The Mumbai 26/11 Siege

Yea, it was a siege.

Thankfully, it's over now.

What do I think about it? I heard/read that the terrorists had three aims in mind when they did this attack:

• Harm India's economy by making it seem like a dangerous place to do business in.
• Harm India's Tourism Industry, by striking fear in foreign and domestic tourist, right at the start of the season.
• Foment ill will between Hindu's and Muslims thereby de-stabilizing the economy.

I started to think, if I could do something about this.
What's the best way to stick it to these guys, their minders and whoever else is linked to this?
I'm too scared to join the army. I'll accept that. So, what else can I do? Here's what I'm planning to do.

Work a little extra. I know it sounds ridiculous, but think about it. If a third of our population in the service industry picks up the pace, pushes productivity, turns out even greater profits, this attack's aim is nullified. Terrorists will realize there's no point trying stunts of the sort they did, because India only comes back the next day and works even harder. Makes better products, writes more code, handles more clients.

Vote. Enough said about this one. Get off your ass, quit complaining and vote.

Crass as this might sound, Have Fun! Go out, meet with friends, catch a movie, visit a mall. Go on a vacation!

Don't change your habits. That is exactly what terrorists want. They want you to be terrorized. And nothing will sadden them more than to see that people really seem to bother much and carry on living. Greatest example I saw of this attitude was a gentleman who had brought his 2 year old kid outside Taj on Saturday evening. A TV anchor asked him if he felt safe to come to this place, this scene of carnage. With this child.

He gave a huge wide grin and said - "I'm not scared at all."

Take that terrorists!

Stop pointing fingers at Muslims in general. While it is true the terrorists were Muslims, it is also true that the reason they pretended to be "Deccan Mujahideen" is so we in India can kill each other and undo the enormous progress we've made in 60 years of Independence.

My visit to two Arab countries earlier this year (Jordan and Egypt) opened my eyes already and now, I believe more than ever, that a handful of rotten apples are indeed bringing an entire religion down. I can only imagine how hard it must be for a moderate, liberal, educated Muslim right now. Shamed and suspected for no fault of theirs.

I'll leave you with two pieces of writing.

Suketu Mehta, wrote this, in New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/opinion/29mehta.html?em

But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow
domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought
and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

Wall-E : The Review

It’s not often that a movie review starts with a look at the credits of a movie. However, such is the artistry and attention to detail in WALL-E, that I have to mention this upfront.

This is a plea to you, if you haven’t seen WALL-E. Don’t miss the credits. The artwork is dazzling, to say the least. It covers various styles, from raw pencil sketches to Van Gogh style pointillism. If you already saw WALL-E, go back and see the credits. They’re worth it.

What about the rest of the movie, whose credits are so noteworthy? The rest is brilliant. This is the story of the last robot on Planet Earth. Humans, continuing their wasteful ways have brought upon so great a pollution, that they have been forced to leave the planet. They have left behind skyscrapers of trash, and an army of cleanup robots, or WALL-E’s.

When the movie starts, just one of these are left functioning. I was tempted to use ‘alive’ instead of ‘functioning’ there. So human-like is WALL-E in his ways.

In a tip of a hat to all those engineers in Silicon Valley, WALL-E’s character is extremely similar to that of an Engineer.

We see how WALL-E follows a daily routine of drudgery, has OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), leading to the neat lining up of his ‘treads’ when he returns ‘home’. He’s also a collector, of Zippo’s, among other things. He has in iPod and is a Noah of sorts, cataloging the artifacts of the age gone by. He is also desperately lonely. His only friend is a cockroach who rides on his ‘back’ when he is cleaning up the waste wastelands and making little cubes of trash and lining them up.

On one such day of drudgery, WALL-E finds a sapling, in an otherwise barren landscape of what looks like New York City. He takes it back home.

Soon after, his humdrum routine is severely disturbed by the arrival of EVA. Although it is never explicitly pointed out, Eva is ‘female’. Such is the enormous skill of the people who made this movie. This is the kind of subtlety that we hope to see in Bollywood more often. Fortunately, we have already directors of the caliber of Ram Gopal Varma, who demonstrated the power of the Language of Film in the movie – Sarkar. Hopefully, more such directors will come along.

Eva is obviously looking for something, and it is apparent she has come from the ‘future’. She is far more sophisticated (she packs a weapons system on her forearm, WALL-E only has claws), and far shinier. Like a gadget from Apple, no less. The similarity is not a coincidence because Jonathan Ive, Apple’s Vice President of Design, designer of such icons as the original iMac, the iPod, the Powerbook etc spent a few days at Pixar designing and/or providing inputs about what Eva should look like.

It then turns out Eva had been sent to find signs of life on Earth, and when she see’s the sapling in WALL-E’s den, she becomes a static container and goes into Hibernation, much to the dismay of WALL-E, who has already started to behave like a star struck lover.

WALL-E then follows Eva into Axiom, which is a huge space ship where humans have taken refuge, waiting for Earth to detoxify.

The humans of the future are presented in poor light. They’re fat, have baby feet and cannot walk anymore. Neither do they talk to each other, or take care of their kids. In a salute to movies like THX-118, humans exist purely to consume. They are also incredibly stupid, and it is clear that it is their robots that keep them alive.

After this, there’s the obvious appearance of the villain, a couple of chases, and a happy ending.

However, I have to mention a couple of things, because they were so magnificent.

The villain is a look alike of Arthur C Clarke’s HAL 9000. That evil red eye, malignantly staring, and controlling the ship as well as its captain. This of course, is not the end to the salute to Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke. When the captain stands up for the first time, we hear Thus Spake Zarathusastra which we heard in the exceptional opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the apes first stand up.

The other thing, which I’m beginning to notice is all Pixar movies, is the reference to the Misfits, The Pirates. Ratatouille had a dialogue where the female chef actually says – “We’re not workers, we’re artists, pirates!”

There’s some element of that in Cars, with the bizarre bunch of cars, road rollers etc that finally help McQueen to glory.

And we see that here too. In a strictly controlled society of robots, the one’s that finally help Eva and WALL-E are the ones from the Robot Mental Asylum. The crazy one's, The Misfits.

A subtle message from Apple, reminding us to Think Different!

All in all, watch this for exceptional animation, a great story, tremendous attention to detail and clean, wholesome entertainment. Highly recommended, for both young and old.

Quantum of Solace - Review by Roger Ebert

I promise you, I did not read this before I wrote mine. But to have my thoughts match that of my Guru, is wonderful.

Full review here - http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081111/REVIEWS/811129989

Notable parts...

Please understand: James Bond is not an action hero! He is too good for that. He is an attitude.

The chase, with Bond under constant machinegun fire, is so quickly cut and so obviously composed of incomprehensible CGI that we're essentially looking at bright colors bouncing off each other, intercut with Bond at the wheel and POV shots of approaching monster trucks.

Dominic Greene lacks a headquarters on the moon, or on the floor of the sea. He operates out of an ordinary shipping warehouse with loading docks. His evil transport is provided by fork lifts and pickup trucks.

Quantum of Solace - The Review

WARNING : Spoilers Ahead!

I should have seen it coming. Since when did Bond dispense of sleek Beretta's and Walther PPK's and pick up a machine gun?

After all, you cannot carry a machine gun in your pant pocket and not have a visible bulge. And such a bulge would be naturally unlikely, even for a ladies man such as Agent 007 who has a long history of overused tools.

I think, the people who made this movie wanted to give the feeling this was an Action Movie and not just a Bond Movie. Hence the silhouette with the machine gun.

This is also the feeling you will get when you sit through the opening moments of the film. We had heard of rumors, trivia and commentary on the famed car chase scene that had destroyed many a Aston Martin.

So how is the car chase scene then?

It's a blur.

Yes, that's the summary. I'm sure you are better endowed with a faster than 30 frames a second vision system so you can actually follow the deft moves that happen here. As for poor old me, I couldn't. I later found after asking my friends, that they too had the same problem.

So my question to the makers is this? Why make an opening sequence that no one can follow and one that only gives a general impression of slick action?

But I'll tell you the truth. Such was my faith in the renewed Bond franchise, with new Bond Daniel Craig as leading man, that I forgave this opening scene. I felt rushed when the scene ended, and perhaps that was what the director wanted to do.

But the next action sequence? What of that? Bond chasing down a man who has attempted to gun down 'M' and in effect released Mr. White?

Again, a blur!

And what of the mix in of the horse race going on in parallel? I just read that one of the first movies that director Marc Forster saw was the Francis Ford Copolla masterpiece - Apocalypse Now. There's a similar scene there. Of a man killing another, with an axe. And yet, that killing is interspersed with a scene where a bull is being butchered in a rather primitive way by tribals, with what else, an axe. The effect produced is incredible.

[If you haven't seen Apocalypse Now please drop everything else and see it NOW! Yea, it's that good!]

But I digress. So this amateurish rip off from the great master Copolla doesn't work. The rip off from Bourne Ultimatum of rapid editing and cuts doesn't work. Because of the age old problem that movie goers pose to directors. The age old problem called - 'I've seen this already. What's new in your movie?'.

So by the time you are fifteen minutes into the movie, you are feeling like you've on a merry-go-round for the time and you are all dizzy and confused. Again, if this is indeed an effect the director wanted to create, kudos to him. It worked!

And yet, such is the faith in the Bond formula, you hope there'll be something that will come and be nice to watch.

After this of course you realise that plot is boring. Did I say boring? Yes, I did. I will not bore you with what happens further on. But suffice to say, it is such a one dimensional, linear plot that I was surprised. I'd expect much more from Paul Haggis (Crash, Casino Royale, Letters From Iwo Jima). Bollywood pot boilers even at the level of Jimmy have better plots than this. And that's saying a lot for Jimmy.

So there's not much in the plot department. The villian, who has to be over-the-top since this is a Bond movie is anything but. No metal teeth, no tears of blood, no pliers for hands. Again boring.

And there are no gadgets either! By which time you feel if you're in the right theatre? Is this a Bond movie at all or a Hong Kong rip off of the Bourne series? How did they get Daniel Craig to act for them? And to their credit I will say, Hong Kong directors would have made a better movie than this. Watch Mission Impossible : 2 and you'll know what I mean. Give me John Woo anyday!

The two finest scenes in this movie are at the Opera where Bond is evesdropping on the members of the Quantum syndicate. And where Bond's friend dies in his arms and after a moment of mourning, Bond tosses him into a trash can and carries off loose change from his pocket. These two are good, and here the credentials of person who directs Drama comes good.

I will end with my parting shot on product placement. We see Sony Ericsson, Ford etc. being endorsed. In fact we also see, in probably the most direct manner, the endorsement of a hotel in Haiti, which I'm sure has more visitors after the film. Shame on you Marc Forster ;-)

But even product placement is bad. After seeing hundreds of Hydrogen Fuel Cells blow up to create a ghastly inferno, how many people in their right mind would prefer to drive a Ford Hydrogen powered car? ;-)

थोड़ा तोह दिमाग लगाओ भाई

Refactor Your Wetware

New book from the Author's of Pragmatic Programmer.

Thanks to Mani for mentioning this in a recent chat I had with him.
You can read the first two chapters for free.

http://www.pragprog.com/titles/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning

Victor Wooten

Sumanth (Our Master of Music) pointed us to this video of a bass guitar genius.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Wooten

Here are some lovely thoughts on music from him.

the bass makes no music ... you do

This philosophy seems closely related to another fundamental truth about Wooten's stated approach to and experience of bass and music in general, which is that music is a language. According to Wooten, when speaking or listening we don't focus on the mouth as it is forming words; similarly, when a musician is playing or performing the focus shouldn't be on the instrument.

People familiar with Indian Classical music will nod their heads when they hear this. Also reminded me of the opening scene of Bruce Lee's classic Enter The Dragon.



Look around 7:20 for pearls of wisdom from the Boss.

By the way, Victor Wooten has written a book, and you can read a couple of pages of it here - http://www.vixboox.com/The_Music_Lesson-Groove7.htm

Pretty interesting concepts there.

Halloween Costume With India Connection

Minute Repeater

Aimlessly browsing through Rediff.com I came across a slide show of the world's most expensive watches. And a feature that they all had was Minute Repeater. Naturally curious, I went and looked this up in the Wiki and this is what I found.

A repeater is a complication in a mechanical watch or clock that audibly chimes the hours and often minutes at the press of a button. There are many types of repeater, from the simple repeater which merely strikes the number of hours, to the minute repeater which chimes the time down to the minute, using separate tones for hours, quarter hours, and minutes. They originated before widespread artificial illumination, to allow the time to be determined in the dark,^[1] and were also used by the visually impaired.

Here are two examples -