Stanford Open 4

 

Stanford Open 3

 

Stanford Open 2

 

Rear Window & Bowling for Columbine

Rear Window - a highly rated Hitchcock movie. By modern standards, the first half of the movie is a bit too dull..... hardly anything happens in the movie ( I dozed off twice). The movie picks up pace in the latter half and is a bit more interesting. Overall, I think it is an overrated movie. Or may be if we consider the age of this movie and the year it was made, it deserves its high ranking.

Bowling for Columbine: a tad too lengthy for a documentary. Michael Moore doesn't really make his opinion clear about the gun control issue... (may be he himself is not clear). But I felt the movie was drifting with Moore trying to show all different plausible causes, everybodies opinions..... all angles of the story as he sees it. In a way, it is better because it gives us a lot of information and we (the viewers) can form our own opinions. But we must remember that we are only hearing "his side of the story". An interesting movie and a thought provoking one at that.

Stanford Open

Had been to see the Stanford Open Tennis Championships. My first time at a professional tennis match in a full-fledged stadium. Initially we sat in our designated seats... high above the baseline row M. As the evening progressed, we decided that the stadium won't fill up and slowly moved down into empty seats closer to the court. Towards the end, we were 4th row behind the baseline and had an awesome view of the players close-by.

The main draw of the day was Sania Mirza. Alas, she disappointed her supporters and lost to a qualifier,V Bardini in straight sets. She didn't play too bad ... many attacking rallies and winners, she didn't play good either.... too many unforced errors, poor 1st serves, etc. Bardini deserved to win ....... she was consistent and aggressive.
Earlier, Hantuchova lost to Perry (from USA) in an up-and-down game. No one really dominated the match.. both players were a bit defensive. I think Perry is one of the few players around (especially among women) with a single handed back-hand. Of course, she slices the ball more often than play an attacking shot., but it was nice to see someone play like that.

Strangely enough Perry was also a qualifier. Today was the day qualifiers won against more well known and higher ranked opponents.

Stanford Open 1

 

Netflix changes DVD viewing habits..... again

This article says that Netflix subscribers are now letting the DVD collect dust at their homes. What this means is that
1. Netflix used to make money from people signing up to watch movies.
2. Netflix is now making more money by people NOT watching movies - u watch less movies- they pay less for shipping the movies - so they make more from each subscription.

I wonder if they considered this as part of their initial business plan.

Run Lola Run

Recently saw "Lola Rennt" / Run Lola Run the other day. Its a very different movie-- deserves its high rating. The first few minutes of the movie, I was thinking "how did this movie get such a high rating???", but about 25 minutes into the movie I got the hang of it. At a deeper level, the movie explores "fate" and what if we could control it. The ending of the movie is very interesting. I was expecting something slightly different.

Cooking eggs with cellphone

This report really freaked me out. Now I am not really sure of the validity of these findings, but sure enough it had me thinking.

==============================

Journalists Vladimir Lagovski and Andrei Moiseynko from Komsomolskaya Pravda Newspaper in Moscow decided to learn first-hand just how harmful cell phones are. Instead what they ended up learning was that with a cellphone around, you’ll never go hungry again…

In their experiment, the journalists placed one egg in a porcelain cup (because porcelain conducts heat easily), and put two cell phones, one on each side of the egg. The researchers then called from one cell phone to the other and left the cell phones on after connecting.

During the first 15 minutes, absolutely nothing changed (that must have been a loooong 15 minutes). After 25 minutes, however, the egg shell started to become warmer and at 40 minutes, the eggshell starting cracking. At that point, according to the researchers, the protein in the egg had become solid although the egg yolk was still in liquid form. And finally, 65 minutes after they had started the experiment, the entire egg was cooked.

In light of the experiment and in the egg’s defense, Mike from Specific Impulse declared that this experiment proves nothing other than the fact that humans are mostly made of water:

‘Water is a dipole molecule and basically looks like an L with the oxygen in the middle and the hydrogens on the outside. When you apply a proper frequency …say… the output of a cell phone, it reacts to the magnetic field. This field spins the molecule. Spinning molecules have kinetic energy and as they bump in other molecules and slow down, they give off heat. This is exactly the same principal that electric motors run on. Every fan in your house, computer, car, etc works on this principal. Field applied to L shaped antenna equals movement.

So now since humans are mostly made of water, heating a human using this principal is fairly easy. If you’ve talked on a cell phone for quite a while, you’ll probably remember your ear getting hot. This is the water that makes up your ear spinning on a molecular level.

Either way, next time you plan on having a conversation with yourself - with one phone on one ear and another phone on the other - you better think twice.

Photos courtesy of Rense


--- Original post found http://www.thecellfreak.com/cellphone-used-to-cook-an-egg/

Capote & Scent of a Woman

Saw two movies over the weekend - Capote and Scent of a Woman.
Both movies had "best actor oscars". Al Pacino in SOAW was superb.... the movie was very good till the very end. Didn't really like the end.
Capote was not exactly to my taste... a bit too slow. P.S.Hoffman has done a good job, no doubt... but somehow I couldn't connect with the Capote character. Was interesting to learn that Harper Lee (called Nelle in the movie) was Truman Capote's friend and more interestingly wrote only one book. (for those who didn't recognize the name, she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird).

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Just returned from watching this movie... yes on the first day !!!
Overall a very enjoyable movie but no one feature/thing stands out. The special effects and stunts were amazing. Could have done with less of those slimy creatures. Most of the memorable characters from the first part are there (including a surprising one at the very end.) Sadly, there is very little character building ..... you are assumed to have watched Part One to understand each character in this one (just another way of saying they were just monotonously repeated what they did before).

Jist of the story - Orlando and Kiera are arrested just before their wedding. For their freedom, they must get Depp's (Jack Sparrow) compass. Sparrow has his own agenda of using the compass.... a lots of twists and turns later, everyone is after "dead man's chest" and the live beating heart inside it.

The story doesn't conclude in this movie.... wait for part 3 to do that (a la The Matrix Reloaded).

One more thing... this one too is a long movie (but engrossing enough to keep you watching the screen). I think it runs for about 2hr30min. I'm not sure why Hollywood movies of today are lengthier than before.

Munich

Saw Spielberg's Munich last week. Although a lengthy movie, Spielberg's direction is so slick that you don't really realize the time. The movie starts feeling like a thriller/suspense movie but it really is a 'drama' that explores the psyche of undercover assassins. The gradual change in the assassination team members' emotions and their feelings towards the mission is worth noting.

One annoying thing, the movie cuts fast to new a place/time and you only realize it after some time. I guess this was intentionally done but it was really irritating.

A worth-watching movie provided you have lots of time on hand.

200Mbps alternative to 802.11n

http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=3083

Very interesting technology by Netgear. At 200Mbps this might as well revolutionize home networking. Powerline Ethernet is not a new technology... the older products supported only about 14Mbps.

200Mbps..wow! TV over IP is not far away!

My first post...

in my nth attempt at a blog.
This one I'll try to keep alive by writing abt the movies that I saw or with interesting weblinks.