The legend of Zelda

I have been pretty involved one of the video games from The legend of Zelda series, namely The Ocarina of Time. An adventurous game, I have already spent 3 weeks on it and I have not yet reached half stage.

This game was made for the Nintendo 64 console in 1995. Even though made almost a decade ago, it has decent graphics and the sound effects and music are just fantastic. It still remains one of the most popular games for N64 console.
Thanks to certain good N64 emulators and walkthroughs (and less work load in office ;-), I have been able to enjoy it on my pc.

This added with the fact that there have not been any good movie releases since lakshya, there is really not much stuff to blog.

Main aisa kyun hoon

Finally saw Lakshya. Based on the Kargil war, I found the movie pretty decent to watch. For once, I didn't find performance by any actor exceptionally good or bad. Though I did feel that while amitabh bachchan looked good without his frenchie, he looked a bit old for the part of commanding officer.

There are two things that I liked about the movie. Firstly, the photography. There were some great scenes of the himalayas and the leh route. The scenery is beautiful. Then there is an exceptional sequence of rock climbing in the himalayas.
Second is the song Main aisa kyun hoon. While I have never been the biggest fan of the actor Hritik, I think he is one of the best dancers the industry has ever produced. The song and his dance on it has a freshness attached with it. And Hritik has not done badly with acting either.

Two points on the character of Preity Zinta. One .. Hritik runs away from military training. She says that she doesn't want to meet him again. Two .. she is engaged to another guy. She wants to go to Kargil but this guy doesn't want her to go. Guess what, she returns her engagement ring immediately and goes to Kargil. Is this what they call love?

The Unforgiven

I am not much into rock and Metallica in general. I just listen to two compositions by Metallica, namely "Nothing Else Matters" and "The Unforgiven".
Fews lines from "The Unforgiven"

they dedicate their lives
to running all of his
he tries to please them all
this bitter man he is

throughout his life the same
he's battled constantly
this fight he cannot win

a tired man they see no longer cares
the old man then prepares
to die regretfully
that old man here is me

I have not yet been able to find a fault in the old man.

I want you to be ...

Just remember a TV ad. A baby is born, his mom says I want you to be born.
He grows up,I want you to study.
grows up more, I want you to go to college, I want you to work, We want you to get married beta, I want us to have a baby, I want I want I want ...

The guy finally says "I just want to be ....... me"

When would I be me?

Gmail

Google started Gmail on 1st April, 2004 with a big bang but a handful of test users. Now after two and half months, they have started rapidly increasing their userbase through invitations. Being a gmail member since quite some time now, I am getting gmail invites almost everyday since past few days. This makes me feel that the final release of Gmail is not very far away now.
The whole concept of 1 GB mailboxes triggered a revolution. One one hand, sites like AventureMail and SpyMac tried to take the initial advantage by providing the same or higher disk space before gmail goes public and thus increase their userbase.
On the other hand, existing portals like Yahoo and Rediff have also increased their disk quotas.
However, my personal opinion is that Google will still emerge as the leader with Yahoo as closest competitor. The primary reason here is because google's technology is far more superior than others. They have developed something called Google OS, great technology for backup and failure recovery. On top of it, They provide a great UI. Gullu has already written a review from a user's perspective.
Yahoo will remain because of its spam filter(which is the best I have seen so far), messenger program and other portals like photos, briefcase, yahoogroups etc. But other sites don't have much to offer. Reminds me of Netscape and IE war.

P.S. Ping me in case anyone needs a Gmail account :-)

A weekend in Noida

I have been living in Noida for like 2 months now. But it still remains a No-idea-what-to-do place for me during weekends. One reason for this is that I spend 3 weekends out of 4 in jaipur, my hometown.
This weekend was different. Went out on all three evenings, watched Dev, met Shikhar and Vipul and found out that Vipul also stays in Noida.
Dev deals with 2 cops, 2 friends, both have suffered the same trauma, but while one has gone against extremism, other has gone against a community. Sadly, most people I have seen are like Tej, who target a community for all problems rather than extremism.
Amitabh Bachchan is brilliant as Dev. As a rational minded cop supplemented with karma, he preaches as well as works towards it. Dialogue delivery is fantastic, and though the subject of movie is pretty heavy, it rarely goes heavy on the viewer.
Om puri also lives upto his reputation as Tej. Fardeen is okay and Kareena is not worth a mention.
There are 2 dialogues of Dev worth mentioning:
There have been communal riots and lots of people have died due to neglect of police. Dev is angry, Tej tries to console by saying that this is just collatoral damage.
Dev Says "hum aur tum kaun hote hai yeh decide karne waale ki kisko jeene ka haq hai aur kisko nahi"
Another place where Dev has put a politician behind bars and CM asks to release him, Dev refuses. On this, Tej later tries to explain Dev that he shud know how to talk to these guys and accept whatever they say or else woh bach nahi payega
On this, Dev replies "Tum bach jaoge Tej"
It takes an Amitabh to deliver such dialogues.

Fanaah

means complete destruction.
My profession has caused me to put many restrictions on myself. No staying awake late on weekdays. No movies, come back home early.
Last evening was fanaah of all rules and routine. Anuj and me went out for dinner and then saw the late night show of Yuva. It has a song which preaches:
hone do dil ko fanaah ... hone do dard ko dawa ... udhne do har ek woh tamanna
Unlike most critics, I liked the movie though I felt it was a bit too long.
After finally having both Hum Tum and Yuva in my kitty, I can now claim my movie lover tag back :-) which got lost after leaving bangalore.
I am feeling pretty sleepy since morning but who cares ... Hone Do Fanaah