The Dark Knight rises Review

Not many times you would get a chance to watch a movie like this on first day and get paid for it. Well that is one of the plus points, when you’re an attending important customer sales events.  I couldn’t help ponder over the important milestones , the Dark Knight series has coincided with my own life, whether it is Batman begins (2004) , when I got out of school , The Dark Knight(2008) when I got out of undergraduate college and now the Dark knight Rises(2012) when I am into graduate school.Coming to the movie,  it takes off exactly 8 years after Harvey Dent’s death in the previous movie. Bruce Wayne is a shadow of himself, reclusive in his mansion happy to be left alone. Until he is awaken from his slumber when a jewel thief, Selina kyle breaks into his mansion played by Anne Hathaway.

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Know your College Meme

Like wildfire, it has been a season of memes in various US colleges this month. With every college trying to outdo each other in creating memes poking fun at various idiosyncrasies, that students everywhere have to put up with. Texas A&M meme has been a rage among aggies, raking up more than 9000 likes in Facebook at a short amount of time. Here’s look ten of the most frequently used college memes and stories behind them.

1. College Freshman

This photo belongs to freshman Griffin Kiritsy  from University of New Hampshire. He personally acknowledged that it was his photo in his blog. The story behind photo started with a naïve phone interview. A few weeks later, the interviewer wanted to take a few snaps of the kid for publishing his story,to which he gladly obliged. Little, did he know that his photo will go on to become viral meme for freshman in every university!

2. Success Kid

This is an image of child with his fist up and with “knows it all” look on his face. The image was first posted in Flickr account by Laury Griner and baby’s name is Sammy.

Success kid is now 4 years old.

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Destiny’s Child

Well , If your expecting to read  about pop music then you could stop here. There are always defining moments in your life, which makes you wonder What's the purpose of it ? School life is where you don't know much , also you couldn't care less. College life is where you start to know something, but you’re not sure about what things to care about. Then there is  the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and young enough not to care .  I think its the 2-3 year time period  in your job after college, where you earn enough to make a living on your own , but also could support your parents , you are a force to be reckoned with, as in your opinions matter.  Looking back at those three years after college , I thought I will use this post to look at three interesting stories that helped learn along the course.

One thing that I realized early on is that, its ok to fail , its ok to make mistakes. Its possible to succeed without failing at times, the question is could you excel at new things without failing? When I first moved into development , one of my first code change had caused a build break ( or in more plain terms a compilation error ) bringing the Release engineering and Quality engineering (QE) work grinding to a halt. What made matters worse , that the change that went in wasn’t requested by QE or Product management; It’s  just that I decided to take a few initiatives that would make life of every one easier in debugging problems , by making changes in diagnostics code. For the next few days , I knew how it felt to be famous for all the wrong reasons. A colleague did say to me People who have done build breaks went onto achieve big things like becoming Development Managers ( I didn't miss the irony ) to cheer me up. I did eventually fix the issue ( which turned out to be source code version control issue rather than anything in code ) . Moving along one month into release cycle, everybody could see the benefits of the change in helping RCA issues at QE and Customer environments later on. I couldn’t help feeling more vindicated for pushing in the change. This resulted in more freedom to make changes/features coming along my way. Moral of the story , Don’t wait for things to happen , make them happen .The actual failure really is not taking the risk to move to the next level due to the fear of failing and tolerating mediocrity.

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X men : First Class review

X men has always been one of my favorite movie series from comic books/Cartoons next to Spider Man. The final climax where Wolverine stabs Jean after professing his love for her in the X men : The last stand, is one of the most memorable romantic scenes , though its a tragedy. In this prequel, the movie takes us back to old days to reveal the lives of Professor X and Magneto before they were adorned with the titles . The movie starts the with same scene as the X men first movie in a second old war camp , where the young Erik’s  (aka Magneto) Mom is being dragged way , resulting in him revealing his ability to control metal. What follows is intriguing scene that sets the tone for the rest of movie between Shaw who wants to use the young boy’s ability through any means and Erik.

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Thoughts on Management and Computing

Recently , I have been dealing with multitude of both the above topics. I realized midway through , how management concepts could be applied to Computing and how computing concepts could be applied to management.

Management Network

Lets start of with how management concepts could be applied to Computing. One of the strategies, when you debut a product is to customize the product according to demographics and region in which your launching the product. Consider the Food market , whenever somebody launches  a new food item in America, the emphasis is to be big . Whether its the Cola’s , Beer , Burgers or the Cars (Hummers) Americans like it big , its one market where Size does matter. Now consider the Asian market , the individual purchasing power is not as big as has in the west . So you need to make the your products smaller and affordable to tap into the market. An excellent example of this is , the shampoo sachet. In the west you could sell a Bottle, but in Asia the number of units of 2 Rs  sachets will outsell the bottles , people will not buy an Bottle of shampoo on a regular basis . Going by the same example you have mini cola’s for 10 Rs for drinks , the world cheapest car nano . The nano  may not be your a typical car in the west , yet it reflects a scaled down version of a car made affordable for the rising middle class. The important lesson in business not to view a large population with low purchasing power as an liability , but rather as an market  to whom you could sell your products scaling down on features and size to make it affordable. Now where does concept come in Computing . In fact its one of the tenets of the Cloud computing i.e, Rapid Elasticity. The ability to rapidly scale in and scale out the resources according to the demands of the end user.  This could be server resources which are increased rapidly during live streaming of an cricket match for website and scaled back down after the match is over. It makes no sense to buy all that server capacity  since the sports event is going to be temporary affair , rather renting out the server makes sense. So the Elasticity that offers flexibility to user based on his needs is no different from the  Business strategy that varies your product scale and features based on demographics and purchasing power of the market your selling to.

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Cup of Joy

Well , its been a long hiatus from the world of blogging  . Anyways most of the things that the break was intended for is nearing completion .  What better way to start it again other than  the cup of joy.  All was not well , with frigging Reliance broadband being down for the last ten days ( seriously,  Anil Ambani should realize the word Reliance in Reliance Broadband is an oxymoron with its DNS server not responding for every 3 hours) .  Add to that I was in SQL training for this whole week , there were serious worries about the likelihood of me watching the India-pak cricket match for which even Gilani and Manmohan seemed to have bunked their office duties. As gracious and liberal as my company is (perhaps was with recent blocking of sites ) , they had setup giant screen in cafeteria , with ten 50'' LCD screens on all directions to broadcast India - Pak match . Its hard for you to,  not to see the match in any direction you turn your head in cafeteria.

As it turned out, things started to get better after lunch. It was more like watching the match in cricket ground , with so many people in cafeteria , with their faces painted in tri color  carrying Indian flags . The guys who profited the most from this was obviously the Food court restaurants.  Anyways these were the highlights of the day..

Seductive Moment: Was debugging T-SQL function , I heard a series roars of  from cafeteria that distracted me . Later came to know , it is Virendar Sehwags plundering Umar Gul with five  4’s in a over. Viru’s innings are like extra martial affairs , thrilling while it lasts , but always ends in heart break.

Generous nature Moment:  SQL trainer who stopped the training  midway and let us watch the match after  hearing  the roar from the crowd for Sehwag’s dashing four’s.

Flashback Award : Wajab Riaz ‘s  back to back wicket taking deliveries . Especially the in swinging Yorker to get rid of Yuvaraj , brought back not so good memories of Shoaib getting Dravid and Tendulkar with similar back to back deliveries at Eden Gardens test match.

Slippery hands Award: This one goes entire Pakistan cricket team .  The kept dropping so many catches . If it was a pin drop of silence , Guess who dropped the pin ? , the entire Pakistan team.

So Close Yet So Far..

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Endhiran - the Robot Movie Review

I am not generally the type, to see movies on the first day. However , call it sheer luck , a six hour power cut and battery drained laptop forced me to check out the Movie. By the time I am writing  here , there have been almost 100 updates in my Facebook news feed , vouching for the greatness of the movie and I am going to be another addition to that list. For starters, Endhiran is not  your typical Rajnikanth film, no opening song , no punch dialogues,no weird mannerisms.  After a long time, Rajnikanth plays a role completely as director's actor ( Its often the scenario where Director's changes stories and scenes to suit Rajnikanth). You have to give it Shankar, making Rajnikanth stick to the demanding role without his usual cliche.

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Inception - Movie Review

Inception , is the fourth Christopher Nolan movie  that I have managed to watch after Memento,Batman Begins and Dark knight.  Memento had already introduced me to his non-linear story telling screen play , where two parts of story move in opposite direction ( unlike the the traditional start to climax way).  With Inception, the director takes the screen play and story telling abilities to a whole new level of complexity.  The theme of movie revolves letting somebody into your unconscious mind , i.e, Dream , where extractors can steal your deepest secrets. True to this, Nolan turns out a edge of seat thriller, heist film.

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Hand of God

I never confess to be an full fledged football fan, but I couldn't help getting caught in the football frenzy during the World Cup. From the very first world cup 1998, which I started to follow , I have tried to follow the beautiful game. Though I don't care about EPL or any other club football league unlike other self confessed football fans. Now getting back to point, whats ironic with Football is the term " Hand of God "  . For people unfamiliar with Football, this phrase was originally coined for Maradona's Goal in 1986 World Cup semi final against England. The score was nil-nil until Maradona got a pass , which he manipulated using his hand to score the winning goal against England.

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How Steve Jobs turned Apple Around

If you have been following news of late, you would have noticed how Apple toppled Microsoft to become the most valuable technology company . Its been quite an turn around for Cupertino based company which was forced to get investment from its Arch rival Microsoft in 1997. I decided to profile Apple's turn around, because there are not many companies that make a comeback , once they start to go down. When Steve jobs returned to Apple in 1997 , Microsoft had become a monopoly in the Desktop PC's, with nearly 95 % running on Windows; Apple was relegated to a niche market. So how does one turn around a fortunes of a  falling company

1.  Focus on your Strengths:

Though Apple had lost out on the Desktop market, Steve brainstormed  to identify the areas where Apple was still making profits and not losing out. Simple enough to put your money where the value comes from.This included Desktop Publishing and Multimedia industry where the Macs where more prevalent and preferred to Windows. He shutdown projects like Apple Newton, CyberDog and Opendoc  to cut costs and put his resources on where Apple was still making money Macs. There are two ways to build a software product , you either develop it from scratch which requires lot of resources and time, second is to go out buy a start up which already has the technology rebrand it has your own and sell it. And the later is what Apple did when they bought NEXT operating system. This later evolved into  Mac OS X powering iMac.

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Sports,Scandal aur Dhoka

Of late, the Indian media has gone into frenzied mode in trying to cover the scoop whether it is Shoaib-Sania issue, or Modi - Tharoor issue. One gets the feeling of being bombarded with the same information on all TV channels. If anybody wants to know whats Plagiarism, they can easily learn it by watching Indian News channels covering this issues. Coming back to the great Indian Paisa League IPL , as a commoner it wouldn't be surprising for your jaws to be drop on watching the amounts that floats around for the job one carries out for just 2 months. Whether its Player's salaries or glamor quotient associated with it, IPL seems to be unmatched in its persona. To throw some figures in, the two teams Kochi and Pune were bought together for a sum of 703 million USD , that's like 3138 crores in INR ; Indian Sports Budget for 2010-11 is 2069 cr in INR . Compare this with how our Hockey Players have to go on strike to get their salary hike few months ago, you get the big picture. What even more amuses me is, whether somebody can profit on buying teams at the huge rate, given that TV and sponsorship revenues will be split among 10 teams. The Pune team for example needs to make roughly 165 crore a year just to break even . May be Indian businessmen dont bother loosing a few hundred crores as long as their names are being splashed around with all the glitz and glamor. As if this is not enough, IPL is getting Tax breaks from State governments. People who own IPL teams are in Forbes Top 100 richest people; Not elderly people who get pensions . If the exchequer is going to get any increase tax revenues, its from events like this .

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The Mistake I almost Made

*This is my first attempt short story writing, so feed backs are welcome
Disclaimer: The finale of the story is as such narrated to me by one of friends , when I was in school. *

It was a cold Monday morning, "Why is it the bed seems most cozy on Monday morning??" I wondered as I gazed at the Sunlight coming through the screens. I half hardheartedly got up switched the alarm off and checked the phone. " Hiii sweetie Krishna.. GM :), Cud we meet today evening at CCD ?? " said the sms from Radhika. There is nothing like a wish from your loved one that jump starts your morning. It was now 8 30 am, I had a meeting to attend at 10 30. So I went about my daily routine in the morning and was ready within one hour. Ideally one hour time would be good enough for anybody to reach their office in a bike , unless otherwise you happen to live in Bangalore, where there are 1000 people exactly like you are going to office at the same time as yours. I made it to the office just on time with 10 mins to spare. However thanks to the rains in the night, the basement parking had got flooded, I had to search for a new spot to park the bike. I hurried to the meeting room, hoping I was not the last person to enter the room, so everybody in the room wouldn't gaze upon me. I was surprised to find an empty room. Later on examining my mail, I found out that my manager had postponed the meeting, since he too was struck in traffic. " Bangalore traffic is one place where all people are treated equally irrespective of whether your Engineer,Manager or Vice President " I chuckled to myself.

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Google Matrimonial Search

This was too funny couldnt help posting it..!! :) Enjoy..

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Avatar Review

Well, given that all the hype this movie was generating , I was sure that I am not going to miss this one. The question was more of when rather than if, as it turned out it was a stressful Saturday with having to be in Office. So was looking forward to chilling out on Sunday. Boy we were lucky, we just reached theater just 10 mins before the movie started, that too in a multiplex on a Sunday in Bangalore. As hopeless as the situation might be for not getting the tickets, one of the guys offered as two tickets for Avatar, talk about luck. We got them and made our way into screening, though there was slight fear whether it was for Avatar or Vettaikaran ( both were screened in the same multiplex). When movie started all our doubts were quelled , it was Avatar ( though I enjoyed the trailer of My name is Khan ).

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What People Want...

As puzzling as the topic I have chosen to post may be, I decided to do a bit of data mining over a month or so, on the various Facebook profiles on what people become fans of. On looking at the below list, some might turn out to be lighter moments , others might make you think, but most of this are small things are the ones that people miss.....


* I promise will study from tomorrow...;)
* You Dont Move after screaming, "Im Coming" when Your parents call you.
* I piss you off because I love you ?.
* You look at them, They look at you, You quickly look somewhere else..AKWARD.
* If anyone can read my mind, I'm screwed.
* I Hate It When Parents Get Serious About Something Funny You Tell Them.
* Receiving birthday calls at 12 at night feels great..
* ROCKING paper, SHOCKING result.
* I Think I Think Too Much...
* No I'm not lying, but when you look at me like that, how can I not smile?

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2012

Of late, I have been hearing a lot about the twitter effect, where tweeple determine how good or bad a movie is, by just tweeting. Well, I have to say you can trust it on how people judge a movie. All the movies which got a trending in the twitter Inglorious basterds, Paranormal activity were good to watch. I ended up watching 2012 thanks to the same hype. This time the venue was VR complex, nice cozy evening ( break from miserable rains , that have been following me where ever I go Bangalore or Cbe). Call it the outsourcing effect most movies in hollywood seem to have indian connnection now a days. This ones no different, where the movie starts with an Indian scientist discovering abnormal activity in Solar flares. The neutrinos from the sun are reacting with the earths crust and it is boiling inside out. An american colleague of his , gets this information to US government, so as to enable the world governments plan for the so called apocalypse in 2012.

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Aadhavan Movie Review

Another Diwali, bunch of films that are releasing. When you have a group of friends getting together, the foundations of visit to a nearby theater are laid. Since his last film Ayan was good, I was looking forward to Aadhavan , plus the Director KS Ravi Kumar makes you think it must be at least worthwhile watching it. Invariably when you visit this theaters during the festive season, they try to rip you of in something, in this case it was Parking ticket, they charged Rs 8 per vehicle,People who didn't have change gave Rs 10 , since the guy who was collecting the money had no change what so ever. Basically he was ripping Rs 2 for every vehicle. Now for the much awaited movie. It started of with a stereotypical feel good,enjoy life song pretty much like his last movie Ayan. Surya plays the role of a hired gun, Aadhavan to take out people. After the intro song , he takes out a Foreign Priest. After this assignment, He is hired to take out a Judge investigating organ trade case in Kolkata by the villain. He misses his target for the first time in his entire life. What follows is a scene to show of his Marchoness, where he vows to take out the Judge in 10 days. Of course the heroine Nayanthara who plays the role of Tara, happens to be Judge's daughter. He gains entry into the house posing as a relative of Servant Vadivelu. Did I forget to mention the heroine intro song??? which tests a your patience so much, I started people getting out of Theater for a smoke. If anything holds the first half together hiding the flaws in script, its the humor between Surya and Vadivel. For most part , it leaves you in splits. Multiple attempts by Surya to take out the Judge, end up being futile during first half. In between he finds time to woo Judge's Daughter too.

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Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie Review

Well, its been quite some time since I have written a movie review. Its not that I have been seeing less movies but rather its hard to find quality movies that make you sit up and watch. Last night , I was pretty much yearning to see Harry Potter, unfortunately I was finding no takers for the movie. I cant understand if people are ready to see Vijay film on PVR for 180 Rs. Why not volunteer for HP6??? Though one of colleagues was interested, it was rather for Transformers 2 ( you could call him typical indian movie goer who are interested in no brainer action movies like Hulk and Godzilla, rather than quality movies ). As luck would have it, within 2 hrs of being at my office , One of senior manager's came and said you could take the day of for all the hard work you put in. I was like wow, Let me escape from office. But on hind sight, even for the last release, they had given me a day of plus Ice creams. I guess the ice creams were a casualty of the recession. Coming back to the point, I managed to cajole my tentative cubicle mate for coming with a movie (at least he has read the book, most other's just watched movies ). It was short walk to Inox across the road ( love this office cause you have a mall and a mutliplex all at a walkable distance ). The movie started and thankfully I did not have to contend with sintex ad or Kumaran silks or Sri devi silks ad before the movie like theatres in Tamil Nadu.

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Micheal Jackson - The King of Pop

It was usual day when I woke up, opened phone to check my twitter account There were a lot of tweets with regard to RIP - MJ. As most people love to tweet what they are tweeting, my natural intuition was that they were listening to RIP by Micheal Jackson. It was latter that I found that the Micheal Jackson had passed away. I was in somber mood to begin with. There lots of people who are in their teens and early 20's who grew up listening to his songs and trying to copy his dance moves ( Prabhu deva probably made it as a hero because of him ). He made dance such a raging phenomenon as much to do with singing. And who can forget the eternal thriller album, the first time I listened , I got goose bumps from his music.

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Geek's Pick Up Lines

Alright, I picked few geek pick up lines from tweets... decided it to post it on my blog, since it was really funny...

(I realize this is an email forward, but, if anyone knows an originator, I'd like to give credit where it's due?)

Geek Pick-up Lines : Part 1

1. Tell me of this thing you humans call *dramatic pause* love.
2. If you turn me down now, I will become more drunk than you can possibly imagine.
3. They don't call me Bones because I'm a doctor.
4. Your name is Leslie? Look, I can spell your name on my calculator!
5. What's a nice girl like you doing in a wretched hive of scum and villany like this?
6. You must be Windows 95 because you gots me so unstable.
7. My 'up-time' is better than BSD.
8. I can tell by your emoticons that you're looking for some company.
9. Is that an iPod mini in your pocket or are you just happy to see me.
10. Want to see my Red Hat?
11. If you won't let me buy you a drink, at least let me fix your laptop.
12. Do u have an unlimited data connection at home,looks like you have downloaded all the beauty in the world?

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