What the hell is top secret?

IB report sees Cong, allies slide in early polls, key with BSP

In the event of a midterm Lok Sabha poll, the Congress will not gain seats, says a top secret Intelligence Bureau report prepared for the prime minister's eyes only.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/oct/01polls.htm

What the hell is Top Secret, for the eyes of prime minister only. Its out in Rediff, you dumbos. Half the world now knows it.

I made Sushi

So after cooking many Indian Cuisines, I wanted to try something very different.
So, inspired by my buddy Dave, who already tried and succeeded, I decided to try Sushi for myself.

I went to World Market and Tan A Plaza and got the necessary kit to make the Sushi.
I purchased a recipe book Sushi, by Ryuichi Yoshii, even though the recipe is quite simple and could be downloaded from the Internet.

And I tried Sushi using Tilapia, and a custom recipe of my own, deriving from the traditional Japanese recipe, and to my surprise, it came out pretty descent :)

The Sushi didn't come out in perfect round shape, but hey, Iam trying this for the first time :)

Attached are the pictures of the Sushi I made. Click to see the enlarged version.

Recycling

Often when I do some cleaning (yeah right...) in my apartment I see so many wires, cables, power cords, used cells and electronics accessories, I used to wonder if there was a place to recycle it instead of trash it.

I came across this website, which provides locations where they can be recycled in the United States.

http://www.mygreenelectronics.org/

Movie again

Last evening Jo and I went to the movie 'War'.

Devon Aoki was hot.

Also the next Batman movie trailer is out. Christian Bale has become one of my all time favorite movie actor.

The Dark Knight

A website I designed...

I designed a website for Uma aunty, who is an excellent dancer, so are their daughters Ranjini and Sarini.

http://www.umaettigi.com

Movies, Movies & more Movies...

Ok...lets see what all movies I have seen recently.

Rush Hour 3, The Invasion, Superbad.

Iam not going to write anything about these movies, Iam too tired. Go see yourselves.

Media War - Sun TV versus Kalaignar TV

Now that DMK has started its own television channel, Kalaignar TV, what will Sun TV do?

I never used to watch political news in Sun TV as I know for a fact that it will be biased towards DMK and against any other party which is in the opposite camp.
There is no denying that.

Now that DMK is on its own, it will be interesting to watch how Sun responds.

I was watching Sun TV 8.00pm News last night, one of the reports was on Jayalalitha giving some land to each of 174 party volunteers from Virudhunagar district for participating in agitations announced by the party and courting arrest recently.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/070827/54/6jz96.html

The report also mentioned that Jaya condemned the party leaders for causing some inconvenience to public and they were asked to explain their actions.

Going by the nature of the report, it looked like Sun was portraying Jaya in a good light. hehe.

Welcome to politics :)

Move away 'Google', Brand 'God' is the new 'Google'

Gold-coated temple near Vellore

Vatican airline takes to the skies

What's India Watching ?

or better

How's India killing time !

http://www.indiantelevision.com/tvr/

Go Sun TV Go.
Make more people watch Mega Serials like Kolangal and Arasi.

May the Men Cook for Themselves and the Family.

Tattva - Understanding the Rituals and Traditions

I started a new website "Tattva" (http://tattva.planetvimal.com/)

Please make use of it.

I went to the movie 'The Bourne Ultimatum' Saturday. I thought the movie was awesome. Very good thriller right from the beginning. I wish I had read the books before as some of my friends said that that books were even more elaborate.

For all fans who like spy thrillers, The Bourne series is a must watch.

Image Courtesy : Yahoo Movies

Rescue Dawn

Last evening I went to see the movie 'Rescue Dawn' starring Christian Bale.
I loved the movie.
I am a big fan of Christian Bale.

He is an excellent actor. He puts so much hard work into acting.

Take some of his movies for example.
He acted in a picture called 'The Machinist'.
He was so lean; actually skin and bones.
See the picture and you will understand what Iam talking about.
This was in year 2004.


The next year, in 2005, he acted in 'Batman Begins'. See the picture from that movie. He built his body.



In this movie 'Rescue Dawn' he makes a similar transformation.
Form this...


To this...



Image Courtesy : Yahoo Movies

Hula

Hula.

This is the project that I've been working on for a while now and keeping me extremely busy.

http://hula.planetvimal.com/

Iam currently busy with the post production work.
I hope to complete them soon.
That's the logo. Yep, I designed the logo ;)

Proposed Chennai airport

http://www.hindu.com/2007/05/23/stories/2007052307200100.htm

Global Warming - "Wakeup you skeptics"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6676775.stm

Hundreds of Hindus in Nepal are flocking to see a statue of a deity which is said to be "sweating".

At least now, the skeptics should start doing something about global warming.

Analyzing 2007 +2 results in TN

I just analyzed the +2 results that came in TN.

The list contains the cities from where the Top 3 scorers from each subject came from and the count of Top 3 scores they made.

Interestingly...many of the toppers came from small towns and villages and not big cities where they have 'excellent' schools with 'super-awesome' coaching/tuition facilities hehehe.

I have a feeling that Chennai, Coimbatore students are involving in lots of extra-curricular activities than curricular activities :)

Tamil Wikipedia

http://ta.wikipedia.org

Cricket, ICC and BCCI

Gone are the days where commercials were shown between cricket.
Now, cricket is shown between commercials.

I was visiting India when the World Cup was going on.
I was watching Sony.
How many commercials!
Oh Gosh.

As soon as the ball released from the bowler's hand they cut to commercials. And when they come back the first ball of next over is almost over. I got a doubt whether Sony was doing the viewers a 'Great' favor by showing cricket in between their commercials.

But after my India vacation I came back to US and was watching the same World Cup here in Dish.
What a way to watch.
Hardly any commercials.
No interruption of the match or commentary.

I understand I paid $200 for this World Cup and its free in India.
So showing commercials is a necessity in India. But there is a limit to that.

These things clearly show that the game of cricket is now mostly under the control of big sponsors.

BCCI - Board of Cricket Controversy in India
BCCI - Board of Cricket Commercials in India
ICC - International Commercial Council

Sachin Tendulkar's coach at school, Ramakant Achrekar, used to place a one-rupee coin on the stumps as bails and used to challenge the net bowlers that if they got Tendulkar out, they could keep the coin. Needless to say, not many succeeded.

If he does same thing today... he will go bankrupt.

Nothing Changes

Buddha said "Everything Changes".

Apparently during the times of Buddha there was no BCCI.

"At his press conference soon after picking the 30 probables for the World Cup, Vengsarkar was asked why no legspinner had been included. "Can you name one legspinner?" Vengsarkar snapped back to the journalist."


Not much chance of change

What the heck?

If the journalist has to give names, what in the world is Vengaya Sarkar's, sorry Vengsarkar's job is!!!

Like i said already here in worldcup blog, nothing much will change.

Cricket World Cup 2007 & Fantasy Team

Created a new blog for worldcup and also bought a Fantasy Team.

http://worldcupinwindies.blogspot.com

Tony Jaa - Jackie Chan, the next generation

Last night I saw the movie Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior. I saw the movie for Tony Jaa. I heard about his stunts from someone I know and decided to check it out myself.

Waw.
This guy was amazing.

He is like the next Jackie Chan. His stunts were authentic and no strings attached (literally).

For any Jackie Chan fans and Martial arts fans, Tony Jaa movies are a must to see.

I have his second movie The Protector in my Netflix Q. Hopefully I can see it next week.

Women cannot be punished for adultery

http://www.rediff.com/

"The section provides expressly that the wife shall not be punishable even as an abettor based on the reasoning that the wife, who is involved in an illicit relationship with another man, is a victim and not the author of the crime."

What kinda logic is that!

hmmm...so much for equal rights for men and women.

In Saturn's Shadow - Saturn and Earth - By JPL, NASA's Cassini

"With giant Saturn hanging in the blackness and sheltering Cassini from the sun's blinding glare, the spacecraft viewed the rings as never before, revealing previously unknown faint rings and even glimpsing its home world.

This marvelous panoramic view was created by combining a total of 165 images taken by the Cassini wide-angle camera over nearly three hours on Sept. 15, 2006."

Can you spot our earth?

You might want to click the image to see in its original size and see how small our earth is!

And how small and insignificant are we within our own Solar System !!!

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image-details.cfm?imageID=2314

Courtesy : JPL, CIT, NASA

My blog got Snap ped ;)

Yes...You can see a preview of the website links in my blog, by just placing your mouse over the links.

My blog's 2-D code - Semacode & Shotcode

Apocalypto and Blood Diamond

Last Friday my friends and I went to Mel Gibson's Apocalypto. I thought the movie was very well directed. It was a thriller from the beginning till the end. The story is about a man and his family's survival from human sacrifice in the ancient Mayan civilization. It has nothing to do with the end of Mayan calendar in the year 2012. I thought it must have something to do with that, but no.

The heroine was a very pretty girl. She looked like an Indian girl. But Mel Gibson in Jay Leno's Tonight show, mentioned that she was a local girl. Nevertheless she was very pretty and her kid son was also so cute.

This movie is definitely not for the faint hearted.
There are scenes where people are killed alive and their beating hearts ripped out and offered as sacrifice :)
Yes, that's right. Beating heart.
And also, their heads chopped and rolled from the top of the Mayan Pyramid all in the name of sacrificing to satisfy some Gods.


Fast forwarding to last night...
Went to the movie Blood Diamond with my 'Movie Gang' again . hehe. I thought this movie was an awesome movie.
Leonardo DiCaprio's acting was very good.
Djimon Hounsou looked handsome too.

The story is about how poor Africans are made to kill each other while the west loots their natural resource, Diamond.

Maybe girls will stop being crazy about diamonds after seeing the movie.

Wait...Am I crazy or what!!!
No... I don't think girls will stop being crazy about Diamonds :)


Images : Courtesy Yahoo.com

VVS Laxman - India's new Defense Minister

India tour of South Africa
Tour Match: Rest of South Africa v Indians at Potchefstroom, Dec 7-10, 2006

Day -2

VVS Laxman 31 runs / 103 balls.
He scored 4- 4's.

So technically he scored 15 runs / 99 balls.

Chennai, Tamilnadu Cops get police cars - First in India

Chennai police gets police cars like USA.
First in India.



Courtesy : Sun Network

Pakistan
Afghanistan
China
Nepal
Bhutan
Burma(Myanmar)
Bangladesh
Sri Lanka

What's common with the above countries!

These countries are either unstable or unfriendly with India.
And they all are our neighboring countries :)

World of Warcraft

It's been ages since I played any video game. Last time I tried any video game was when I bought Sony Playstation 2 couple of years ago, but really never played for more than a week.

Now after a long break and after much hype and publicity from Todd and Alex, I decided to try out the latest hot game 'World of Warcraft'.

So last weekend, I downloaded a 10 day trial version of the game.
Gone are the days when games were just few kilobytes and maybe megabytes and came in a floppy disk. This game, which I downloaded was like 2.5 GB. But with a broadband connection, all I had to do was schedule a download overnight and the next day morning it was all downloaded.

This was just a 10 day trial version.
Yes, after 10 days if I want to continue playing I have to buy the game which is like $50 and here is the interesting part...if I have to continue playing I have to subscribe to the game, and it costs about $15 every month.

Yes, World of Warcraft, also called as WoW, is a MMORPG.

So I created some characters and tried out the game.

Iam in.

Stop blaming Indian cricketers

It has started all again.

You know every time Indian cricket team performs very badly, protestors take it to the players home and streets and burn effigies and things of that nature.

This has to stop.

Our cricketers are human beings.

They have a life, they have a job to do. Day and night they work in Ad shootings, and attending functions and events and may be partying and doing some side business, and we should be glad that they agreed to play for our cricket team even though the monetary benefits from the salary is not much. We should be grateful for that.

The reason for us losing the matches is coach Greg Chappell.

Are you asking me Why!

I don't know, I thought that's what we usually do!
Blame on the coach and sack him. I thought its a SOP - Standard Operating Procedure.

Ghajini and Asin

Ha... a different weekend after a long time.
I rented 3 Tamil DVDs. Watching tamil movies after long time. After seeing the movies...I realized I haven't missed much, movies have not changed.

Emtan Magan, Maanavan(yeah, don't ask anything more about this movie, this is for Reema Sen) and at last...Ghajini.

Ghajini was little different, but still I don't know if this was a hit back home, but I thought the movie had lots of flaws.
But I liked Asin's character and her acting. Asin looked very beatiful. Her character was 'living' in the movie. All her scenes, were so full of life and fun. She reminded me of someone.

hmmm...I've done 'A movie a day week', I guess I should now do a 'Book week' and read some books this week.

Mélissa Theuriau - Anchor for the French channel LCI

Mélissa Theuriau is an anchor for the French channel LCI which is a 24 hour news channel. I wonder if anyone will remember the news !

Work Warning!
Don't google her for images.

Turducken - What kinda stuff is this !!!

While the rest of the world is busy working... we are busy stuffing.

Move away Turkey, welcome Turducken.

What are we going to do next year...stuff this into a cow!

Oh poor birds...and animal.

Deja Vu

Ok... This is my problem.

I really do not believe Time Travel as they show in movies is possible.
It is impossible to go to the past and interact with the past and change things.
I can't even imagine something like that happening.

We may be able to see the past, but in a 'Read Only' mode. You can see , but you can't interact, or in other words you can't change the past.

I went to 'Deja Vu' last night.


The movie was a good movie, except for the fact 'Time Travel'. But the whole movie revolves around time. So ... :)
Accepting the fact that time travel is possible for like 2.5 hours, this movie was surprisingly a good movie.
My expectation were low for this movie, pretty much I thought it was a junk, but it was at least above average if not good.

The technologies that they use in this movie...come on, its just movie...I do not think anyone in the world has such a technology as of today.

The actress, don't know who she was, was pretty.
Denzel Washington as usual was cool.
Val Kilmer...comes and goes.

hmmm...I wonder what I would change if I can Time Travel and go to past!!!

# The U.S. entry process is considered the “world’s worst” by travelers

* Travelers rate America’s entry process as the “world’s worst” by greater than a 2:1 margin over the next-worst destination area.

* The U.S. ranks with Africa and the Middle East when it comes to traveler-friendly paperwork and officials.

* 54 percent of international travelers say that immigration officials are rude.

* Travelers to the U.S. are more afraid of U.S. government officials than the threat of terrorism or crime.

* Two-thirds of travelers surveyed fear they will be detained at the border because of a simple mistake or misstatement.

http://www.poweroftravel.org/release-11-20-06.aspx

James Bond's Casino Royale - Daniel Craig fits the role

Last Saturday went to 'Casino Royale' and 'Happy Feet'.

I wanted to see 'Casino Royale' on Friday, First Day.
But was invited for a Birthday party so I had to watch the movie on the second day :(

So went to see the new Bond after a second Birthday party at noon on Saturday.

The new Bond was awesome.
This is a very different Bond movie.
This is the 'Bond Begins'.
Bond is very rough at the beginning of his career.
He is not sophisticated.
He makes mistakes, he apologizes, he doesn't know how to act(like Bond) around women. He gets beaten and kicked around. He bleeds badly. As the movie progresses, you can see this rough Bond getting refined and starts to kick ass. In the end we get, 'Bond, James Bond' :)

As this was the first novel written by Ian Fleming, there are only few gadgets like the Defibrillator in Bond's Aston Martin and a tracking tag implanted in Bond's arm.

Iam a big fan of Pierce Brosnan. When I heard that he won't be doing the Bond sequel I was disappointed. But when I saw Daniel Craig, I thought it was a good choice.
Daniel Craig made a good impression in this movie as the rough, unrefined Bond. I do not think Pierce Brosnan would have fit the rough Bond role as perfect as Daniel Craig. Piece Brosnan looks sophisticated.

I liked the movie.

It's interesting it gave a tough competition for the Australian animation movie 'Happy Feet' despite the fact that the Bond audience is considerably less than the animation movies and in addition to that, many Bond fans boycotting the Bond movie, to show their dislike in Daniel Craig.

In my opinion, they should watch the movie for themselves.

'Happy Feet' is, I believe, the first Australian full length animation movie. I thought it was hilarious. The animation was very realistic.

Dum Maro Dum - Hare Krishna Hare Ram, Zeenat Aman to Yana Gupta

I've been listening a lot to one of my all time favorites 'Dum Maro Dum' from 'Hare Krishna Hare Ram'.

Bought the song in iTunes too.

If you wish to see the video of the song, its in YouTube.

Dum Maro Dum YouTube video


God, if I had money, I would remake the movie with Yana Gupta in the role of Zeenat Aman.

Only Hotmail

Only HOTMAIL.

Iam a paid customer of Hotmail.

A Movie A Day Week

Monday - Flags of Our Fathers
Tuesday - Flushed Away
Wednesday - Borat
Thursday - The Prestige
Friday - Babel

India, Pakistan activate anti-terror mechanism

ok...that's funny, because

"I am a Lashkar member", Pakistan MP discloses

Are these guys kidding Indian government?

A friend of mine and I planned last weekend to do 'A Movie A Day' where we see one movie every evening for 1 week. So far it has gone good. Let's see how it goes from now on.

I was also in for a surprise when I came to know this.

Sivaji The Boss Trailer - Rajini Shriya Vivek Vairamuthu AR Rahman Shankar AVM

I created this trailer using some still pictures.
Turn on the music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADioDbIPggc

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8196567495169793799&hl=en

India's Bangalore in name change - Bengaluru

"The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi says that for many it is an assertion of regional pride and preserving local culture in the face of growing Western influence."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6107082.stm

Preserving local culture ???
You preserve the local culture by closing the bars and night clubs, not by changing name

India's Google Map ?

I came across this India's version of google maps today.
Even though its not as detailed as US and Canada, this looks cool.
At least its a good start.

Who knows, Yahoo or Google might end up buying this company, making the owners millionares.

http://db.mapmyindia.com/

You can see a map, or you can get driving directions too.

Road Trip to Canada - Part I

It was like 8.30 am on a wednesday morning. I went to Vasanthi akka's home to get some Canadian dollars. She had some from her earlier visit to Toronto. I thought I could use it. It was a 11 hour long drive from Richmond, VA to Ottawa, Canada, according to my car computer. It started badly. I was lost in Richmond twice. Yes, it's quite embarassing considering that I have lived so long here, I took wrong exits twice and it cost me nearly 30 minutes. Then as I had lots of water that morning, hoping to stay hydrated during the long drive, I had to stop twice to pee between Richmond and Washington DC. But call it blessing in disguise, because of this delay, I missed the rush hour traffic in Washington DC.

When I reached the US-Canada border the immigration post was like a toll booth. The officer 'Bonjour' ed me. I replied the same and said 'Hi' . That's my complete French vocabulary, other than 'Sortie' for 'Exit'(this is very important, I needed to know how to get the hell out of a place when in danger) and 'One, Two, Three'.

The officer did not ask much questions. He knew why I was there.


Then when I reached my place at Ottawa it was like 7.00 pm wednesday night.


I checked in and was looking for a place to eat. I found a Greek fast food place and ordered some Falafel togo.
Came to my room, had it and went to bed.



The next day was important for me. I needed to be relaxed and comfortable.

My new digital Camera

For a long time, I wanted to own a digital camera.
The one I had bought in 2001 was a very old camera with poor resolution and very low memory.
I gave a Canon digital camera to my sister as a gift.
But I myself never owned one.
The only camera I had was a film SLR.

So for this Canada trip I decided to buy a digital camera.

I was impressed by reading the reviews of a particular camera
Kodak EASYSHARE V570 Dual Lens Digital Camera

I also bought a 1 GB memory card.

I took lots of pictures in Ottawa, Toronto and Niagara falls.
I will have to download them to my computer, which by the way suffered a hard disk crash, and check out the quality of the pictures and video clips(yes, the camera seems to take beaufiful video clips).

But first priority, salvage my notebook computer and see if I can recover my data from the hard disk.

Camera Review:

It's simple, easy menu options, less buttons, not too complicated.
For a "not so smart" guy like me who just prefers to take pictures and does not want to spend time figuring out how to take pictures, this is a good camera.