University of Surrey logo

My journey towards joining University of Surrey began many moons ago, in the beginning of 2009. UK-based universities used a centralized application system called UCAS, and that’s where I began. UCAS allows you to apply to a maximum of five universities – my choices were Surrey, Aberystwyth (Wales), Kent, Aston, and Cardiff (not necessarily in that order). To cut a long story short (I feel sleepy!), I got offer letters from all five universities by mid-May. I now needed to pick one of these. Surrey  is one of the best universities in UK for electronics engineering / computer science. Surrey’s faculty of electronic engineering is at the cutting-edge of research in the field, including working closely with Surrey Satellite Technology, a spin-off from the university’s Surrey Space Centre which has worked on major projects such as the European Space Agency’s rival to GPS. Surrey county is also where many electronics and software firms have their headquarters. Surrey, thus, was by far my first preference among the universities I applied to.

Also, they know a thing or two about 'good marketing'.

Around the end of May, University of Surrey’s Director of Student Recruitment Dr Peter Marshall (who was a professor in the faculty of electronic engineering before taking this administrative position) visited New Delhi. (This was after I had got my offer letters from all universities.) I met up with him for a chat, and by the end of that meeting I felt that Surrey was the right choice for me. I accepted by the end of the day (via UCAS). I must thank Prannoy ‘Pony’ Sablok, a DPS VK senior and Code Warrior currently studying at Aston University for all his guidance during the application process. Then began the paperwork. I received my visa letter from Surrey towards the start of July. I applied for my visa on 17th July, and just three day later – on my birthday – I got my visa. :D That was a pleasant surprise, since visa processing generally takes around two weeks!

University of Surrey location. That's Guildford.

My university is situated in the town of Guildford is approximately half an hour away from London by rail / road. I solemnly deny that the fact that Douglas Adams had a soft spot for Surrey (the county) had anything to do with my decision to join Surrey (the university). Arthur Dent stays in Leatherhead, Surrey; Woking is ‘the word for when you go to the kitchen but forget why’; Ford Prefect is (supposedly) from Guildford…and so on. More references to Surrey in popular culture can be found in Harry Potter, Lara Croft, and War of the Worlds.

A celebrity resident of Guildford

The past few weeks have been spent meeting relatives and school friends. Had a great time participating in the AIIMS college fest Pulse 2009 with ex-DPS VK Quiz Club members Rachit and Varun! (Came second in general trivia quiz, first on movie quiz, third in science quiz.) Making goofy faces at the Code Warriors reunion (more photos from CW Reunion 2009 here)…

…total vellapunti…

Stationary on an escalator

gyaan.in, the associated meetup, technology (un)conferences have kept me busy too. Which reminds me, i’ve been working on the draft of a novel too. Shshshsh… No more details yet. One thing that I have realized is that writing a long-length work is tough shit. You start working on something, and then you find it doesn’t quite fit in. Maybe I’ll rework those bits, spin them off as short stories and then publish them here some day. Oh, and I’ve been doing this in Google Docs – revision control is a very handy tool.

For the past few months, I have also been working with Youthpad (and to an extent, more.VoiceTAP) as a content writer. Coming up with new blog post ideas for Youthpad daily has been a fun task, although at times I’ve suffered from serious bouts of writer’s block. :) Sadly, with university starting I won’t be able to continue in this position. Anyway, it has been great fun!

University of Surrey promotional video. I *heart* the catchy tune!

I won’t be blogging daily from now onwards (I hear my RSS subscribers breathing a sigh of relief), but I think I’ll remain fairly regular in putting up new blog posts. I’m also introducing three new post categories on my personal blog – Surreyal, about happenings at the University of Surrey; Stiff Upper Lip, for everything else quintessentially British; Take42, which I intend to be a vodcast. I’ll try to incorporate more podcasts, videos, pictures in the future. And just FYI, I think it’d be a swell idea if someone starts a company called Take42 Interactive, as a parody of Take2 Interactive. ;)

Still packing...

Wow. This has been one long blog post. Soon, I’ll be switching over to a new time zone. It’s 6am in the morning right now, and I still haven’t slept one bit. Need to get some rest now. I want to thank all my readers for the immense support and great company that you have given me. And remember, if you need to get in touch I’m just a click away.

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish! :)

PS – The cake is a lie.

However, most of these services are intended to provide you with information before you leave your house / workplace. You can look up information for a place you plan ahead in visiting. If you want to make a spur-of-the-moment decision to go to some restaurant or find a business when you’re on the road, you were pretty much screwed. Sadly, most of these local search engines don’t have good mobile interfaces (except for JustDial). JustDial also operates a human-operator assisted telephone helpline (6999-9999). The way this works is that you call the number, a human operator types in your queries into the normal JustDial interface, and then reads out the results to you.

As you can imagine, this procedure can be quite cumbersome. You may be unlucky enough to get an operator who isn’t that good / doesn’t understand what you’re saying. Many times call centre operations are based out of one city, and if you’re calling in from another city then they’ll be thoroughly confused (as I’ve found out at times).

So you were pretty much screwed in such situations…until now. To circumvent these and other problems, Google India launched Local Voice Search about a year ago. It was a laughable attempt at that time, because the whole operation was based on a human-operator picking up the phone and keying in whatever you wanted to know into standard Google Search. Totally not worth talking about. Now however, they have shifted to an automated voice recognition system – which makes the game a bit more interesting.

If you stay in Delhi (NCR), Mumbai, Bangalore or Hyderabad, dial the toll-free number 1-800-41-999-999. This connects you to Google’s automated voice-based local search system. The system will prompt you to speak a type of business (e.g., ‘cafe’, ‘pizza’…), restaurant / shop / other business establishment (e.g., ‘Subway’, ‘DHL’…), or movie for show timings (e.g., The Taking of Pelham 123).

The voice recognition system will they play back what it understood, ask for confirmation, and then prompt you to speak the area name in which you are seeking whatever you want. In case automated voice recognition fails, the system will transfer your call to a call centre where a human operator will assist your search. (Human assist is available only from 8am to 12 midnight though.) Once the system has recognized all your choices correctly, it will read out the top three results for you – and also send you an SMS containing details for free (if you’re calling from a cellphone number).

I have tried out the service a few times, and my reaction to it is mixed.

1. Movie timings: Almost always fails to recognize movie names, especially if the movie name is weird (for instance the example I gave). When it does find a match, you don’t get results from all cineplex chains. That’s still understandable, because till now there’s no single service which allows you to check show timings across all chains. (Hint hint, entrepreneurs. Here’s an area you start-up. That is, if movie theatres stop being a dick and give you access to their data.)
2. Restaurant / exact business names: Mostly gets it right. The problem is that the contact details supplied are often out-dated / not working, so you’re back to square one. Still, when it works this is a life saver. After all, you’re dialling in toll free, so it’s not as if your money is being wasted.
3. ‘Vague queries’ (searching by business type): Hit-and-miss affair. Again, toll-free, so no harm in checking.

The main ‘problem’ with Google Local Voice Search is not so much of not an extensive-enough database or voice recognition. The main problem is that it’s search engine simply does not understand the concept of ‘proximity’. Once I tried to track down courier services in Bhikaji Cama Place or Vasant Kunj. Voice recognition identified the place name correctly both times. Yet, when it came to giving results, it gave me address in South Extension and Lajpat Nagar! (People who live in Delhi will realize how ridiculous this is.) And it’s not as if those services don’t exist in the places I specified (as I found out from JustDial mobile web search).

Clearly, Google Local Voice Search has quite some way to go before it becomes a dependable alternative to ‘calling your friend who lives closest to the area you want to go to’. However, the concept holds so much promise that I’m sure Google (and other companies) will invest into efforts such as this – and we, as end users, would definitely want to adopt services such as this. Searching by speaking out words is so inherently intuitive that it has the potential to bring the power of search to a lot more people and in a lot more environments (d0esn’t tie you down to your computer desk).

Until then, we can only hope for better results than shown in the video below… ;)

Howard shows off the capabilities of his ‘amazing’ phone on The Big Bang Theory

My rating of The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Love him, hate him, you just can’t ignore him. Dan Brown is back…with his new novel The Lost Symbol. Initially titled The Solomon Key, the book was finally released on 15th September 2009. You intuitively know this book was going to smash a few records when you find a PDF ebook torrent of the book within hours of release (probably made easier by the fact that is was released as an ebook for the Amazon Kindle). The first few comments on such highly anticipated book releases are always from retards who shout “Fake!” without even bothering to check. I prowled around torrent sites for “You are a retard, <username of first commenter>” comments to pour in, and then got on to downloading the book once the I knew for sure this was the real thing. The hysteria has already started – The Lost Symbol has already broken the one-day adult fiction sales record and Washington tourism board has launched a special microsite dedicated to the novel. Heavens have mercy on us all.

Watch a news report about the launch of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol

In a way, Dan Brown is like the George Lucas of the publishing industry – he can make mega-hit books by the minute, but years down the line everyone will acknowledge his works as a piece of shit. Just like dear ol’ Chetan Bhagat. Here’s the ‘official’ description for The Lost Symbol:

As the story opens, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned unexpectedly to deliver an evening lecture in the U.S. Capitol Building. Within minutes of his arrival, however, the night takes a bizarre turn. A disturbing object–artfully encoded with five symbols–is discovered in the Capitol Building. Langdon recognizes the object as an ancient invitation . . . one meant to usher its recipient into a long-lost world of esoteric wisdom.

When Langdon’s beloved mentor, Peter Solomon–a prominent Mason and philanthropist–is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes his only hope of saving Peter is to accept this mystical invitation and follow wherever it leads him. Langdon is instantly plunged into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and never-before-seen locations–all of which seem to be dragging him toward a single, inconceivable truth.

You know what this reminded me of? The interactive Dan Brown plot generator. I’m not kidding. While I was reading the book, I was truly irritated by how Dan Brown kept following the template of Mickey Mouse watch wearing professor + chick-and-professor-rolled-into-one love interest for Langdon + an assassin + secret society. He repeats Langdon’s backstory as to why he wears the watch, has claustrophobia, does laps of the Harvard swimming pool, etc etc every 30 pages – just to ensure that if you start flipping through the book somewhere in the middle, you have a ‘deep understanding’ of Robert Langdon’s character. I’ll keep the review spoiler-free.

Watch The Making of The Lost Symbol, the book with a five million print run

Thing is, Dan Brown’s formula has worn down by now. After The Da Vinci Code this simply seems to be a half-hearted attempt to fulfill a publisher’s contract. Despite being riddled with plot holes, Dan Brown’s previous novels worked because they were fast-paced and exciting on their own accord. In The Lost Symbol, he tries to overdo this by making lame attempts to insert cliffhangers at the end of every five paragraphs. It’s not a compulsive page-turner. Another irritating bit is the overuse of italics. Every second line is in italics. This is done to ‘speak out’ the internal thoughts of a character. We readers love that, man, but for Christ’s sake don’t overdo it man. There is no need to emphasise everything.

Certain phrases are repeated way too often in the book. The number of times something ‘dawns’ on Langdon will make you think he’s orbiting the Earth in a space shuttle rather than moseying around in Washington DC. (Astronauts on a space shuttle see a new ‘sunrise’ / ‘sunset’ every 45 minutes, approximately the same time-frame in which some ‘startling revelation’ ‘dawns upon’ Robert Langdon.) Every time one of these ‘dawning’ epiphanies happens, Langdon becomes a walking-talking Wikipedia entry on said topic which caused of ‘revelation’. Poor Isaac Newton is once again dragged into yet another secret society (this time it’s the Invisible College) and becomes party to fiendish conspiracies. Between being the Grand Poobah of the Royal Order of Water Buffaloes, Freemasons, Invisible College, Priory of Sion, and whichever ‘secret society’ Dan Brown cooks up in his next novel I wonder when did Newton get the time to work out the laws of gravity.

Dan Brown does a volte-face to his attitude towards religion compared to his previous novels. Angels & Demons (the book, not the movie) had reasonably balanced Science vs Religion philosophical discourses. The Da Vinci Code came across as anti-Vatican despite not intending to. The Lost Symbol marks the complete surrender of Dan Brown to religion. The Bible, which was described in The Da Vinci Code as “The greatest story ever sold, rathe than the greatest story ever told“, metamorphoses into Dan Brown’s version of The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. He does mention Koran, the Bhagvad Gita, Zohar et al too, but more in the tone of extras – bouncers at a nightclub while Jesus & Pals are having a party upstairs. For Freemasons who apparently believe in a non-religious deity, that’s a bit of favouritism, isn’t is Dan-san? Seems that Dan-san can’t take being heckled by bishops any more. Or maybe, like sleazeball Sony Pictures executives, he decided to start atoning for his ‘blasphemies’ in The Da Vinci Code. There is no way this book is starting any controversy. It sucks up to both Freemason and Church ideologies.

On the bright side, the novel does have parts where it shines – most of these involve the assassin Mal’akh and his sheer ruthlessness. As soon as your interest perks up, you’ll find it snuffed out by the standard Dan Brown template story. Even when there are twists in the story, you know there will be a twist – which means it doesn’t really catch you off guard. Like…’killing’ Robert Langdon somewhere after halfway into the novel. You know he’ll be brought back to life somehow, so you aren’t really surprised. If you did a double take in the last sentence at the ‘brought back to life’ bit, well, you’ll need to read the book to understand; the explanation, BTW, involves mice.

My criteria for whether I like a book is “Do I want to read it again?”. Dan Brown’s earlier novels met that criteria, because they were roller-coaster rides that kept you on the edge of your seat till the last page. You Lost Me At The Point Where Dan Brown Sucks Up To The Vatican is a more appropriate title for The Lost Symbol. Dull, irritating – but occasionally brilliant – you should read this book once just so that you don’t remain the only one not to read the book; beyond that, this is a book that must be given a quick burial.

My rating of GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra

GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra belongs the same category of movies as Transformers – ‘lovingly’ referred to as ‘war porn’ by critics. An assorted collection of slow-mo shots of military equipment and special-op military forces. Heck, even GI Joe is a Hasbro toy-line – so that was something expected. And with Stephen Sommers – the Mummy guy – at helm, you can’t expect anything other than a popcorn action flick. My interested in this movie was piqued when I watched its trailer. The Eiffel Tower crumbling to bits? If this didn’t beat Transformers in sheer entertainment value, I don’t know what would.

Before I begin the review here’s a bit of trivia, since it has been pointed out to me that I’m the most likely person to know random facts. Random Fact Of The Day is that Sienna Miller’s boobs caught fire while the movie was being shot. Details are sketchy as to whether an explosion was involved or they spontaneously self-combusted due to their hotness. Thankfully, as it transpired, no valuable assets were lost.

Watch the trailer for GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra

I admit that I’m not familiar with GI Joe lore. I played with GI Joe toys when I was a kid but didn’t really gave a damn about who belonged to which organization. Just let them loose (in your imagination of course) to bash each other up. I’m pretty sure our Indian shores haven’t had the (mis)fortune of being bombarded with Joe merchandising such as comics either. So my experience in watching the movie is that of a n00b to Joe-lore.

The GI Joes

The entire story of the movie can be summed up thusly: GI Joe is a special unit comprising of military personnel from across the world who ‘try to beat up bad guys’. The bad guys are M.A.R.S. Industries, who are contracted by NATO to develop nanobots that can eat through metal. They develop the weapon, and then for some convoluted reason the head of that company plans to steal it from himself while it is enroute to be delivered to NATO from his factory. Why not just make some for himself? Because then you wouldn’t have a big budget movie, dummy. Anyway, he succeeds in stealing the nanobot-equipped warheads from himself, decides to launch them from a secret aquatic base under the North Pole – and it’s up to our ‘average Joes’ to save the world.

Not fake. Look, even that guy behind her is staring.

The movie is almost completely CGI. Everything except for the actors is shot on a green/blue backdrop. While the quality of CGI is good, it is quite obvious whenever you look at a scene that it is fake. (Note – not referring to you-know-what in the picture above.) Without the stylistic over-the-top-ness used in the likes of Sin City, GI Joe feels as if you are watching someone else play a video game. Stephen Sommers peppers the movie with bullet-time shots a la ’300′…except he does it on a ‘grander’ scale using attack helicopters and whatnot.

"Son, this is NOT a serious movie. Please drop that poker face."

Acting is average at best. Honestly, the batshit insane story does not give anyone room to play around and even think about delivering a serious performance. Nobody seems to have informed this fact to Dennis Quaid though, who miserably drags through every scene as if he’s starring in some poignant war-drama. Many flashbacks in the movie; most of them done in the most juvenile and cheesy manner possible. Rest of the cast is completely in-flow and enjoying working on the movie. Most actors will come out with their reputation pretty unscathed.

Nobody complaining...

Sommers seems to have found a new muse in Sienna Miller. He rivals Michael Bay (and Bay’s fascination with Megan Fox) by ensuring that Sienna Miller is shown in every second frame. Just like Michael Bay, he devotes a lot of time to, erm, ‘close-up shots’. Nobody in the movie theatre complained though. ;) (Which reminds me , if you want to watch a movie in Delhi, watch it at DT Cinemas if possible. Plush seats, and the whole theatre is practically empty all the time. It’s like watching a movie in your own personal theatre. Food is crap though, and overpriced at that.)

Still nobody complaining...

The story, as I said, batshit insane. In a flashback, a soldier is sent into a terrorist bunker to ‘shoot down those bastards’…when an airstrike has already been ordered on the building. Why do you need to shoot someone and then drop bombs on them. Probably just to say you can. So this soldier goes in, sees some weapons experiment being shown on a computer and decides to transfer a webcast on to his pen drive. GI Joe has opened my eyes. I never knew US soldiers carried Kingston pen drives while in the middle of a battlefield in Somalia. When he plugs in the pen drive, he first scans it with Norton AntiVirus. Such dedication is truly commendable. Putting his life in the line of fire, to ensure that his pen drive is virus-free, so that when he gets back to the US of A Pentagon computers don’t get infected.

Or take the scene at the Arctic Circle. So they have a huge fucking military base the bottom of the ocean, with huge towers and shit which nobody seems to have noticed…despite the fact that nuclear submarines regularly patrol the area. No possible explanation is forthcoming, except maybe M.A.R.S. Industries borrowed Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak for a while. An epic battle happens between the Joes and the bad guys. Many underwater torpedoes later, the Joes decide to blast the ice directly above the Bad Guy Base. Soon, massive blocks of ice fall to the ocean bottom, crushing the Bad Guy Base. Erm, so why exactly again did the ice fall down like blocks of stone? Isn’t the fact that ice floats on water the whole fucking principle behind icebergs, which was then turned into a multimillion money mint movie called The Titanic?

In one scene, Bad Guys Inc are driving towards Eiffel Tower in a vehicle and plan to fire a nanobot-equipped warhead at it to reduce the monument to dust. The Joes chase the Bad Vehicle, and the amount of destruction they cause simply in pursuit of the vehicle is probably greater than what the Bad Guys put together could ever achieve. Such dedication, you see, to stop the Bad Guys that they readily kill / maim innocent civilians and wreck property in the process.

You don't get it, do you? NOBODY is complaining.

Many parts of the story are inspired by Star Wars. A clone army similar to the initial batch of Imperial Stormtroopers is created and they are ‘made fearless’ by injecting them with nanobots. (Don’t ask, don’t ask…) The icing on the cake is a Darth Vader lookalike who eventually becomes Cobra Commander, complete with a face mask and rasping voice.

If you watch this movie with a few friends, this unmitigated disaster can be turned into a laugh riot for the sheer cheesiness and stupidity of the whole enterprise. In that sense, it isn’t a lot unlike Snakes On A Plane. So bad, that it’s good.

Overall rating: 9 / 10
Speed in dispatching items: 7 / 10
Diversity of items on offer: 10 / 10
Item design interface: 9 / 10
Pricing: 8 / 10

Items available: T-shirt, mug, coaster, keychain, mousepad, greeting cards, poster, jigsaw, diaries / notebooks, calendar, watch, pendant, sweatshirt, money bank, sipper, tiles, wine glass, plaques, engraved keychain, letter pad, magazine cover, jewellery box, marble pen & keychain, photo print (on various surfaces), mirrors, cigarette lighter, pen. Check out the complete list along with sub-categories here.

I’ll be frank right at the outset. Out of the three companies reviewed till now, I find Myntra the best. Nobody beats them in the sheer variety of items that they have on offer for customization. And it’s not just the variety, but also the kind of gifts – many of them are truly unique and hatke. You would really want to give or get a gift of the types they have on offer. They also offer customization on a far more varied types of material / surfaces than the other customized gift providers.

Once you narrow down on the gift item you want to give in the ‘Create Product’ page, proceed to the designer by choosing whatever specific type of that item you want to create within that category. Myntra’s design interface is a joy because of its simplicity. No baffling buttons, no broken layouts. All that you have is a simple step-by-step guided process. You also get more control than the others on position, size, and overall look of how the product will look when printed on. Within the designer, a higher number of fonts is available if you want to type in text; however, I would suggest you to stick to making your design as image and then uploading it.

Myntra design interface

It’s the little things that make you want to order from Myntra. Any other company – whether a brick-and-mortar store or Myntra’s online competitors – will charge you extra if you want to print on both sides of a T-shirt; Myntra charges a flat rate whether you print on one side or both sides. When you are giving your order, for a small fee you can also specify the item to be a gift, to be couriered directly to the person whom you want to send it to. While I don’t think they’ll gift-wrap the item (duh, they’re sending by courier), they allow you to include a personalized message. When it comes to couriering (whether you choose the gift option or not) you have a choice of three different companies – BlueDart, DTDC, and Aramex. (The Aramex option seemingly can’t be selected though, since clicking on it actually selects BlueDart. Some bug in their code.) Courier charges are extremely reasonable. Curiously, they charge less to send via BlueDart than DTDC! :O

Say you don’t want to design items, only want to buy something. Myntra has a thriving designer community who sell their designs on various gift items for you to buy. None of the other competitors have a thriving design community. They have a design community, but most designs are crap. Myntra has cornered attracted some good designers to its platform!

Douglas Adams references on this blog just don't stop, do they?

I’ll share some of my experiences so far with Myntra. I ordered a jigsaw puzzle (to be sent as a gift), part of which you can see assembled in the image above. I was a bit skeptical how my uploaded image would look when printed on a jigsaw, or heck, how even the jigsaw would feel like – but when I got the finished product it was simply beautiful. I’d chosen this to be sent by BlueDart, and it arrived next day after dispatch date. The only thing I didn’t like was that it didn’t come in a box; just in a plastic package with a cardboard back. Otherwise, this turned out to be an awesome gift item.

Customized pens from Myntra

The most recent items I ordered from Myntra are these customized pens that arrived today. Myntra keeps you informed about your order progress via SMS, and these shipped right on time on 16th September – the deadline they had assigned themselves. (They set a deadline, and most times they deliver before the date they set.) I had asked for this to be shipped by BlueDart but I don’t know why, maybe because this was a large order, they sent it by DTDC instead. DTDC is a bit lax about delivery, so despite the items arriving in Delhi on 17th, DTDC brought to my home only late afternoon on 18th. (I’m sure this wouldn’t have happened with BlueDart.) I ordered these pens as gifts to be given to my schools teachers, but because of this delay on DTDC’s part the only option I have is to go and give these on the day I leave for UK. :|

Close-up of customized pens from Myntra

To some extent, this is Myntra’s fault, not just DTDC’s. Even when the invoice on the shipped product mentions shipping company as BlueDart, they goofed up and sent by DTDC instead. Why. The. Fuck? When I’m individually paying shipping for each product, I at least deserve to receive the items by the method I want. The pens themselves look classy, and the custom text on them doesn’t seem as if it will come off easily. The boxes they come in seem a bit flimsy though. Anyway, I’m sure my erstwhile school teaches will be delighted. It’s a unique gift item.

Overall, I would say that what makes Myntra stand apart from the crowd are – SMS tracking, delivery options, gift option, wide variety of items with variety in material, reasonable prices, intuitive design interface. When I need to order any customized items in the future, I will continue to prefer Myntra. I might have to pay slightly more than what its competitors charge, but in return I am assured the product quality is going to be good. I would definitely recommend Myntra as the gift / printing solution provider of choice.

The concept of SMS Gyan is that while some high-end phones have good web browsers, every goddamn phone has SMS capability. What SMS Gyan tries to do is that it tries to be an ‘answer engine’ instead of a ‘search engine’. I would have brought up WolframAlpha if I was a TechCrunch author, but that I am not. SMS Gyan and Wolfram are different thing and they shouldn’t be confused. SMS Gyan works like this – there are a few specified categories in which you can SMS queries to them, and then it sends you answers related to that. The categories currently available are: encyclopedia, dictionary, acronym, live cricket scores, movie/book reviews, weather, alerts, stock market, gadget price, calorie meter. You can find out exact details on how to format your SMS query on their website, so I won’t bother repeating it. If your phone has a web browser, you can route your query via the SMS Gyan WAP site – but that kinda defeats the whole point of SMS Gyan. The service then sends back pint-sized bits of information on whatever topic you ask it about.

I believe any search engine – whatever kind it may be – should be judged on the basis of the results that it gives. I decided to run some random queries in various categories to test SMS Gyan. I present the results here, with my commentary with [ ] braces.

1. Encyclopedia
   1. quiz – A quiz is a form of game or mind sport in which d players attempt 2 answer questions correctly. Quizzes are also brief assessments used in education similar fields 2 measure growth in knowledge abilities andor skills.
   2. Kevin Smith – Kevin Patrick Smith is an American screenwriter director as well as a comic book writer author actor. He is also d co founder with Scott Mosier of View Askew Productions owner of Jay Silent Bobs Secret Stash comic novelty store in Red Bank New Jersey. He also hosts a weekly podcast wi.More [I think the message is truncated and you can get more info by sending back a message]
   3. Oompa Loompas – This article uses bare URLs. pls help improve this article by turning bare URLs into proper citations containing all of d information on d referenced works title date publisher publication author so that d article remains verifiable in d future. [This was a big boo-boo. Obviously, it's capturing details from the Wikipedia page on this topic, but it caught the wrong information.]
2. Dictionary
   1. quiz – competition in d answering of questions, hoax, interrogate. [Note that this is different from the encyclopedia result. Good!]
   2. whatchamacallit – an object of unknown name. [Not a very common word. I'm impressed it got this one.]
   3. bill gates – Oops no results. [Just testing what happens if I gave a non-dictionary word.]
3. Books
   1. White Tiger – Amzn Rating: 4.0/5 , Caught in the rooster coop , From The Darkness into the light , Incredible Journey Through A Changing India , Is White Tiger at best a Paper Tiger? , Debut novel about India a fantastically dark read [Crap results basically.]
4. Movies
   1. Taking of Pelham 123 – Reviewbag says: Sorry, I don’t have reviews for this query–Powered by reviewbag.com
   2. Good Will Hunting – Avg Rating: 4.1/5 , First and foremost, Good Will Hunting is a film riding young, exuberant energies , There’s nothing original in this picture, yet it’s intensely likable just the same , You’d never guess this just-off-center movie was directed by indie hero Gus Van Sant , With its sweet soul and sharp mind, it’s one of the most heartening films of the year , This beautifully realized tale is always engaging and often quite touching , Intimate, heartfelt and wickedly funny, it’s a movie whose impact lingers , Thanks to solid performances by Damon, Williams, and Driver, the story glides by on charm , Fairly bursts with the exuberance and youthful energy that must have attended its creation , It’s the individual moments, not the payoff, that make it so effective , Stuffed–indeed, overstuffed–with heart, soul, audacity, and blarney
5. Acronyms
   1. TAANSTAFL – There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch [Impressed that it got this.]
   2. CORBA – Common Object Request Broker Architecture (Object Management Group); Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Association

I could go on more about results from other categories, but I hope you get the gist of what the service does. Overall, I must say I was impressed with its abstracts on most information snippets that I asked it for. SMS Gyan is not coming up with the answers itself, but merely channeling information from other places online to you. In a situation where you are stuck with no GPRS/EDGE connectivity, or you have a phone which doesn’t have a (good?) web browser, SMS Gyan holds much promise in getting you in the information that you need. They’re also working on some new offshoots such as live event promotion SMS management etc. Yes, there are some glitches in the service – but these are early days yet and I’m sure their team will work on removing these over time.

The concept is extremely simple, yet the fact that a majority of phones in India are not smartphones might mean that SMS Gyan has a product which can actually take off and be successful. Give it a try online (WAP site) or check out the SMS query format.

My rating of The Taking of Pelham 123

The Taking of Pelham 123 has run out of steam in Indian theatres by now, not that it took of much really. But I knew I couldn’t miss this movie since it’s directed by one of my favourite directors Tony Scott (brother of another of my favourite movie directors, Ridley Scott), and stars Denzel Washington (on of my most favourite Hollywood actors) to boot. To jog your memory a bit, this Washington-Scott duo has delivered some smashing films (and some of my personal favourites) like Crimson Tide, Man on Fire, and Deja Vu – among others such as Domino and Enemy of the State. I couldn’t watch this movie earlier when it was released since I was not in Delhi.

Watch the theatrical release trailer for The Taking of Pelham 123

The Taking of Pelham 123 is a remake of an old 1974 movie by the same name, based on a novel by the same name about a hostage situation on a New York subway train. John Travolta plays the role of Ryder, leader of a group of ‘terrorists’ (for the lack of a better word) who take people on a New York subway train hostage. They demand a ransom of $10 million to release the hostages; if they don’t get the money on time they threaten to kill the hostages (and actually do kill some of them). Denzel Washington plays the role of Walter Garber, a disgraced transportation authority official who has been demoted to the position of train dispatcher for taking a few weeks previously, and on whom the responsibility of negotiating with the terrorists falls upon. Yes, there’s an official police negotiator in Lieutenant Camonetti (played by John Turturro), but Ryder refuses to speak to anybody other than Garber. There’s a catch in that fact that the ransom demand is just a small part of a bigger plan on Ryder’s part to make money by investing in put options before the hostage situation happens. The train involved in the situation is subway train named Pelham 123, thus the name.

The movie revolves around how the hostage crisis unfolds over the period of slightly longer than an hour. Heavy bass soundtrack is littered all across the movie. After proving that he’s a son of a bitch in the movie Bolt, John Travolta fulfills the role of a dick superbly, albeit by needing to use the word ‘motherfucker’ way too often and wearing a biker tattoo to prove his Convicted Criminal ™ credentials. Denzel pulls off his usual police officer / hostage negotiator / army guy routine with elan. John Turturro does everyone a big favour by not showing the crack of his ass and standing beneath the testicles of an evil space robot. So where could the movie possibly go wrong?

Pelham 123‘s problem is that the whole plot feels a bit to conveniently arranged for a Hollywood movie. Where else other than a Hollywood movie can certified thugs walking into a subway train with ‘motherfucking machine guns to blow the fucking heads off’ – without any noticing? Where else can a cop car have a car collision, flip over, and have ‘three motherfucking somersaults’ before hitting concrete? The movie is good, but not great. The lead actors all do a satisfactory job, but somehow, they don’t seem to be into the movie with their heart and soul.

Meanwhile, those sleazeball Sony executives ensure that every few minutes of the movie we have to endure shots of a Sony product. Including John Travolta browsing the Web via WiFi on a Sony Vaio laptop in a goddamn subway train. I believe the reason for all goons choosing Sony Vaio laptops must be because they’ve opened a special 1-800-WE-LOOK-THE-OTHER-WAY hotline for orders from gangsters. Then there are Sony cars, Sony guns, Sony cellphones, Sony microphones, Sony helicopters, etc.

This is a great movie by usual Hollywood standards, but I’ve seen terrific stuff from Washington-Scott earlier – and this movie just doesn’t live up to those standards. Still, if you have an opportunity to watch it, don’t miss it.

(Denzel Washington is one of most favourite actors because he only does serious, intense roles and does them really well. The only non-serious role he ever played, I think, was in The Preacher’s Wife and that was pretty much a flop. So far I haven’t come across a Denzel Washington movie which I felt disappointed about after watching it.)

NOT Photoshopped

I thought chemists treated you well and immediately brought medicines to you because of Bapu-ji‘s moving words (on currency notes, you know). It is only now that I realise that I’m Mr Cash.

******

I also went to my ICICI bank branch today, to sort out some foreign exchange transactions. Now the forex desk is located near the sanctum sanctorum of the bank – the bank vault. This is where they have their wealth management division, demat services, NRI banking, and as I mentioned, forex desk. So while I was talking to the forex banking officer, she received a call on her landline phone – one of those wireless Reliance WLL handsets. She took the call on speakerphone and guess who the caller was – a telemarketer from ICICI Bank offering her loan! I had this laughing fit right there, and a pretty noticeable one at that since that section is such a quiet area given that 3-4 senior bank officers sit in this particular section. All of them looking at me stern faces silently tut-tutting. One of them was this authoritative looking mustachioed guy, the type you know instantly when you look at him that his name must be Thyagarajan or something similar. (I wasn’t very much off the mark; his name turned out to be Srikanth.) I assume at least one of them thought of locking me up in the bank vault to shut me up but then…the customer is always right. :D

If I ever get into an argument with an officer at ICICI Bank, I hope they’ll try to terminate my account. In my defence, I’ll say that my conduct was not ‘unparliamentary‘ since I wasn’t in the Parliament in the first place. ;)

******

My rating of Sin City: A+ (Oscar-worthy)
Cast: Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, Bruce Willis, Nick Stahl, Mickey Rourke, Elijah Wood, Devon Aoki
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino
Studio: Dimension Films

Frankly, I haven’t a clue myself why I’m clubbing a section on Sin City in blog post starting off with Johnny Cash and ICICI Bank anecdotes. The only semblance of an excuse that I can mumble out is “I saw the movie today, again, on Star Movies”. Not quite the same, what with all the editing to make it that Indian movie channels are forced to do but still a breathtaking experience nevertheless. There is something about Frank Miller’s movies that brings tears to your eyes for the sheer beauty of it like Sin City does. 300 too, for instance.

The film noir style of the movie grips you from the very beginning, even if you’re one of the squeamish ones who doesn’t like gore. The whole feel of the movie is so unique that you can’t help but watch it again and again; marvel at the amount of work that must have been put into making each and every scene. In a way, Sin City strongly reminds me of A Scanner Darkly. Every frame jumps out as if it’s a page from a graphic (in both senses of the word) novel.

Watch the theatrical release trailer for Sin City

The film’s substance is based more on style than anything else. It doesn’t have mindblowing story or particularly quirky dialogue (like the ones you’d find in Tarantino movies). Still, a star-studded cast and knock-your-socks-off visuals keep you hooked. Bruce Willis does a Die Hard cop routine. Clive Owen – the soul brotha of Jason Statham in that he was too poor to afford anything other than ‘the intense-look class’ at acting school while doing part-time taxi driving – does what he does best in looking intense, broodingly delivering dialogues, and driving ‘a hard top with a decent engine’. Mickey Rourke does a good Hulk impersonation. Then there’s the cute little Devon Aoki who plays Miho the assassin, a role similar to what she played in the critical flop DOA: Dead Or Alive (DOA is certainly one kickass popcorn movie). Jessica Alba is…Jessica Alba (you don’t need a reason to watch a Jessica Alba movie).

Don’t miss this movie the next time it’s on telly, if you haven’t seen it already.

I’ve been using Essilor‘s Crizal lenses for quite some time now. Nah, I wasn’t swayed by images of people giving Colgate smiles after wearing those. What I did find interesting was that my optician said that the lenses are ‘scratch-free, dust-free’ and whole bunch of other ‘frees’ (except for the price-tag, which is nowhere near free). But hey, it works. I was happy with is since it really is what all they said.

New and improved is an oxymoronic term (if it’s ‘new’, it can’t have been ‘improved’; if its ‘improved’ then it can’t be ‘new’) often abused by the likes of Cadbury Bournvita marketing executives. So when today I need to choose new lenses (power increased by .5 dioptres), I was very curious when the optician told me that now they had the new and improved Crizal A2 lenses.

Now since Crizal lenses are already (supposedly) ‘scratch-free, dust-free’, what more am I to expect from my Crizal A2 lenses which I ordered? Probably a laser tracking system that shoots down dust particles mid-air. Or maybe the previous one was merely scratch-free, while this one can be used to cut upon bank vaults. Crizal’s India site gives a few clues.

"You can become Superman simply by buying our lenses!"

If I don’t ge X-ray vision enhancement (I assume that’s what it means) with these new lenses instead of just vision correction, I’m taking them to court. :D

I’ll slip in something sideways here. I went to the British Council library yesterday to return some books. I was browsing through the shelves to find something new to issue, when I came across this:

iPod and iTunes...for *real* Dummies

Steve Jobs will probably have a heart attack if he comes across this book. If you need a fricking manual, scratch that, a fricking for Dummies book to operate an iPod / iTunes then it’s a probably a good indication that either technology is way too complex or that the preson reading the book is from Jajau. Lest you accuse me of Photoshopping the image, check out iPod & iTunes for Dummies at Amazon.com

Speaking of spectacle lenses, it isn’t as if I’ve not tried to switch to contact lenses. Bausch & Lomb allows you to try on their contacts, so I gave it a shot once. A sales assistant is assigned to help you put on the contacts for the first time. Try all I might I just can’t keep my eyes open when the contacts come close to my eye. The sales assistant tried many many times, but each time my eyes started blinking so rapidly that the contacts couldn’t even come close. Half an hour or so later, one sales assistant was trying to hold down my upper eyelid open, a second one was trying to keep my lower eyelid open, while yet another tried to put the contacts on – and failed miserably. I found out that day my eyelid muscles were stronger than hand muscles of grown men and women.

Seems like I won’t be wearing contacts without a whole entourage of people to hold open my eyelids.

PS – One of the artsy-fartsy types found out what a Mission Impossible 3 type start is called; the term I was referring to is ‘in media res‘.

My rating of Between The Assassinations by Aravind Adiga

I’ve read both the novels that Aravind Adiga has published till now, but I thought I’ll first review his second novel since it was what he wrote first. In a George Lucasian universe, this is the ‘right’ way to count what came first. Between The Assassinations was published after Aravind Adiga won the Booker Prize. A longish excerpt of the book was published in a issue of Hindustan Times’ Brunch Sunday supplement (this was before the book was released), and that had me hooked. I went ahead and bought the book as soon as it was available in stores.

Between The Assassinations is collection of short stories on the lives of people based in a small town called Kittur in Karnataka, where Aravind Adiga hails from. The book is titled so because the timeline of the stories is between the period of Indira Gandhi’s assassination to Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. In praise of the book, each and every short story is exquisitely described – you will feel as if you yourself are present there in each situation. (This trait of Aravind Adiga’s writing comes up in his later book The White Tiger too.)

There was a reason this book wasn’t published earlier and it is this – it is goddamn boring. All the short stories are just a description of lives of people in a small town city. Nothing sets it apart as being in Kittur; you can transplant the stories to any other place and they’d still be the same. Nor do you give a damn about the characters; they aspire for nothing and go out of memory after a few pages. This situation is similar to a short story in this very book where an aspiring writer’s stories are turned down because although they are well-written, yet the characters ‘want’ nothing. None of the stories are related to each other in any way. I kept hoping maybe he’d do that a la Crash / Babel, which would make the effort spent reading worthwhile, but no. Stories have no bearing to the two Gandhi assassinations either, except that the author said so. The incidents could be set in any other period without making a difference.

Between The Assassinations feels like a scientifically accurate paper describing the lifetime of snail – written in excruciating detail but utterly pointless. In isolation some of the stories are good but the novel doesn’t work as a cohesive unit; more importantly, it is marketed as a novel and not as a collection of short stories. Only a resident of Kittur would give a damn about it. Also, everything is written from a firang perspective. Dal becomes lentil stew; everything else is similarly translated. Ironic when you consider that Picador released this book only in India (at least, that was the situation when I bought the book).

What happened, I guess is, that Aravind Adiga using this novel as a ‘shooting practice’ before moving on the to ‘Olympic Games’ (his next novel) and chose the easiest topic which came to mind. Once he won a Booker, the greedy bastards publishing companies knew they could pawn this other book off as “…from the Booker-winning writer of The White Tiger“. Released it only in India since they knew nobody other than an Indian would rush out to buy and read this.

But for Aravind Adiga, this was good practice. For what he wrote next was truly praiseworthy…