I found the following panels while reading the “Chronicles of Wormwood” and I think that this is what the suicide bombers/any one who kills in the name of God/Allah/Bhagwaan deserves.
"I don't fear God. I fear those who claim to speak for him" - Anonymous
– Suramya
This weekend was a particularly fun weekend. Surabhi was in town for a couple of days so I got the enjoy her company with my parents. It was nice to be together as a family after such a long time. It had been a while since we all got together and just relaxed. We spent most of the weekend just talking.
Today was mom’s birthday but since Surabhi was leaving on the 22nd we decided to celebrate it on the 21st with a dinner at the Golf course. We decided to have Chinese food I ordered some spicy garlic noodles and something Manchurian and I really liked it. I like the Indian version of the Chinese food as they put a lot of spices and stuff in it but I don’t like the way they make Chinese food in the US ’cause it tastes like they just boil a bunch of vegetables together and serve it. (Yuck…)
Then on Sunday we had a little surprise birthday ‘party’ for mom. We got cake and candles and decorated it in my room without telling mom, when we were ready papa called her into the room and we surprised her. It was great.
I also bought the latest harry potter for Surabhi. Its an expensive book (Probably because it is a hardcover book). But you have to see the hype over here. This is the first time I have seen so much excitement over a book in India.
That brings me to another topic, the Times of India and Aaj Tak network have no clue on how to promote books. My mom told me that she was watching the news to hear more about the presidential election that were going on and right in the middle of it there was a banner floating at the bottom of the screen giving away a major plot point. The worse part was that this was before the book was officially released. They found out about it by reading the leaked version of the book and decided to share it.
Even Times of India did the same thing, they had this photo of two kids posing next to a Harry Potter cutout and the caption read “In the epilogue of the book …..” (They gave away the ending but I am not ’cause I don’t want to spoil it for fans)
I mean come on, don’t you have any common sense? This is a book that people have been waiting for ages for. Would they do the same for a mystery movie that came out? No right? (At least I hope so) so why are they spoiling the ending of a good book? Anyways, I still haven’t read the book yet.
Well this is all for now. Will post more later.
– Suramya
I have been watching this TV series from 1985 called “Amazing Stories” and I love it. This great series was created and directed by Steven Spielberg and I must say that it shows in the stories.
Each episode is only 25 mins long and they cover completely unique stories. For example the first episode is called the “Ghost Train” and is about a train which derailed 60 years ago and one of its passengers who was waiting to get on it survived. The train appears every year at the time it had crashed waiting for its missing passenger.
My favorite so far is the episode called “Mummy, Daddy” in which an actor who is playing the role of an Egyptian mummy in the swamp gets a call letting him know that his wife went into early labor so he rushes off in his mummy costume without taking it off. Now the locals think he is a real mummy so try to kill him. Pretty funny story.
I have watched 4 episodes out of 24 from the first season so far and I love it. Most of the stories are funny though some people might find a couple of them scary.
If you get a chance to watch this then do so. You wont regret it.
Well this is all for now. Will post more later.
– Suramya
I went and watched Harry Potter yesterday. It was an ok movie but I am glad that I watched in India where I paid Rs 120 (< $3) for it instead of watching it in the US where I would have paid ~ $10 for it. The main reason I didn't like the movie is that I am not a harry potter fan and the movie was too slow moving for me. 'cause I am not a Lord of the Rings fan either but I liked the movies. Just going to share some of my thoughts on the movie so if you haven't seen it yet stop reading because the remainder of the post might contain spoilers. The main thing that i found weird was that they went and created this army and Harry spent a lot of time training them to fight. But when they finally went to fight only the five of them went. Why? Couldn't they wait a few more mins and gather everyone, after all most of them were there in the office... Anyways, I like the Die Hard 4.0 much better than this one. So far the only movie that I really liked this summer were, Fantastic 4 2 and Die Hard 4.0. This is all for now. Will post more later. - Suramya
Finally. Official proof of what I have been saying for years. 🙂
A new book seeks to demolish the concept that computer science is rooted in mathematics and, in particular that the notion of the algorithm is fundamental to computer science.
Source: iTWire – Want to be a computer scientist? Forget maths
– Suramya
A lot of must have seen the advertisements on MS Vista where they talk about the wow factor. Well today I used it on a clients machine and it certainly made we go wow. Read on for the details…
I had a 90 MB file that I needed to extract on their system (224 MB uncompressed), so I copied the file to their system,right clicked and chose extract. Then came the wow factor. Vista told me that it out need ~13 hours to extract the file. Waited for a few mins and it didn’t go down. It really was going to take it 13 hours + change to extract it. Certainly made me go wow.
I didn’t take a screen shot of it at the time, but then as I was telling my cousin about it, I decided to blog it so needed to take a screen shot. When I took the following screen shot it was telling me that it would take 5 days to extract. I waited for a couple of mins in case it was just exaggerating like Windows XP and it would show the correct time in a few mins. But alas it kept showing me the same time.
So here goes:
BTW, just as a comparison, my Windows XP system on a 1 GZ system with 512 MB of RAM takes ~2 mins to extract this file. Haven’t timed it on Linux yet. And this vista install is a running on a new machine thats pretty powerful. And i am not the only one who saw this. Another guy was complaining about it on one of the forums that I visited. His file was taking ~15 mins to extract on vista while on Linux it took about 11 secs to extract.
Ah well. I think I can do without the wow in my life. Pretty happy with Debian and XP for my systems. Don’t think I will be upgrading to Vista anytime soon.
– Suramya
Went and saw Spiderman 3 on Sunday. It was an OK movie. Yeah I know that the special effects were great but the movie was ok. I had expected it to be a lot better.
I had some issues with the movie plot/story that spoiled it for me and I am going to talk about them in this post along with the parts that I liked, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, don’t continue reading as the post might contain spoilers.
The first major issue I have with the movie was how they made the Sandman responsible for Uncle Ben’s death. This is completely against how the comic’s and books look at that event. His death was a major point in Peter Parker’s life because he felt responsible for his death as he had let the crook that killed him get away because “It wasn’t his problem”. This guilt made him realize that “With great power comes great responsibility”. So when they made Sandman the killer they changed a basic fact of Spiderman history. I know. I know. Its just a movie, but still its jarring/annoying to those who follow the comics.
The second problem was that they had way too many villains in the movie. You didn’t need the Sandman, The green goblin and Venom in the same movie. It made the movie look too cluttered and jerky. It just wasn’t flowing from one villain to another smoothly. They should have had only one villain or at most two. More than that was pushing it.
Loved the dance that Peter did at the Jazz club. It was funny. Overall the music was well chosen and appropriate.
When threatened why didn’t MJ tell Peter that Harry was going nuts and had threatened her? That whole part of the movie (Peter and Harry’s rivalry) wasn’t needed at all.
Over all the movie was fun, but it could have been a lot better if they hadn’t tried to put so many things in it at the same time.
– Suramya
Meghna tagged in her post on good places to eat in NY so now I have to recommend 5 places to eat in my location. Since I have been traveling a lot and have been in various cities over the past few years I am going to recommend good food places in different parts of the world that I liked.
Delhi:
Spent most of my life in Delhi but as far as restaurants are concerned I am not very upto-date on whats good. After all when you come back home after a year of eating restaurant food you want to stick with home cooked meals while you are at home. Anyways here are a couple of places that I really liked in Delhi:
1. Karnataka Food Center: This awesome restaurant is located at Sector 1, R.K. Puram. I have been eating here for the past 15 years (maybe more) and I love this place. It the THE palace to go in Delhi if you want some good south Indian food at a reasonable price. The decor is not the most classy but their food is heavenly. I really like the Onion Uttapam and Badam Milk.
2. Punjabi Dhaba’s: This is a generic entry for all the Punjabi dhaba’s located on any road going west of Delhi. These are usually small places with cots /small tables in front and while they may not look like much the food they serve is really good and reasonably priced. So if you are ever driving to Punjab/Gujarat/Rajasthan from Delhi and get hungry stop at one of these places and you wont regret it.
The best way to judge the quality of the food is to look at the amount of trucks parked outside as the truckers are the best judge of good food and if there are a lot of them around then the food is good.
Yes, their food is the really unhealthy, colestrol increasing and diet breaking swimming in butter and oil but it still tastes so damm good. 🙂
As a precaution if you don’t like spicy food tell them!! Otherwise they will make it really really spicy. And don’t tell them to make it mild as their mild is very spicy for most people.
New York City:
Have been there for almost 8 years now and I love the place. Its a food lovers delight with awesome restaurants everywhere. It is said that you can taste every cuisine in the world without leaving NYC and I agree. Some of these places are really good and here are some of my favorites:
3. Cafe Habana: This gem of a place is located in SOHO and if you like good Mexican food you will like this place. The food is cheap and really really good and their corn on a cob is to die for. Plus their service is really good. I have eaten at a lot of places where while the food is good the waiters/waitresses look and act like they are in a funeral but in contrast the waitress over here were friendly, cheerful and helpful.
The place is really busy so expect a wait when you show up. On weekdays its not that bad, though on weekends however the wait is a lot longer. One thing to keep in mind is that the larger your group is the longer your wait is, so don’t show up with a group of 15. The max I would take to this place would by 7 – 8 people, any more than that would be a bit difficult to fit in as the place is quite small. Another plus point is that they play some really nice music.
4. Lapalapa: This Mexican restaurant is located in the east village. I really like their brunch menu. They have a nice and friendly service with waiters that are ready to help you choose and don’t act like they would rather be doing something else. They have a heated room in the back with a glass ceiling that looks really nice when its snowing. Its sort of like sitting in a green house. If you go there, try and get seated in there. Its lovely.
5. Jaiya: This Thai place is located on the 28th street and has some really good Thai food with some good choices for vegetarians that don’t taste like boiled vegetables. Its a bit pricey but the food and the atmosphere are good.
—-
That ends my list of restaurants that I liked. Wanted to list this really good Irish place I went to in Kansas but can’t remember its name 🙁 But it was really good and I will update the post when I remember its name.
Now I get to tag 5 other people and I choose: Aditya (Delhi), Arvind (Bangalore), Sakshi (Bombay), Surabhi (Hollywood, FL) and Vinit (Hollywood, FL)
– Suramya
PS: For some really yummy cakes check out Wengers located in Connaught Place, Delhi.
As if there weren’t enough annoying things in the world, here’s a new one. This company called Emotive has created a product that allows the Caller to choose the ring tone on the receiving end. Yes you read that correctly. The caller can choose the ringtone on your cellphone. They have already released it for Skype where a lot of people have downloaded and installed it, and now they are going to release it for the mobile market on April 24th.
I don’t think its such a good idea as I can imagine so many abuses for this technology thats its not even funny. For example, telemarketers can set their tones to be an advertisement for their services and everytime they call someone that person becomes an advertisement for them. Or a person can set the receiver’s ring tone to something embarrassing to discredit them, think something like a loud horror movie style scream when the receiver is in a meeting or trying to sleep.
The worse part is that as far as I can figure it out the control is entirely with the caller, there is no way for the receiver to opt out of this “benefit”. Whats next? Overriding the sounds on my PC?
Source: MobileTechNews
– Suramya
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