Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Gyan: Water Proof vs. Water Resistant!

Ever wondered what the hell is the difference between Water Proof and Water Resistant equipments??? Well, I wondered and google'd extensively sometime back and saved this info. Today morning I was going thro' some info and stumbled upon this and thought might be a good idea to share with others.
Water Proof vs. Water Resistant

Water-resistant means the receiver collar can withstand the effects of rain, snow and other inclement weather. However, it should not be submerged in water, as this may reduce the battery life and cause internal damage to the components.

Waterproof means the component is designed to withstand submersion in water.

Hope this makes things a bit clearer. Well, so you might be wondering what on earth made me look for that difference. Well, a few days back I bought a new watch the Casio G-Shock 12 Beasts (here is the specs, and [1], [2], [3] is how it looks), which is water resistant. It made me wonder what is waterproof when the shopkeeper insisted that it's *not* waterproof but water resistant.

Links:
[1] http://www.ari-web.com/shop/watch/g-shock/L/g-7100-1jf.htm
[2] http://www.creativewatch.co.uk/g-shock-casio-g-7100-1ver-large.jpg
[3] http://image.www.rakuten.co.jp/parksgallery/img1006832227.jpeg

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Collateral: Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx

Collateral (n.) Serving to support or corroborate.
A large portion of “Collateral” takes place inside the taxi (how boring). Tom Cruise sports as a hard-hearted contract killer assigned a task to knock off five people (apparently key witnesses to some crime committed by off-shore narco-trafficking cartel) in single evening. It looks so atrocious that Tom kills everyone and anyone who comes his way. On this killing spree, circumstances force him to hijack Max' cab and Max (Jamie Foxx) becomes "Collateral", an unwilling accomplice. The relationship between the Max and Tom is strange and twisted, never ever culminating into anything concrete. They eventually become inter-dependent in a way none of them imagined. The movie is NOT at all action-packed as might be advertised. If anything, the background music for most of the movie is to be appreciated [rather the only thing to be appreciated ;-) ] Though I won't reveal the end, it's more than pathetic, unexpected but not for good.

Movie is as boring as hell, tooooo much babbling and lack of any actresses only adds to boredom :-(.
In short NOT worth the viewers' TIME and MONEY.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

M$ IE (Internet Explorer) SUCKS!!!

IE *SUCKS* for sure and my belief only got reinforced yesterday night when I spent about 2+ hours fixing my sluggish home computer. No, it's not slow coz I've a Celeron 400MHz, 64MB Ram and Win 98. It was working fine until it's sluggishness got onto my nerves. Once I learnt that my brother uses IE to browse net, I looked no further. I knew that %&^*ing IE must have let in lots of spywares and unwanted programs on my system. I grep'ed through sys directories, startup config and Add/Remove programs only to find thousands (I literally mean thousands!!!) of unwanted files, couple of unwanted/suspicious programs and startup entries. It was a gruelling task to get rid all of them and my system is now back to it's normal speed. Thank GOD my Hard Disk hasn't crashed (Touch Wood) which I strongly suspected for my PC slowdown.
Well, why the hell am I telling you all this!
So here's the MORAL: Trash that *&^#ing IE and get Opera[1] or Firefox[2]. These have hoards of features that IE cannot match. Hiding images, built-in Pop-up blocking and Tabbed browsing being my FAVOURITE! Hiding images enables me save browsing time since it doesn't download images to be displayed and saves me embarassement when it doesn't display those kinky gifs found on many sites!
Well, here's[3] more why you should use them.

[1] http://www.opera.com/ (download here)
[2] http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ (download here)
[3] http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/why/

Shaving Tips for Men

"SHAVING," an ancient practice of raking a sharp blade across your face every single day of your life from your early teens!
Well, it indeed is important to shave the right way to keep looking sexy!
This [1] explains Do's and Don'ts. You might even want to have a look at another[2] link as well ;-) And this [3] seems to be a nice link too, didn't read it though.

[1]http://www.bullz-eye.com/mens_grooming/2003/maleface_shaving.htm
[2]http://velvetdragon.com/etc/shave.html
[3]http://www.sosuave.com/home/feedback/shaving.htm

Sunday, October 17, 2004

I *love* Samurai Swords!

The movie (Kill Bill -I) did add fuel to my already undying burning passion to own a fine Samurai Sword (chk this & this & this & this ...), which was kindled when I saw the sword for the first time with my Sensei (Karate Master) some six years ago. I bet Samurai is one of the world's FINEST and MOST FAMOUS swords! Wish GOD gifts me with an opportunity to buy one from it's very homeland, Japan! Amen!

Watched Kill Bill Vol-1

Spent most of my weekend playing football tournament, which I've already covered in much detail here & here. Apart from that, I watched Kill Bill Vol-1.
Don't worry, this time I won't bother you with the nitty-gritties of the movie, otherwise you would come to believe this as an exclusively movie-review site ;-) I'll stick to stating the best and the worst scenes in the movie. The BEST of the scenes is when Hattori Hanzo, one of the master swordsmiths making finest of the Samurai Swords in Okinawa, presents Uma Thurman with his best workmanship to date in a ceremonial fashion. And the most preposterous scene is when she goes to avenge O-Ren Ishii where she fights 20/30 odd skilled fighters killing/disabling all of them single handedly!!! I could have taken it had the stunt been pulled by Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li or Chow Yun Fat. And apart from that what's more sick is that move is tooooo gory, Yuck! But all-in-all, a nice movie to watch.

Miraculous victory against Tata Technologies!!!

Ya, you read it correct, we have beaten'em, with 1-0!!! Calling it miraculous not because it happened as a result of some ground breaking miracle, of course unless you call constant practice a miracle :-) It's miraculous for the fact that Tata is one of the toughest teams in our pool and most of us at Nevis being newbies. Tata had control of the ball for more than 60% of the game, with first half ending at 0-0. Sometime after the start of second half, Ranjeet (captain, a man with relentless will to win) made an amazing pass along the left flank and the ball landed to be in Amit Singh's control, one of the most promising forwards in Nevis' team. Moving along the flank he dribbled everyone coming his way and started moving inwards, in the direction of the goal, when he was intercepted by one of the defenders. OOps :-( He could have easily cut him off and then taken a direct shot at the goal. But not wanting the glory of scoring at the cost of chance of conversion, he saw another of the forwards, Amit Shindore, rushing in. He lofted the ball towards him, ensuring the he doesn't have to foul with an off-side. Making full use of his well built body, Amit Shindore, kept the keeper from disturbing his poise and simply headed the ball! Whoosh!!! Bang!!! And there went the ball directly into the nets!!! Yuppie!!! Indeed an amazing goal! We are now leading with 1-0!

With only a few minutes to go and tension mounting on the opposite team, they made some amazing moves, with almost 6 players rushing into our 'D' area, until our defenders got them by balls by foiling all their attempts to rush into strategic positions by means of 1-2 1-2 passing. Not to forget Shrirang who almost paralyzed their left flank making attempted attacks from that side useless. So much were they pissed off and desperate to score that they started losing patience and taking direct shots from half-line when they could have easily cut through the defenders directly into the 'D'. They did take some good shots, but good enough only to either land on poles or intercepted by one of the defenders. One was indeed fatal, when the ball came in rushing and I had full chance of deflecting it. I kicked the ball with all the strength I had only to result in feeble tap under the ball. whoosh! The ball lofted high enough beyond the keepers reach :'-( Oops, what the *%#$ (I know everyone almost said that ;-) )!!! I bet every heart there skipped a beat. And then ... Phew! Thank God! The ball landed just beyond the top pole! Nevis, rather I, was lucky!

Our gaolie did great job of defending the goal inspite of being injured at hands. It was cheering squad that kept our morale high and created pressure on the opposite team. Three cheers for Nevis: Hip Hip Hurray! Hip Hip Hurray! Hip Hip Hurray! Insiders news, now, after 2 wins, Kapil has promised to sponsor us a dinner with booze!


Saturday, October 16, 2004

Nevis beats Ensim 2-0!!!

Hurray!!! Nevis thrashed Ensim, yes I said thrashed, because the ball was in Ensim's half for more than 98% of the time :-) Our (Nevis') goalkeeper touched the ball only once in the whole game. First goal was scored by Sagar B (vice captain) as a penalty kick, which we earned when one of their defenders put the hand in between when Chidanand kicked the ball in the goal. Second goal was scored after half time by Amit Singh.
It was the first victory ever for Nevis in two of the tournaments we played. In fact first time since last all games have we scored a goal :-)
We have a match against Tata Technologies tomorrow morning and I just pray for repeated performance from Nevis!

Thursday, October 14, 2004

My Fav aliases/settings in BASH

Some aliases/settings in bash to make life simpler-n-interesting ;-)
Nothing special about them, just wanted to share'em with buddies.

# Force *interactive* cp and rm
alias cp='cp -i'
alias rm='rm -i'
# List only directories
alias dir='ls -Lla | grep ^d'
# Grep with colour!
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
# List all hidden files/dirs i.e. files starting with 'dot'
# but not '.' and '..'

alias l.='ls -d \.??*'
# Conveniences
alias path='echo -e ${PATH//:/\\n}'
alias du='du -h'
alias df='df -kh'
alias j='jobs -l'

# The 'ls' family (borrowed from ABS Guide's sample .bashrc)
alias ls='ls -hF --color'
# Add colors for file type recognition
alias lx='ls -lXB' # Sort by extension
alias lk='ls -lSr' # Sort by size
alias la='ls -Al' # Show hidden files
alias lr='ls -lR' # Recursive ls
alias lt='ls -ltr' # Sort by date
alias lm='ls -al |more' # Pipe through 'more'
alias tree='tree -Cs' # Nice alternative to 'ls'

# And Now the *killer* setting!!! Set vi editing mode on shell prompt!
# This is *THE* best I can have in the shell!!!
set -o vi

Do share yours!

Monday, October 11, 2004

The Terminal: Steven Speilberg & Tom Hanks

Yes, the movie is worth watching, but of course, only if you like Hanks. It is far from bad, but at times quite obvious and bollywood-ish at other times :-(
Despite all this, what I liked in the movie??? Tom Hanks (Viktor Navorksi) has acted very well, speaking broken English for most of the movie. The direction at airport is done pretty well. For Cathy fans, nothing much in there, but she, for sure, look DAMN sssssss....sweet! (I know what you guessed here, but hard luck lol)
To sum up, this movie cannot be rated as Mr. Speilberg's finest of the movies, it barely crawls towards 'Good', but if wanna kill time and/or like Hanks, it is a 'must-see'. It's kind of comedy movie with lots of emotional stuff into it. Personally I expected much more from Mr. Speilberg.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

My Weekend!

Alas! Weekend is over. But all-in-all it was a nice weekend.
Here is the summary of what all I did!
Saturday:
As a part of Football tournament, had match with Cybage and we lost to them with a score of 1-0. We did perform well but failed to convert the chances. On returning home, I loafed until evening and decided to watch "The Terminal" after my dinner, it was quite refreshing. Read out for my views on the movie here!
No volleyball this Sat, was way tooooo tired to go for it, how sad :'-(
Sunday, as usual, I played football until I was dead tired. Took Jacuzzi and Steam bath to refresh myself. Me and my brother played good hosts to my uncle who was with us for breakfast. Since my lunch was ready, I had BRUNCH! What the heck is BRUNCH? Well it's the combination of BReakfast and lUNCH, in short, when you skip breakfast though you are very hungry, and take lunch instead it is called the "BRUNCH". No, it's not my invention, I borrowed this terminology from my cousin! I spent rest of my sunday relaxing with Atlas Shrugged and doing lil household chores.
Am back to office early morning today, kicking and blogging!

Thursday, October 07, 2004

The Village: Mr. M.Night

Hey buddies, I saw ‘The Village’, and irrespective of what views (generally negative) people hold about that movie, I rate it as "class one” movie! Don’t expect too much of horror, nor should you expect it to be fast paced like other Holly movies. It’s damn slow, but the direction is of unprecedented quality. Yes, even without any of the special effects, Mr. N. Shamalayan has done an amazing job of directing it meticulously. If you see the cast, you will feel as if each one of them was *born* only for his/her role! Bryce Dallas Howard as Ivy Walker who acted blind woman is the one to look out for! If you have an eye for details, this *is* the movie for you. If you haven’t seen it yet, … yes you guessed it right, I would urge you to see it once. And guess what... it has got a *cute* love story too! Well, not kinda romantic movie, though. Well, if this is not all, it has got great cinematography, dialogues and proper use of sound!
Warning! Don't expect it to be as great as Sixth Sense, it will only disappoint you :-(

Test Blog!

Yes, this is my first ever blog of life :-)
Inspired by lots of my buddies who keep blogging to entertain and to educate ;-)
Hope to blog regularly!