My rating of Linkin Park’s Minutes To Midnight album: 6.9 / 10

I got Linkin Park’s latest album Minutes To Midnight yesterday, thanks to my pal Prashanth. Here’s a track-by-track review first.

Wake (2 / 5): The shortest and a vocal free track. You’ll have to crank up your speaker volume right up to max to catch anything. Sounds more like an intro for The Matrix. The reason why I’m giving it a 2 it because nothing is very audible until a large part has been played, and then, the rest of the good part is too short.
Given Up (5 / 5): More hardcore metal intro, followed by typical LP style. A heavier track than the rest, and I liked the lyrics too (because I’m pretty much in the same introspective mood these days). It’s the BEST song out of the album by far, and I’d probably add it to my fave songs playlist too.
Leave Out All The Rest (5 / 5): The song is a very good advice to the music label executives who handled this album - leave out rest of the crap from this album. Again, it’s a newer style, more Simple Plan than Linkin Park, but it’s really good.
Bleed It Out (5 / 5): Nice song, the clap track sounds as if it’s meant to be some soccer anthem. Repetitive at parts. Typical LP style, and good.
Shadow Of The Day (4 / 5): A slow track. Sorta romantic. The vocals end early, leaving you thinking that the song is over, but there’s a good bit at the end which is only instrumental.
What I’ve Done (3 / 5): The most publicized song of the album, was released earlier. It’s sort of midway between the hardcore LP style and the new slower variety they’re trying out. Intro is lot like the sort of music the use to start of the credits after trashy horror movies. Definitely not worth making the flagship song of the album. I just don’t GET how this pathetic song can make it to the top of charts.
Hands Held High (2 / 5): I don’t like rap (this is one’s mostly rap), so my judgement might be biased, but I didn’t like this one that much. The instrumental sounds as if it was done by a one-man (one-boy?) school band with chorus’s in between which seem inspired by the Mr Bean theme song. Very confused song, with the last part not rap at all.
No More Sorrow (2 / 5): Starts off as an attempt to convert the theme of The Terminator into a funeral song (which means it doesn’t match with the title). Instruments are more Dimmu Borgir than Linkin Park.
Valentine’s Day (3 / 5): A slower, softer track. Doesn’t use the typical LP chorus style too much.
In Between (5 / 5): Looking at the track title, it should probably have been the 5 / 6th track. It’s ABSOLUTELY unlike any other LP track you would have heard. Vocals get highest priority and it’s a really slow song. Out of the different styles tried out, this ones probably the best.
In Pieces (3 / 5): An attempt at mixing a slow song with faster rock, and falls flat on its face.
The Little Things Give You Away (5 / 5): After a string of bad songs towards the end, the album finally ends with a better song. This is the longest track in the album - about 6 minutes long - and has long vocals-free stretches, which frankly are pretty good. I liked the end of the song a lot - nicely done, but it’s more an accomplishment on part of Hahn, I guess.

Overall, it seems as if LP or their music label got too greedy, and tried to attract more sales by putting in more genres (this one was co-produced by Mike Shinoda, BTW). That messed up this album - hardcore LP fans who liked their rap-metal-punk sort of style appealing will be disappointed; while those of not interested in LP probably won’t buy it anyway. It’s mostly the older style ones which I liked more. And hey, listen more carefully, and you’ll find that it’s not only Chester Bennington who’s done the vocals, but even Mike Shinoda has chipped in, although Chester is of course, still the lead. It also suffers because nobody expects such bad things from LP, not after Meteora and Hybrid Theory. Minutes To Midnight simply becomes an album for collection’s sake for LP fans, but some songs are really good. And this is something you should have, even if it doesn’t quite touch the high standards of their earlier albums.

PS: Wondering about the title of the post? Just have a look at WHEN this was posted…

This marks the beginning of a new series, a short one, to guide eleventhies post-class X Board results about admission process for other schools. But before I give my words of advice, I feel the need to rant about the CBSE a bit.

CBSE is exactly what it stands for, ’secondary education’. They think that education is secondary and the most important thing in life is to know how to mug up things and create xerox copies of standard answers in your Boards. I suffered because of that, getting a 79 in English last year, which really hurt my overall Board marks. I could have easily got a 95% with better English marks, and it still hurts me a lot. And why pray did I get less marks? It’s because I made the heresy of using humor and sarcasm in my board paper, apart from new vocabulary. Okay, I admit that mocking CBSE in my English paper essay was a BAD idea, but still…

And it’s not only me, many others who’re good at English have suffered. Those who get 80-90s in school regularly get 60-70s in Boards, and those who get 60-70s in school and frankly don’t know the XYZ of English end up getting 80-90s. Students who’re good at English regularly lose out because they generally express their own perspective in opinion based questions in the Boards, and the Board then wants only a few standard answers.

Anyway, coming back to my main topic - admissions. I know for a fact that many students feel very attached to their old schools because they’ve spent years studying there, made loads of friends etc etc, but believe me, once you make the switch to a better school, you’ll enjoy it too. All that talk of not fitting in and all is rubbish. Take the DPSs for example - there’s a 100% increase in the number of students in class 11th because so many students get in. For this though, you need seriously good marks. And if you do have them, say more than 90%, you should definitely make the switch. I admit that your peers can get boring because they’re mostly all top rate nerds (I don’t fit in there), but they’re pretty amazing to meet. The main reason though are the teachers - believe me, they are far better than what the smaller institutions can offer.

Having made three (or was it two?) futile attempts to get back to the main topic, I do so now by giving a school-by-school guide. Since I’m at DPS VK, future editions of this series will concentrate on that.

• DPS R K Puram: The flagship school of the DPS family, its admission process is online. Go to www.dpsrkp.net and register yourself, and wait for their cutoffs to come out. Generally, if you don’t have more than 94-95%, forget about it. They won’t even consider if you have an extraordinary extracurricular record. They’ve stopped taking an admission test because of the huge demand, and give admission purely on Board marks. It’s huge, the number of students who get admission - around 500 (they have around 23-24 sections of 11th each year), and almost everyone is 94-95% sorta guy. Do note that criteria is lower for hostel students. Also they release multiple lists, but don’t wait if you have got 92-93% because you probably won’t get through.
• DPS Vasant Kunj: Coming to my school, you can find the updated admission procedure to be put up soon on the school site www.dpsvasantkunj.com (although it’s pretty boring looking, I know). If you missed the first round of admission which is on the basis of a test and your pre-board marks, you can apply now. For commerce and humanities, there’s no test and candidates shortlisted on the basis of Board marks get called. For science, there’s an admission test, generally in June. About 500 students apply, only about 250 make it through - and last year almost every new student had got more than 90%. The admission test has English, General Science and Mathematics. I’ll put up a detailed post on that later. After that, you’ve the interviews, and then you get through.
• Sanskriti School, Chanakyapuri: If your parent(s) work in the government, then you can get in easily, otherwise it’d be pretty tough. The school has a site, but it’s not at all update. Go to the school campus for information. There’s an interview based on your marks. Do note that their total number of students in 11th is less, and the school’s better in commerce and humanities. Keep this as a backup option if your dad / mom works in the government while you’re applying to other schools. They take in about 30 students, but you’re generally required to make the decision to join it before the results of other schools’ interviews come out, so you need to make a conscious decision based how well you have a chance of getting through in others. Amazing infrastructure though - after all what do you expect when almost every government arm gives them crores of funding?
• Mother’s International School, Aurobindo Marg: It’s a good school, although sort of conservative in its outlook. Infrastructure, especially the labs, is old. The teachers are good though. However, they take in very few students each year after a test, and that too you need to apply early. Their website is www.themisonlin.com (and there’s is NO spelling mistake that I made here).
• DPS Mathura Road / DPS Noida / DPS Gurgaon: Go for these ones if you live incredibly close to the school. Academics-wise, these are pretty okay, but do try for the other, better schools of the DPS family. The selection criteria in these is lower than DPS RKP or DPS VK.

Watch out for more on my blahg about school life in these institutions, opportunities for extracurricular activities, about their admission tests, etc etc.

Been quite some time since I posted anything about CLasses at CL. It’s because I’ve been solving packages and revising class 11th for sometime in the past few days. Long long gap, and don’t expect many posts too these days.

We celebrated an impromptu ‘Chemistry Week’ last week by studying chemistry for all the four days a week that we have class. That was because our physics teacher was unable to come because of certain problems and math teacher was unable to come because of certain problems. Enlightening, what I just said, isn’t it? I also find out interesting things. For example, I always thought N₂O was laughing gas. Silly me. It’s only when our teacher told us that it’s lopphing gas did I realize my grave error. Silly me.

Our math faculty has changed. We don’t have Sprite with us any longer. If you want to know what colas with no taste AT ALL have in common with math teachers, I’ll soon make it CLEAR (keep the caps in mind…). Our last math teacher had a habit of asking ‘Clear?’ in a deep-throated voice after every few sentences. It sounded more German than English / Hinglish, and ended up reminding me of the movie U-571 every few minutes in the math class. He was called ‘Clear?’ by most others, but I found Sprite better. All I can say now is ‘Clear nahi hai…’

The new chap is amazing at calculus - solves questions in a jiffy using multiple methods. A B. Tech. from IIT Roorkee, he’s the typical studious IITian sort of person. Good thing they decided to swap teachers for the calculus part, he’s definitely good at this.

In other news, we now have four hour class instead of the usual two hour ones. Right now, it’s in the aftervening; although SO many people are demanding classes in the mor(o)noon. If you ask me, the first one’s way better. Because then, I don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn (i.e., any time before 9am) to go to class, and then try to stay awake. I feel so sleepy then that even coffee gives up trying to wake me, and I feel even more sleepy. Don’t assume that I am sloth, there is no need to assume that. I readily admit the fact. It’s just that I like studying at night, and wake up till 2-2.30am daily. I generally don’t sleep in the aftervening, but sometimes I take a 42 minute long nap on school days.

And sheesh, it feels awkward to be solving packages at full throttle after so many days!

PayPerPost (better known as PPP), the online blog marketplace that helps to power and monetize so many blogs these days (including) mine, just made a new update to its system. There are LOADS of things to talk about this PPP release, which will help bloggers to generate revenue from what they like most - blogging.

1. As you know, PPP is a beta website, and is constantly being updated. This happened far back in time, but now the site is much more navigable and loads faster. Help pages and forums are more helpful now.
2. This release is codenamed the ‘Birdo’ release of PPP. Rather, the part 1 of Birdo release.
3. This has new features, like ‘benching’. Earlier there was a system where a blogger / advertiser could ban the other for various reasons. Now, the option of benching allows either one of them to temporarily suspend the other from participating. Neat, isn’t it? For sometimes there are opportunities which you might just want to put on hold for a while.
4. The main thing in this release has been the launch of PPP Direct. This is what I wanted to talk about. PPP Direct allows a blogger to be contacted by an advertiser directly for opportunities, cutting out the middleman. Sites like ReviewMe have 50-100% markup on their prices - which means that the blogger only gets half of whatever the advertiser pays. PPP Direct has only a markup of 10%, of which 5% goes into PayPal and credit card transaction fees. It’s a secure way for bloggers and advertisers to interact and set a fee agreeable to both. Also, PPP Direct will help in filing tax returns automatically, easing out many problems for bloggers.

Hope that PPP keeps innovating and offering more fun opportunities!