I have set up my blog on my site @ http://suresha.me/blog/

Also, you can read my photo blog @ http://suresha.me/photo-blog/

Here is a graph from wordpress stats page.

Money: Its more madness than cricket. Huge money spent on broadcasting rights was evident from day one. Lot of ads and a 10-minutes statergy break inbetween games!!!!!!!

Glamour: The likes of Shilpa shetty, Preity zinta and Sharukh and co adding some glamour to the game. And their animated reactions!!! And as if thats not enough, we have a contest for best female face in the crowd for a movie in Bollywood.

Nonsense: Also called “Set Max Coverage”. Its experiment of using TV stars for crcket anchoring is quite pathetic. The likes of Mandira Bedi, is a mere annoyance. As if not enough, they got a Indian Idol winner. Oh …. God.

And cricket: Finally. Cricket took the centre stage for a while. Likes of Sachin and Dravid striking the ball and Kumble taking some wickets.

Whats missing from first day is a close contest. Hopefully we will get some good cricket in coming matches.

Jhossh is brilliant – Rediff

Jhossh is refreshing kannada movie, with a story about teenagers. Directed by Sivamani, the film has impressive music, choreography and camera work.

Jhossh is about a gang of teenagers, graduated to college and the depicts the typical confusion of the teenagers. The film scores well with music. The film is engaging with good humor. The camera work is brilliant.

But the film lacks a strong story line and specially drags towards the end. The director loses stream trying to bring the moral.

Rakesh Adiga and other co-stars are a good fit to the film. But these first timers need to get a bit of acting lessons.

Both the female actress in lead role sizzle, though not much in the film for them.

Overall a good entertainer and a must watch for all people who want to go back to their college days !!!!

And the good news. Microsoft has extended beta downloads and product keys till Jan 24. So I headed to the windows7 download page. The download worked fine, though I still think Bit Torrent is a better and easy distribution platform.

Installing windows7

Once the download is over, burn the iso image to a DVD and create a new partition to hold windows7 (If you want to dual boot with your existing OS). Then boot the PC using DVD and windows7 will start installing. The installation was a snap. I just had to point the partition on which to install and thats it.

It took around 30 minutes and couple of restarts and there you go…. much awaited windows 7 is here.

More on features and first impressions in my next post ….

For detailed installation instructions, visit here

Some critics liked it very much while others bashed it. Whatever it is, we had decided to watch it on first day simply out of interest – after all its an much awaited movie. And then I had got “Ghajni Haircut” by paying 300Rs, so it was only wise to get attentions on first day. So in the middle of mad rush to get tickets, we got tickets for a cost of 350Rs. I was hoping that the movie is worth that price.

Finally after 3 hours of torture, the movie is over. So why didn’t I like it?

Its a bad copy of “Memento”. (I heard in news that the director of Ghajini watched memento only after completing the movie. Coincidence.). So if you have watched “Memento” and liked it, only one way to like it: if you have a Anterograde amnesia – i.e short term memory loss !!

Its a no-brain-er. The movie has lot of masala – like a typical SRK movie. Action is unrealistic. Dialogs lack the punch – except here and there.

As some one has said – “Amir has used his body instead of his brain”.

As it is noted here, Polaroid cameras are out of production from almost 2 years. But obviously, makers of this movie cant think of any alternative while copying.

Positive points: Asin has acted well and she looks cute. Amir’s body (Sure .. I will watch his body building DVD than this film).

So all in all – waste of money and time.

My reco- Get a DVD of Memento and watch it at home. Thats what I am doing now.

Thats what Satyam learnt the hard way. It didnt took them much time to realize that. But the damage has been already done. The stock was down 55% in ADR in NASDAQ and 30% down in indian markets even after reverting the decision to aquire mytas.

Thats the price for hurting shareholder trust and for bad corporate governance.

“If it had not been (Major) Sandeep’s house, not even a dog would have glanced that way.” - Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan, on being turned away from the Bangalore home of Sandeep.

 

“Aisa nahi hai. Itne bade shahar mein chhota hadsa ho jata hai. To total failure nahi hai. (It is not like that. In big cities like this, small incidents do happen. It’s is not a total failure.)” - R R Patil, Then Maharashtra Home Minister, on gravity of Mumbai attacks.

why should I resign after the Mumbai attack? - R R Patil, Then Maharashtra Home Minister, on taking moral responsibility of Mumbai attacks.

“I have submitted my resignation letter to Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. I have gone by my conscience and decided to take this step,” - R R Patil, Then Maharashtra Home Minister, after being forced to step down by NCP.

 

“It was decided on the spur of the moment. It wasn’t pre-planned. Taj security chief Kapadiya called and asked me to visit the hotel. The two (Riteish and Varma) were around so I took them along. What’s the big deal? Why the fuss?” - Vilasrao Deshmukh, Then Maharashtra Chief Minister, on taking RGV and his actor son for Taj inspection.

“I have offered to resign. If the responsibility of the attacks is on the chief minister, then I will go.” - Vilasrao Deshmukh, Then Maharashtra Chief Minister, on taking moral responsibility of attack

 

“Give us evidence and we will prosecute them“, Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan President.

Should we tolerate this anymore? Enough is enough. We need to take action.

Here are some of the thoughts from the people blogging.

Sambit Bal has a thoughtful article on cricinfo.

An exceprt from his article:

That England shouldn’t play the next two one-dayers should have been a no-brainer. Middlesex and Western Australia needn’t have bothered making explanations. Sport is not bigger than life, not even in a country where it is said to be the religion.

 Every time I see the photograph of the young man – who looks not a lot older than my son – dressed in jeans and t-shirt, carrying a machine gun as casually as he does the satchel over his shoulder, bearing a sinister glee in his eyes, I am reminded of Barack Obama’s words about the killers of 9/11: “My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another’s heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with such serene satisfaction.”

Let me declare my interests. I love this city. If anything, the last two days have made me realise the depth of that love. I have no guns and grenades to defend it with, but I can fight for its spirit. It sounds like a cliché, but clichés also happen to be true. I can’t wait to see a stadium in Bombay reverberating to the sounds of cricket. I will be there.

There is a good article of first hand account of wednesday shooting on india uncut blog.

And then there is a stream of photos on this on Flickr.

That’s what a report printed in Mint is hinting at.

IPhone’s launch in India has been dubbed the biggest failure of a top-notch brand from a well regarded company in recent times.

The 2 operators – Airtel and Vodafone – are said to be able to sell only 11,000 sets till now. What a shame for such a beautiful product !!!

So what went wrong?

For me, there were 2 dampeners:

1. High price

2. Expectation of a lower price as it was announced to be $199 in US and world wide and also expectation of     a fall in prices.

Most of the consumers felt cheated because iPhone was selling much cheaper in other countries. This is the main reason that people shy-ed away from iPhone, eventhough other mobile phone manufacturers like Nokia, Samsung and BlackBerry are able to sell even costlier smart phones.

Definitely a lost opportunity.