Small is beautiful...Green is elegant

11th hour is part 2 of inconvenient truth.. Al Gore’s impressive documentary which makes you feel ashamed for being lifelong consumer of fossil fuel and raises hazar questions on the life style we got getting accustomed to without even having the pangs of irreversible destruction we are causing.
We all know Leonardo de Carpio, the man who has a public image of being sensible and earnest about things he does. And after Al gore he is the right choice of voice that binds these plethora of freewheeling interviews. Tthese sound bites are just long enough and crisp enough to communicate what a one whole book worth has to say.
I mean 2008 is heating up with the so many sane minded people coming out and making their voices heard. Obama appointing Steven Chu as a energy advisor, makes one hope for some path-breaking changes in world in which we live today. We have seen millions of people getting affected by food shortages like never before , unprecedented floods and storms and draughts.... all the result of haphazard use of fossil fuel, trapping of too much of green house gases in biosphere, leading to rise in average temperature causing arctic ice to melt. Its caouse and effect even 4th standard kid can understand took us wiping clean of half the O3 umbrella and 3/4th of rain forests to learn. Right now we are witnessing a tipping point and if we don’t stand up to that, we will not live to see the future. It’s basically you are not saving the environment , it will continue to live but then human won’t be there to see the aftermath 'cause it won’t be a livable anymore. There are so many catchy lines in this: Introspecting US academicians quoting Churchill, “Americans often do the right thing, but only when they exhaust all the other possibilities”. (make sure you turn the subtitles on even if you are watching it English. Made me remind of, not long ago, we have George Clooney’s Batman, in which a middle aged environmentalist woman was portrayed as a villain and laughing stock of the whole party. Seriously, we have come a long way from there.
Central theme of this documentary is nicely punctured with 3-second video-clips of natural events and somber voice over that adds to amazing effect. Hearing about what we notice and but chose to ignore sometimes makes us be conscious of the gravity of those things
‘Go green’, but how? Kindly package it for me, for the masses.. what can we do at my level.... may be run a blog/website where people suggest tricks / hacks / strategies to reduce ones carbon footprint. Unlike Americans we are not big fan of SIGs special interest groups possibly because we already have so many cults and sects and are a divided society. Of the top of my head, we should make a PIL in consumer court to start putting carbon values (how much green house gas this product led to into the environment in its making) on the products and we stick to buying those which are the least...market forces are the strongest, there is no denying once it comes into effect. All you need is right push in right direction and it will self-evolve. So far the oil lobby driven the geo-politics and the wars and the tensions in the second- half of the 20th century, but Obama promises some change in the time to come. As an Indian we should be ready to gear up ourselves with the values of frugality and 'small is beautiful’ and ’green is elegant’ attitude. Gosh, it worth a Tantra T-shirt slogan. 
Otherwise our politicians will sell us off as a dumping ground of the greedy and set-in-their-ways so called immature developed countries.

Lurkers... any thougths... what can be done to drag the hand s of clock backv inot the time frmo the 11th hour...

Assassination of Jesse James

A beautiful movie in which characters come alive and a legend is re-enacted and revisited. Based on a novel in which characters speak slang of American English of the turn of 18th century…I watched it without having gone to tomatometer or imdb, ‘cause I was sure Ridley and tony Scott coproduction should hardly disappoint. It s a story about a legendary robber, a persona build to such a minute details and his disposition described so well, it is easy to guess it is written and directed by same guy who has finesse in narration, nowhere there a hurried or mushy mashy portrayal, or underdeveloped shots, each scene each shot is polished to an extent that one would feel the level of a slowly finished oil painting by some laid back artist. Recreating the times and the mood of that era has become a mere technicality now-a-days for most productions, but it should not escape a mention. Oh and the background score, It lingers long after the movie is over, there is no denying how much intensity it adds to the whole scene. Remember the screeching siren sound so well used in the sequences ‘to peak’ in Dark knight whenever there is ‘spat’ between the opposites …joker and batman,… I look forward to some gems from rehmanin the flicks like Gajhini…coming back to Jesse.. Brad Pitt coproduced it, he looks like choosing big frame portraits ..earlier achilles In troy and now jesse james… then we have almost 20, bob ford, a guy highly impressed of jesse’s persona to an extent he imitates every gesture, watches every move, moves around slyly in most of the frames, portrays a meek who faces the conflict , a deep desire and need to be applauded and be somebody …and a suppressed loathing for his own demigod he is slated for some trophies for his performance.. and some of the angst and private confessions of Jesse are so well said, “ I go on journeys out of my body, I wonder about that man that’s gone so wrong, I’ve been becoming problem to myself”… There are no significant female characters and it’s to be watched for the performances in some of the well scripted shots. It’s a long one (2:40) by any standards for an English movie, but it is canvas well used and rich with subtleties. Don’t watch if you are in a mood for a quick snack. It is a multicourse French gourmet cuisine to be savored till dawn.

suicides and blasts

Reading Hindu after Times of India is like resuming a serious news channel after a commercial break. I have never seen such an irresponsible agenda driven so called national daily as TOI. Yesterday in Hindu I read a shocking piece of statistic: The number of deaths by suicides among farmers is mammoth 1,82,000 since ‘97… last four years Maharashtra, supposedly developed and progressive among the states, has been breaching 4000 figure in farmers deaths…. that is in spite the so called India shining and air of progress, recent influx of FDIs, creation of wealth and opportunity by IT and services sector. Deaths toll by Naxalites in the ‘interiors’ of tribal India in central regions is far more and especially more brutal and leading far more ‘loss of trust’ in government which virtually does not exist in those areas.

But what is taking center stage in media is killing done by mercenaries sent by our neighbor and that to me is as good as giving wrong signal to unhappy elements in India. It is like, you want your issue to be taken seriously, go and shake up urban India and hit where it hurts. Politicians in India have got habituated to delaying tactics knowing public memories are very short term and under the name of patience they can and have been avoiding definitive actions.

The whole episode makes me think common principles of prioritizing issues are being forgotten by so many those who are responsible for our society’s mental well being. And we don’t seem to be doing anything substantial on any front either. … let that be national security, intel, inclusion of marginal social sections, …looks like we are busy addressing the symptoms too much that we completely lack a long term solution to any of these problems. Watched “Charlie Wilson’s war”, Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in a very realistic political drama, around the tumultuous times before the US was coerced to intervene in Afghanistan invasion of USSR by a single person’s will and efforts then in 80s. 28 years later we are paying the price of trusting this most insecure neighbor and trying to keep peace process going in spite of repeated back stabbings. This movie is must watch as it shows how the wars are fought and how their financial backbones are spread thin across the globe. ...When we are in our retirements there will be movies made on How indian parliament attck was plotted or How bunch of brain washed mercenaries were sent on suicide mission to Mumbai..By then lets hope both countries mature enough and look back as mistakes of the past.

Why do we like designer stuff... or do we?

I have been pushed to see something bizzare by the subject line of the fwdee...






interesting isnt it..!!
Don't tell me that its hard to quickly say what's the time. I know its not that usable. but thats not the point. Its a design with personality and may or may not get thumbs up for being usable. Now here lies the tricky part which involves how a designer steers through such moments of decision where he has to drop fancy attribues of her designs and make peoples lives easier but mundane and less interesting. Thats the reason Mac designs have a definite personality. I heard they don't bother too much when they go ahead with their usability studies. There is One maxim that a camel is a horse designed by committee; I would extend it further, using a a overly normalised product by bunch of designers is worse; resulting interaction must feel like romancing with a family and not a person.

Alas, there are moments when the inner designer get immensly satisfied...

the other day in a similar mindless browsing spree landed at IDSA awards... here is one winner from IDEO : Heimspiel (german for "home play" ) .. so many amazing subtle design changes ..Ideas such as bringing a light element to a door edge that allows the light to spill into the room as the door rotates around the hinge, a radiator control knob that begins to illuminate in response to the radiator's warmth, door knob allowed to 'sink-in' if it has "do not enter" sign ..like a disbaled button... feels like a smooth fusion of Product Design and interaction design...


going through it made me conscious ...like a suddenly-vision-corrected-person-coinmg-out-of a-spects-shop.

the whole thing reiterates what a real design effort can turn into rather than a I-wrok-for-bread-n-butter work one gets accustomed to and start getting habituated to.

Some works are really outstanding.. check out ... IDSA awards

The Robbie Williams Show (Something Beautiful)

I just love this song ... I like robbie williams music...its so much in your face... I started listening to his mucis in my design school.. in fact that is when I started listening to eng pop music... lyrics is good,

Digsby : all in one

tired of maintaining hazzar networking sites,....we all have our reasons "hey, 'cause I have been using it from start, ...this, I started since I liked the interface,.. this one...oh..I just have coupla friends there, this id is just to provide whenever asked in typical web form for registering " .... We had meebo earlier for consolidation, here is one more Umbrella client which will take care of your messengers, mail clients, networking sites in one place... digsby... worth a try.... i liked the homepage as I could find one character of Family guy in their avatars... you never what thing you will like in an app.

21km in 2:10 ....Just did it

After having heard so many times about the marathon run and the 'zing thing' in it from Saand, just to make him stop teasing me, I finally registered - with a slight doubt in mind. The deal is 21km and his dos and don’ts involved 'eat lot of carb... samosa, kachori.... etc, have a good rest before the day of the run, don't push too hard, get yourself into a rhythm,... tried to do just that.... somehow got a week’s time to 'train' my poor legs. So this Hyderabad run is an annual event here.... and mood of the city is to have it filled with gala events where there is live band (making sure some gals are there to jam and dabble with electric guitar), singers who hold you in the tired moments after the ordeal, then some eye-candy parachute landing manuvers, ... Unlike usual Hyderabad beaming sun over your head, we got a surprise hill station-ish weather and slight drizzle. Amidst the recent terror events in Mumbai, the mood was sombre but people were brimming with patriotic fervour and groups with different agenda's and motivation for the run were also there, a group of displaced Kashnmiri pandits, green movement groups, some loksatta volunteers with placards raising the right questions about the security lapses etc.... The IST was followed sacrosanctly and we were flagged off at 6:20 .. 20 minutes late than the scheduled start. First 14km were breezy, me and my buddy could cruise smoothly looking at each other and pushing ourselves, then things started to slow down, on the psychological tiredness than physical, eagerly watching out for the intermittent sight of the board showing distance left. Somehow got past the finish line. The last 7 km took as much time as first 14km. Lessons were learnt, got richer by experience and promises were made to make it for the next time even better. Let us the sea. Did I mention, this is by far the most well organised event by any city administration I have seen. I am starting to admire the outlook of the city as a whole. She knows she is not as big to be in the leagues of Mumbai and NCR ...but she is getting there.

Edge of Heaven (German/Turkey)

So far have not watcvhed many German movies, but of those I have watched (gigantic, Im july, etc) there is always a mention and fascinating reference to India. Feels good to be perceived by a different culture this way. Reminds me of one exchange student from Germany we used to have in IDC, she was just amazed by vibrancy and clamour we live in. Being a Fine arts grad, she succinnctly put, back there in germany its all shades of gray. She liked in here. And she actually rode a bicycle with her friend from Mumbai to Kanyakumari. OK...I was digressed to some distnat memories. I was talking about movie.
'Edge of Heaven' is a movie lying on my hard disc for some time and I kept wondering what could it be about. Never wanted to land into another supernatural or crappy version of period movie. And at one assuming moment I happend to open it finally to watch it. The movie has multiple perspectives at a turkish population living in germany, stigma a migrant family generally has to go through. Migrated alienated and living in some country trying to fit in and once that phase gets over, what remains is a longing. The plot is annotated with two deaths..thats what connects the dots in this movie. In fact two chapters of the movie open with titles and like reading a novel which gives feel of "while this was happening..". Nejat (pronounced neshat), A turk who teaches German in German university who speaks less but means lot, his brutish but loving, old-school father living in Bremen who manages to save from his pensions and tips from horse racing to get another turkish "woman of loose virtue" to be his live-in wife in old days. Her name 'Veter' that means "that's enough" in turkish, being the seventh daughter in family. Veter's daughter, Aayten, a student of sociology back there in Turkey involved into political activities against the tyranny of state regards to freedom of speech, right to education. Now as the story unfolds Najat is led to his quest for Veters daughter in turkey while Aayten to germany in serach of her mother.
Its all about loving your parents, tag line go well than Johar's melodramatic mutlistarer. In new country, ties with family becomes so significant. These days near and dear are all a phone call away but that feeling is what keeps us going. When Nejat tell the story of Ibrahim and the God, the message of the movie comes to effect. Movie is about telling a story that leaves it mark than a quick shot of entertainment. If you share the same mood and expectation then this is a good watch.

nothing personal about loans... :)

कर्जे जो उठाये हमने बाज़ार से
हमारी जान की दुआ करने वाले बढ़ गए....
बेहिसाबो मे रहना सीखते गए यूँ ही
गिने गिनाये जीने मे क्या ख़ाक मजा था

Thoughts on pot

Quantum of solace se yaad aaya... that’s what are we missing in our lives... at least let me speak for myself... I heard all the bond movie names are picked from such cheesy words from Ian Fleming’s novels...

The constant turmoil that we live into.. I mean... every dig we take on internet starts with Google... it is a new world’s web address bar... for a while think about a scenario where you are living in a room and everything you want involves a hunting ... long ago we used live in simpler times... where a book finished used to linger in our minds for days... quoting that used to be way of enjoying it... calling bro from other room and reading him passages were the fun part... something is getting lost today..maybe there are distances.,...maybe people we care about part... and there comes a need for talking with many at a time ... we are constantly hard pressed for time....
I go blank in front of blank screen and get careful and politically correct and filter my own thoughts... but true me do meet me sometime.... thoughts come rushing in...
It peaks when I am on my morning 8km run and climaxes when I am taking hot showers on my back...(my lord, ye baat note ki jaye..ye insaan aaj kal sexual metaphors bahot use karne laga hain)
But I feel the blog should not give away ..but should talk about the things that culminate out of your intense brooding over a thing, thought, issue... it should surface with more clarity than clutter.

Things I like to share I get it in that ephemeral moments when my mind is completely light and feathery .. watching over the steps one after the other and thinking nothing else... i fact these days...we hardly do anything for a prolonged period of time... something is always there to disrupt u .. a buzzing cell...talap for tea/coffee... somebody at the door... unwanted mail alert... ... we tend to get something close to this thing..that higher state of mind..on pot(I don’t have that experience as yet but my friends from arts school tell me) or on the pot... (assuming some invest good amount of time for the ROI sitting there) ... some find such lighter moments... moments of clarity in their sleep ...at 4 am... my Prof Bapat.. use to say.. sleep after a good wrestling with a tricky design problem and let the mind synthesis it ... and in the morning..it will be all clear and crystalline for u... they call it “let me sleep over it”..

For me this part of sleep comes not at 4 am but pretty late in the morning... and that supposedly design breakthrough moment actually turns out to be sleep breaking moment ,,,..

I see I write in a muddled up manner, try to be relentless. It reminds me what Sean Connery says to his prodigy in ‘Finding Forrester’ ... Don’t stop ... Keep writing...Don’t stop even for a moment.. it is a key to good writing.... but ... when unlike the seasoned writers it should be good to be able to write one full page of your state of mind... I admire those who can do this..may be through a diary .. sometime they are the one who use it to motivate themselves... for people like me.... by constantly pushing myself .. as to show me what u are capable of.. this results into a constant watchfulness I would say till the level beyond which it is difficult to call healthy.... blog is on such poking to myself... I don’t believe in mass media but I blog...I believe the key to good conversations is knowing how the listener is responding... and growing into that conversation in such a way that you both discover something more valuable and connect... sometime I feel there can be a nice tool one can develop that creates a collage of my conversations with many into a coherent publishable feed... so i tell my friend.. about this movie... and then about how was stuck in traffic... it would be nice to extract that conversation into something others like to overhear and add... no....not a chat room.... we don’t want more chaos to what we already get exposed to... we don’t want to land up in the privacy law suits also. ..

Welcome to sajjanpur .. Return of Relevance

Shaym Benegal is a sweetheart from the time I, sorry, we (started watching TV was a group activity then), used to watch 'Bharat ek khoj' with kurta clad Nehru ...and later shyam banagal took me to new heights of adoration after his "mammo"...happened to see this film on one serendipetous afternoon on TV... and realised the lasting effect of a good cinema on ones mind and opinion and so on ....

Last weekend, picked Sajjanpur over much hyped 'Kidnap' and (plz...dont judge me!) 'Drona'..and needless to say I throughally enjoyed it... at prasadz it was like a private screening...in out metros such movies can survive with such medium and small size theatres only... It was less of a movie more of a folk-lore told in a similar fashion. This story touches so many interconnected aspects of our not-so-urban areas and unlike Swades, it gives a full justice to it without being unmindfully preachy about it. Some characters stand out and some shots still bring the smile on my face and make me realise how can the director bring humor in so subtel way.... One such instance was "Baithiyeee Mamaji..!!" ... there was nothing funn about it but it was all adding up. The shot when Ila Arun comes and steals the show is , I think, the high point of the movie. If possible catch this movie with a Bihari on your side, as some words are better understood at that very moment and there are a lot of the words from rural dialect. Omkara tried this and here again we are trying to go back to where the real stories are.

Light Bulb Moment

mind in thoughts, eyes in blank stare,
a step after another, matching lines of the floor

frantic run on a mill, still going nowhere,
light bulb moment eludes, nothing seems clear

Farhan Rocks

Was it because platinum tickets in PVR screen or a good company or my upbeat mood, I don't know...But i liked ''Rock on'.. and Farhan as a rockstar. It came effortlessly to him, a prodigal son of poet and screen-writer who is already on a career high with his few flicks, nobody else would have been a better choice in this role... and Farhan did it so well...I mean his stage presence overpowers any what so ever flaws in his rest of the screen presence or his heavy hoarse voice, a perpetually frozen countenance.
I believe rock is not about good voice ... its guys' idea of mass communication...
Its loud and its direct...
I am no big rock fan ..but i have listened to my share of rock and
I don't have crazy looking hairdo or grunge graphics outfits or silver jewelry... but the way these 4 jam... I loved it..
this new actress who did 'saakshi' was good in her role, she is out from now on for good sensible roles, few that our film industry produces... and Koel was equally bad... but they were always the side dishes..
No where these rockers feel any obligation to the English rock, they are as Indian as it can get... may be a little urbane ... in the ideas they convey... in the words they choose. Like a real Punk rock, this shows the reaction against the producer- driven music compopsition ... with their skirmishes with label company honchos...

Among the movies on the similar theme, I have seen 'Almost Famous'.. it was good...Kate made it good...while the soundtracks are all from the already popular songs, the theme and the story is around a band's dynamics... same is with very well made movie 'Dreamgirls' ..its about a band's journey and all the emotional ups and down they go through like a spicy reality show squeezed into a two hour movie. One of the best movie on such theme, I stumbled upon is "Once", which is also an Oscar nominee for 08, a simple story of a guy and girl and the music they happen to compose together...both are non-worldly and socially awkward and in typical situations of their own in their lives...but its the music that gives them the new breathe of life and hope.

Like any Hindi movie, ROCK ON has got many unconvincing twists and glitches in the script, like the time Farhan calls it quits...I mean one got to have something big to happen for leaving your passion all of a sudden. But all and all, its a good movie... As I always say, watch this flick with bunch of dudes in forgiving mood and not with sceptics.. !!

The Other Khayyam

Been to twist n tales... our own neighborhood bookstore and enjoyed an hour there..
came across a classic ...life n work of Omar Khayyam...his work"rubaiyat" (four liners)..first I thought is this the music director of the classic 'Umrao Jaan' ... but no .. this happened to be a century older... a poet who pushed the boundaries of mysticism, existentialism, nihilism...

These few lines got stuck as I flipped through..

"Since neither truth nor certitude is at hand
Why waste your life in doubt for a fairyland
O Let us grab the goblet of wine
for, drunk or sober, in ignorance we stand"

The guy was not just a poet but happened to be a versatile human being ..a scientist,mathematician, astronomer...deeply inclined towards the doctrines of Sufism but never confined himselves into a single doctrine... ..the book have higher linguistic analytical stuff on his style or writng..
things like "Ontological indeterminism"... that mean Khayyam used to use the words even outside the periphery of the commonly understood meaning and context.. "daayra" ... one of my favorite Urdu word..

would have been a good a buy..wanted to give in to the impulse...thought unless I read his poetry myself and let it sink, no point in reading the second hand interpretations... So saved it for the days with luxury of time and deeper pockets!!

O Soulmate !

O soulmate, of denied existence
let me find my soul first
the glass shoe I'll then take around
from city palace to that remote hut

As I look for you all around
Its more a search of lost self
somewhere within and without
a mute perfection waiting to prevail

Handful of salt thrown either way
safe shores, see'em all receding away
the pain and the pleasure of love labor
realm unseen unknown, into we both sway

I start feeling consistent again...

I see people around me who have some or the other way some itch for physics. ..every designer some point of his life wanted to make his career in physics... although theoretical physics is tucked away nicely in the mysteries of advanced mathematics... it always eludes one when he sets out make career choices that are at that time of life look pragmatic and worldly. But the quest for philosophical foundation is always on...in some form...some call it spiritual or some knowledge, some search for completeness...

I grew up in a school where a day used to start with recitation of 16th adhyay of Bhagvadgita.. for reasons beyond my understanding even today.. they say it explains so many things, mostly behaviral dos and donts but I still pick my choices on my own on every cross-roads and those codes of conduct fails to come to my mind. Later in the day we were taught physics which tries to define the world view of space, time, object, matter, cause and effect.. separate isolated belief systems were under constructions ... I am sure folks from school wanted us to learn Upanishads but with no broader framework as to why it is good to know these ancient scriptures... so the answers are now getting clearer. Its when Fritjof Kapra runs you through the simplistic understandings of philosophical basis and limits reached by western way of critical inquiry into things, lets call it quantum physics deep downward and relativistic model upward. In his book "Tao of physics" he draws parallels from Hinduisms and other eastern mysticisms and I feel my both ends somewhere meeting. I start feeling consistent again.

Music that connects

Music is integral part of our lives, and when me and my friend hang out inevitably topics shifts to things he liked and things I liked listening to in these days, ...its like a co-discovery.... he was telling me, incidences around some songs - Once the legendary S D Burman was composing a song and R D of course had his itch to introduce a fleet of instruments at every sam-n-taal. Now S D allowed him to do so and when the song finally came out; RD was aghast as none of it was there in the final cut. SD took care at the time of sound mixing!!
Our thought train such kept crossing lines, finally Pink Floyd and their insistence of perfection. ..in one of the song they wanted a pig's squelching sound, they brought a pig right in the recording studio.
Ek vo din tha aur ek ye din hain...
Now we live in the world of fakes of the likes of pritam who plagiarizes each one of his song from World music and in a way render social service to the ignorant people pf India. Some of the originals are from Korean movies even some from TV serials ..and are worth listening to as you would like them even without understanding the lyrics.

Permission Interfaces for better dialogs

We loose our innocence every passing day..we call it learning the ways of the world...
so is designer goes through this maturity curve, he learns the ways of the world; undones all the notions when he was fresh out of design school. We used to have these rosy ideas about appropriate design... we still do but in more pragmatic frame of mind.
I was under the the deep influence of design bible "design for the real world"by victor papanek. I used to look at the marketing efforts and their right hand mercenaries for all the dirty work - the advertisers, in utter disdain. I still think its a bad use of creativity.
As papanek opens his book with a line - "advertising is world's phoniest profession which tries to influence people to buy things they don't need with the money they don't have and to impress the people who don''t care."
And now here I am reading this book "Permission Marketing". It teaches you how to bait a stranger to be a friend, and then a customer.. of course I am not out there to sell anything. My whole focus is this books emphasis to use of the web for 1:1 with masses as against traditional interruption marketing techniques of the conventional mass media.
But it is good to learn from things you feel unethical and immoral, right? so When sachin says he wont endorse cigarettes one feels good about him..
neways...in this book Seth Godin succinctly take you on to changing nature of marketing efforts with time and media...what amazon did to web and how its changing the ways businesses are done.No, its not going to be another dotcom dud. Web is mature now if it is not already said enough. Core values and mores of the permission marketing is so very relevant to UXD since its finally the UIs that get influenced by this pitch and approach. And finally out there on web and its clutter and overload of information - you are in a selling business..may be not a commercial product or but of course an idea or a sequence to do things.. wherein step by step permission interfaces are more desirable than in your face interruptions.

Little Miss Sunshine : Time to look back...

Its not one more in the crowd of character comedies, in fact I wont call it comedy at all. There is some good characters and pretty eccentric in their own standards too.

Our protagonist the kid who wants to participate this pre-teen beauty contest, a self-help teacher and really PITA (pain in...) practitioner at home, an adolescent and restless brother of miss sunshine who is focused to the edge of craziness to become a fighter pilot, a scholar and depressed to clinical levels uncle who just had a break up with his gay partner, mother who is trying to cope all the pressure, and the old school grandpa.

This jamboree creates this tremendous possibilities of friction, tension and drama. I mean once you have a good 'elements' identified what's left is pretty much their 'placements',...as one theater director likes to call his characters as my 'walking-talking props'.

It is of the kind of a film where you go in, have heartiest laughs without realizing that laugh is at you..the audience. In fact it ridicules the conditioning of us by mass media to have the Best in our lives and thereby making ourselves miserable. We 'all' want the best personalities and features illustrated over and over by glossy magazines, education that is intellectually stimulating and work that is rewarding and socially relevant, spouse that is sexually, emotionally stimulating and comforting, kids that listen to you and have some of your unfulfilled ambitions...anything below than this is failure and No NO. This movie has lot to say about how American living has turned into. This finds it place alongside "American Beauty" , "Requiems for a Dream" and "Ghost world". If you liked those, go for this one.

Our Indian urban-scape is slowing gonna be like that, an eventuality of set of distorted ideas that we follow about modernity and being a developed nation. Reminds me of the Eddie Vedder's song" Society" .... society, you're a crazy breed I hope you're not lonely without me ....When you want more than you have you think you need ...

Gorge at George

If you are a foodie, then ultimate pleasure is discovering new joint and planning it for a nice occasion.
Being in Pune and especially in Aundh had been a so far not that adventurous but of late there is some renewed activity and some surprise discoveries. I have been a regular at Idlicious, a breakfast joint to go to with half sleepy eyes and eat till you drop those typical southee dishes and hang around with a steaming cup of filter coffee. Moving on to the midday, if you are a hard core non-veggie, ‘Tareef” is one such place on your list of never-to-miss eateries, especially for Paaya soup and raan (lamb leg piece nicely roasted) and their tenderly cooked mutton biryani. It reminded me of my days at Hyderabad and those late luncheons after a sweaty volleyball games and quarrels thereafter. Talking about mutton “George” is on such restaurant near MG road. Have a good walk on MG road and then take it out all on those crisp mutton chops followed by Pishta Kulfi. If you little more foolhardy in your culinary explorations, radio will take you to new high with kheema pav and seekhs. MG road is a place full of such close to my heart joints. You enter Hotel Diamond with tired legs and you have at your disposal gulps of chilled beer and mooh lagan ke liye Surmai fry. ... List is endless...watch out for more on this ...till then let me go and relish homemade aamras and rice papads.

Starting out in the evening

I have this special place for the American Jewish scholars and writers. They would give you the best piece of literary work, may it be Charlie Kaufman, Spielburg or here in this case Andrew Wagner... this is so far the best screenplay, and it gets its due nomination to some ivy league critic award as well.

The four corners of the plot, these four characters are so well balanced and keep the things tight. A less understood writer in his last years, his daughter on the wrong side of 30s who has her own issues with her relationship with a guy who carried some priorities of his own ahead of anything and last the catalyst of change in this story, the university student completing her thesis about this writer who comes and "shake things up".
There are some good conversation when this student probes in to bring out the writer's take on her understanding of his novels. The film is replete with dinner table quotable and some deep enough to be just quotes..

"..To sit across a table and talk to someone you love is itself a complex engagement...to go to bed with someone and carry the conversation to the realm of body, a realm of insecurity and vulnerability and fear as well as pleasure, is fraught with the sad evidence of how difficult it is to understand a person and to make yourself understood."

When she say.." I find few men of my age interesting. They are like chewing gums, few minutes of flavor followed by a bland repetition..."

Eloisa to Abelard -- Alexander Pope

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

Era of Keywords

A walk with colleagues after lunch is a mine of crazy topics..we were talking painting..a pro in that field made a passing reference at a technique called ..'Wet-on-wet', I made a mental note...to look it up. And it opened up treasure of fixes for all the little dilemmas I had in past while dabbling acrylic paints in awkward way.
We live in the era of keywords... an inquisitive mind can embark on insightful journey with few right words up his sleeve. Gone are the days of hand-holding and sharing the hard earned wisdom of worlds. Kids today, all they have to know is type in that bland empty text-bar and reach a particular bit of information in no time.
I get a feeling in sometime there would be some nerdy high-school competitions to find a piece of information using Google and then boasting their way to glory by how they picked those specific bunch of keywords to slice n dice and reach the finish line. No wonder MS is flirting with Yahoo for their share of search market.

Call for ideas... everyday traffic problems

One of my colleague from work was very excited and happy...thing is he worked on a proposal, a solution for traffic congestion at the cross roads.. ..everyone gets pissed but he went little further and tried solving it....got an article published in daily and one fine day got a response from traffic commissioner...such public-govt administrative partnership is although something most logical..but happening just recently ...and is very encouraging,...

My friend was pretty sympathetic with the conditions at this traffic control room.. "they work 12 hrs a day..continuously answering a beeping radio...following up an orderly on certain case ..dictating certain purchase requisition to a clerk who is getting words handpicked from the whole cluttered mingled conversations"... in fact .....As in good ol'days, from changing the lane if policeman is seen coming to partnering them on such solutions, we have come a long way, at list in patches.

Other thing I noticed that we are starting to voice our concerns using Web as a Social Platform ..there is a trust and hope developing that my voice will get heard and not as a chance incidence like a message in the bottle floating on a web cloud. Today Orkut community provides, although in some make-shift way, a social tool for special interest groups like 'Save Pune traffic' groups to virtually come together.

Madam Q

They say about British people that all they like to do is watch football and reality shows and stand in a que whenever where-ever possible....
With we Indians the story is different .... as with everything else...I saw a nice yellow strip at one of the airport boarding line ... "Please wait for your turn" .. it looked so alien and culturally misfit to find it there... we like to huddle around, a ticket or whatever is the object of desire should be a priced earning at the end of intense struggle. that use to keep us alive ...those little victories..but used to leave us tired and annoyed and conveniently oblivious towards the bigger questions of life and spared us with pseudo-intellectual vanity that people in rich countries often find in their lives.
In one of the bank cash counter, people don't pay heed to such lines, so the rifle holding multitasking security has to stand there and make sure they do.
Some time I feel, isnt so counter-intuitive that the countries and cultures which are scarcely populated have habits of queing up while with us, the more the crowd the more chaotic it tend to get. Sense of organization and order is also a cultural conditioning... it is very unnatural to us..or not conditioned as yet ... some of the inherent behavioral and cultural difference between western and eastern civilizations are at the root of divergent development and growth trajectories we took.....this fact is emphasized beautifully in Jerad Diamond's book...Guns Germs and steel.

That aside...coming back to yellow strip. New 'feel good' factor in urban India brought with it so many such alien ..not quite grounds up.. artifacts and constructs... which seems to be quick marker of being developed but it is a big time misfit with the minds that has seen it both....the past and the fast changing transient present...a hazy snapshot that is whizzing past...

There are some things new technology brings with it... which is inevitable...but some are nothing to do with technology..they just follow the suit...At time like to call it non-contextual design copied inappropriately.

Resurrected...

My site is up again... go visit www.amitrathod.com
want to add a mini-feed of this blog to the site. I got to do little Googling for some code snippet.
Other thing I am planning to add is thumbnail view of portfolio, nobody cares or likes to read long passages, pics can result into much wider browsing of pages than could possibly facilitated by a menu.
Also felt like adding my latest bookmarks . These days ones' personal browsing history run into millions but it is at the same time becoming a thumb-print of who you are.

Time hi to nahi hain...

Don't have it on my wrist
got it strapped on my mind
a scarce resource they always say
hard pressed paupers of every kind

Reflections

Stick-out my forked tongue, I need a constant affirmation
I thieve on flattery, limelight and all that adulation
Am I getting more responsive, and so less immune
lose my yesterday on every passing reflection

Part time soul

4 am poet and a part time soul
much ado about a perfect hyperbole
feather-weight champion can't stand this wind
each realizing potential dwarfing me within

Sweet Phony

Hands and limbs, tied to the strings
Bright blue screen behind, freedom to dream
Get wide awake, let the body sleep on
well, the clever Ad gets it all spot-on

Beijing Bicycle

Kumar's initiative is bearing fruits...in the series of his hand picked foren language movies screened every Friday, this Chinese one is the third.
If you are here for spoilers then you will definitively get some.
With this movie first thing peeps into an in-n-out Indian minds, "yaar chinko ne acchi khaasi progress kar daali hian... look at the big road... n all that humdrum"
But that apart... once the story start sinking in, the cultural differences subside and we start associating with the dreams and forces of typical adolescence which knows no ethnicity.
Story revolves around two needy boys claiming the bicycle. The art of storytelling espoused in this movie lies in hiding some facts that generally drives anybody's sense of fair judgment. Through this IMO director want to make a comment on every single crime, every single story that we come across leaves it incomplete and that is not because could not be made complete, but it cannot be.
Some amazing frames and still camera work makes it a serious movie making and engrossing to watch.

Ephemeral never fail me

a living without a grand scheme,...
Appy, watermelon and latte with cream

episodes of ...sun moon and twilight,
the feisty, the fragile and the delight

but the ephemeral never fail me,
and square one is the end of each journey

Paradox of choice by Barry Schwartz

Some time I wonder books of this kind are a nice amalgam of research papers we hardly bother to read in first place, although author brings us the insights from these references in a framework of this book ..which try to develop a theme around the current overabundance of choice in every walks of life.... and which is not empowering us the freedom of choice but wearing us down,...

there some nice references to concepts like price anchoring - some pricing tactics followed to create an artificial feel of choice and good bargain, psychological ledger of our buying and spending habits, framing etc,
...

an easy read like a stroll in a park,,,, with many insights on its way...
happen to come across this book as a part of quarterly book review we often do in our small design group at work... it definitely a must for those deal in consumers domain or design websites for commodity selling.

'Atonement'- More than Keira in it

Why is that classic stuff is made out of tragic stories ..which makes it all the more beautiful and at the same time fragile... Keira Knightley's 'Atonement' is one such story...that even after the cinematic experience some kinda longing leaves you restless and wasted .. ... Some shots are detailed with more than one perspective which adds to the intensity of the plot. A sense of regret fills in the entire life of Briony tallis, a kid now grown up and plauged by the haunting of the past blunder. She brings the characters of her play "Two figures at the fountain' alive to some kind of redemption on her part.
The Victorian era is so well detailed in not just costumes and sets, but even in the gestures of the characters and compositions of the frame. One near the pool is especially exquisite.
It reminds me similar powerful performances delivered and that bygone era rebuild in "Sense and sensibility" ; Emma Thompson with her suppressed anguish, boyish charm of Hugh Grant, Kate Winslate with her yet another bubbly effervescence. Although 'Sense..' is backed by Jane Austin's water-tight classic, I would give 'atonement' heads up for its end-treatment wherein the inner narrative of the author comes out.

transliteration ...now in blogger..

Earlier I used to type in Devnagari using Baraha client...now blogger supports a transliteration as well...

let me try

अरे ये तो बहोत ही आसान हैं... खाली एक ही प्रॉब्लम है...जब तक मैं किसी भी शब्द को ख़त्म न कर दूँ तब तक हिन्दी मे preview नही आता... that keep me guessing without giving me an ongoing feedback.... anybody from the blogger listening... i think i have to whine loud enough... or this is not a right place.. :)

Jean-Pierre Jeunet - The craftsman

With every passing movie... I am getting BIG fan of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. He is hooked on to Audrey Tautou, the fabulous actress in and as 'Emelie', the Jean pierre movie that most people know about. she never lets him down with her tender performances.
Yesterday watched mesmerizingly beautiful 'Un long dimanche de fiançailles' (French) - "A Very Long Engagement" is a touching tale of a girl's idiosyncratic belief that one day she would break the mystery of her fiance disappearance from war front who was sentenced for court marshal along with other five. she has these crazy habits of relating things around him to find the answers to her depeest questions and more often she gets it as some kind of validations of her beilief.
Her journey and story is a cinematic treat to get involved in and Jean-Pierre weaves yet another classic with his characteristic thumb-print seen all over.
His style render every frame with rich compositions and vividness of the French landscape. At times subtitles are a distractions and viewer is torn between this ugly trade-off and we pity ourselves for not having learnt French, the language with its peculiar phoneme and free flowing movements like tai-chi.

Coupla days back watched "Delicatessen", also by Jean Pierre, a romantic love story on the backdrop of weired world only a most creative mind can visualize. It has its moments that still bring smile on my face. A must watch, at least for the scene wherein the joker comes in for a cupa tea at her loved ones invitation.

misplaced aesthetic

Poetic Justice, once again a misplaced aesthetic
hard hitting realism, crumble so soon to bits
self reinforced belief, a dear delusion
frenzied race to nowhere, you me and every fucking one.

O Asad

Me my companion, they say lonely,
It’s the very anvil of poetic if only
Deep dent me, o Asad, it’s you to blame
Let this half baked soul put to the flame

एहसास-ए-तुफ़ां किनारे से नहीं आता
इश्क-दा-जझ्बा दबी कशिशों में नहीं आता
सदियों कि खलिश और पल मे छुटकारा
रंगीन दिल को आसां रास्ता नही भाता

TOI and our thought trains

The other day I was talking to my brother who is aspiring to get into a Business school. The topic of discussion was GD sessions that are conducted during the Management Entrances. One of the topics given to bunch of 10 candidates is "Morality is a creation of weak to control and deter strong" and initial thoughts that are heard would boggle anybody with sane mind.

One guy gave an example of how Dhirubhai and how he (not even saying) allegedly build an empire using corruption while others took shots at the similar examples. Now it is absurd in so many ways ...first you quote an heresay, second it is not even close to point under discussion. It seems guys in their eagerness to 'talk' loosing a ability of active listening. Other thing evident is inability to talk in terms of concepts and abstractions or making statements which shows chain of reasoning and logical/rational bent of mind. Most talk like a typical Times Of India article, shallow in its way to drive home a point...look what you did to our best brains...!

Any takers of these mashups....

Being in an IT company is like leading two lives. Your alter ego works in the office which is time-matched to precision with western developed world while as you step out of office the reality hits you in the face. Some time it leads to frustration while sometimes I look at it as an opportunity and responsibility on us to at least bring into our daily lives some essence of digital world. These days my Google reader is flooded with feeds on topics like free APIs, most powerhouses exposing key APIs for the developer community to use and create mashups. I cannot help but put these pieces together in my mind. Some mashup ideas I am thinking can greatly make a difference...

1. We have lot of builders want to advertise their new projects, and people take long time to visualize the exact location of the new site of the apartment. A google map API can be used. We got to decide where this data is coming from. It can be a small news-mailer sent to key builders that will fetch the location information of the upcoming projects, or more appropriate would be government registry which is more authentic but the toughest to access place unless you have more forthcoming municipal corp. We can also ask them to upload images of the scheme which then pins it places using panoramia. Same thing can work wonder for the rentals. We are yet to build businesses around it.

2. With sites like 'burrp' getting loaded with members-and-consequently-with-visitors. Burrp is basically an imitation of "Yelp : an collaborative restaurant review site in a nutshell" an web20 venture started by Paypal founders once they sold off the cash cow to eBay. Now with lot of info on burrp we can utilize a standard toll-free number well popularized to get a query SMS from any location and throw back information of hotels in-and-around that area to that cellphone in return. Since we got this mobile revolution like never before in India; this can be a hot-cake idea for an API if not a tailored feature for burrp.

3. We are close to an age wherein Phone cameras geo-tag all the images it takes. Now with some additional voice tag while the photo is being looked at or being taken becomes a powerful metadata. This will improve the relevance for the image search from its current effectiveness.

4. More from the geo-tags: Assume you have access to the locations of the people through their cell phones; may be you are sitting in the control room of a cellular service provider. Once you know this area/pin code/lat-lang constitute an area under IMAX a movie theater. At 6:00 pm you have a bunch coming out of some XYZ movie. Now you can send SMS and do quick market survey as soon as those folks walks out of the theater. I know this flirts with privacy issues but such geo-context can lead to some interesting 'push' information flows.

My 2 cents on Gtalk-Gmail

Lately got into habit of critically comparing products I use. Case in point is gtalk and yahoo chat clients.
G-talk I felt also lagging in terms of some of the features like "show me recent conversations". Its a high time folks at Google should come up with something as base functionality is now already assumed and well digested. Now we want next course on our plate!
We share so many urls / links among the close group of people. Why not Gmail provide a way to access all those in one place. It can be a list of links shared with columns like who send it, when, etc... Same can be done by finding out phone no.s, and attachments. We are moving towards an era wherein Gmail is our Online Any Time accessible place for storing document and communication.

I have seen lot of people using it to work on doc partly at work and later imparting finishing touches at home using Google doc.s. Now unless you convert consciously each attached doc into a Google document it wont let you collaboratively edit it. It should be done by default for every document that comes as an attachment.

And above all...when are we going to have the tabbed interface for mails...

Why do I love Stewie?

Every one has a reason to love Stewie ...I have many. and it reflects....
1. Just the way it happened with overly popular friends sitcom, after some time one start identifying with certain characters.
2. When in reverie one doodles stewie without any construction lines!!
3. In the middle of conversation, your mind drifts to wonder what would stewie would have said to Brain at this point....

then my friend is time to safely say that you are seen one too many of 'Family Guy' episodes for a day.

Recent Watch : The Hoax

Man.....Mr. Gere can act and how...!

May be this is first time I saw him with those 70s brown hairdo ...and he also bears a fake nose. There is this shot in the initial few minutes when he is waiting in the lobby of the publisher and he is all shaken by the cold response ..he is getting jolts of reality but he dont want to let go...he acts through grunts, sound of heavy breathing,.. he trembles and boasts just to catch hold of the receding dream.....

Story, an adaptation of a novel and some hand-picked events of the life of certain writer Bob Clifford, who claims to be writing an Autobiography of legendary Howard Hughes and tries and almost gets away with the con given the imbecility of aging and idiosyncratic Hughes.

But this movies owes a lot to Scorsese's' "Aviator". It sets the tone for the charismatic character of Howard Hughes....or may be this is a case for the non-US audience like us who didnot already know about Mr. Hughes that much before Aviotor.

Recent Watch : Ghost World

One thing you will like about this movie is the way a medium of cinema is used to make a free comments on many issues that are bothering the director and he wants to share...
of American lifestyle, of perception of art and expression, about mass media and its result into mass consumption, of the vices of capitalism, of culture of shallow pursuits.

Story or plot revolves around the teenage-adolescence void and their yet to 'harden' and 'develop' social skills. But it is just a prop. The undercurrent is very strong and it is voiced when our "dork" record collector says.."Give them a big mac and a pair of Nike and they are happy"....

For Scarlett fans.. it is one of her subdued performance or a mere presence to show flip side of 'those who comply'.

Recent watch : Death at a Funeral

This one is one hilarious and slapstick comedy...builds up through the movie and reaches the crescendo towards the end... like a Woodhouse classic full of close family members and relatives, aunts and uncles, with their eccentricities..all shows up and there begins one rib tickling series of events.

Too beautiful to lie (Korean)

Wanna watch a Karan Johar and David Dhawan flick in Korean tint with its mastered brew of romance comedy? Kim Ha-Neul replaces Govinda and How!!! This is kinda stuff that proves that a good passable film can be made with tried and tested formulas and patterns. But it does not stop it from being a bit less entertaining!!

Canadian : Sweet Hereafter

In the back drop of serene Canadian village, a story, hypnotically told, of a tragedy and its aftermath. Two parallel stories run through the movie - one of the ambulance chaser who him selves have troubles back home...and of a surviver of the accident, a more sensitive one of the bunch.
She gets to live her favorite bedtime story of pied piper.

There is this opening scene of car wash that sets the mood for the things to come.
Sense of community among distressed is paramount and it gets its rightful place in the scheme of things.

The film's tag line "There is no such thing as a simple truth" lives it up to show how.

Bic Runga : Sway

A friend fwded me this beautiful song by Bic Runga...hope she is not One-hit-wonder...hk out the lyrics too, and the tune is so good it reverberates all day long ... enjoy

Invasion : Extremely Pathological, Stay Away

Hollywood has this culture where the studio biggies forms a committee and decides how and on what next movie gonna be. And a typical result of such cumulative nonsense is "Invasion". And why Mr. Prolific Daniel Graig is accepting such pedestrian roles is also a mystery. He is a tuity-fruity doctor fighting against alien invasion with a mother and practicing Psychiatrist who is Nicole Kidman. Donot waste your time and money on this...

Khamoshi(1969) : Watch it for Waheeda and Gulzar's poetry

Have been listening some of the best songs (since the time I could remember listening to music) like "Tum pukar lo" and "Woh shaam"..and realized that they all happens to be from "Khamoshi (1969)". Credits of the movie were crowded with awe-inspiring biggies. There I found some of the best artists behind its making. Waheeda Rehaan's charming presence and Hemant Kumar's melody makes each of its song a haunting number. "Sirf ehsaas hain ye" is also a gem of poetry by Gulzar less likely to found in mainstream Hindi movies. But one sure feels the pace of things matching to late sixties and one cannot deny that fact that it was one of the forward looking cinema for its times. Watching Waheeda makes me dig down for her best flicks. No doubt she gave some of the classics like 'kaagaz ke phool' and 'Pyaasa'.

time to get happily surprised

I was down with viral.. feeling shitty that evening ...after a long boring day in bed...and in half sleep I double-clicked this flick...n got happily surprised that I watched it till the end without break...This is a psycho roller coaster ride is at its best if one lets the power of "Make-believe" take over.

India's own Majid Majidi

Blue Umbrella - A simple Ruskin bond story told in the equally simple way. Vishal Bhardwaj comes up with yet another movie for kids, staged on the serene backdrops for his native Kumaun. Why I kept thinking of Majidi is because of the subject matter although Iranian uses a perfectly still camera for longer shots a little too much that gives more seriousness to the whole narration. Once a friend who is pro told me about this bit. Although more play with camera gives a little fluidity if the story lacks it.
Don't miss it if you admire Vishal's work.

Sona - Abhi Nahi Aana

very good song...just chked..it is from 2006...how did i miss?.. Sona mahaptra's one more video is there...aa ja...which has got a nice music video.

Understanding USA

Along the line of my previous post...this one is also about the info-graphics and its tremendous power to drive home a point based on complex data.

Ted dot com and gapminder

Ted's site is an apt platform for the biggies in the world arena; those who bring about a change in the perception of world issues. Some of the presentations and talks will remind you about the movie-documentary 'The Inconvenient Truth'. The way each argument is put up and made so compelling, is a testimony to its clarity of thought and transparency in presentation ..which is so much missing in a mass media we are fed with these days.

Having read Tufte's Classics and always thought about missing examples in todays context, this one presentation took me a long way in terms of my understanding of "Quotients of Development" and power of appropriate info-viz tool that help us drive home the correct inferences out of statistical data which are normally looked upon sceptically and often discarded as yet another useless contrived gimmick of numbers.