They have a saying – The acorn does not fall far from the oak … but what about the acorn, it also wants to grow big and strong like the oak … does it get that chance?
Stardust
With an 8.0 rating, it was a sure shot plan for this evening. And with such a star studded star cast like De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes, Pete O’Toole … I kind of expected a lot out of this movie and frankly speaking I was kind of let down.I dont know, maybe its just me … but I feel it could do a bit more. Claire Danes and Pfieffer could have put in a little bit more … but thats the way I feel.
Had I gone to the movie without any preconceived notions, then I would have enjoyed it a lot more. Well … De Niro’s role is enough for the paisa vasool factor. In fact, now that I think back, the casting is the one factor which has pulled the movie into the higher ratings. Its a fantasy movie that takes place in a magical land of Stormhold, which just so happens to share a “wall” with England. Beyond the wall in Stormhold, lies a whole different world of magic, wizardry and fantasy.
Of lightning bolts that can be sold, of flying pirate ships, of unicorns and of course of witches. Enter Pfeiffer, who plays the evil sorceress poised to take Claire Dane’s heart for her eternal youth. Original plot … indeed.
Theres a hopeless romantic within all of us. Its there within me, I endear it. This movie appeals to that silly person who likes the entire love-conquers-all concept. Thats why it is liked by people of all ages.
Bandwidth
The fastest I have surfed is when I was alone on the campus (during a brief stay in summers) at Planet-I. It was a glorious 2mbps speed. And it rocked! All you want at a click of a button. Even when the campus was in full swing, with 300 odd participants surfing the internet, the net was still at a decent pace. This is India we are talking, where people still pay a big premium for connectivity.
Last week, one of my room-mate informs me that in UK, they are working on this new technology thats going to shoot the transfer rates beyond imagination. Just imagine, what would you do with transfer rates of 100mbps!! All data you want is completely accessible and available to you within seconds. An entire movie within seconds … infact, the individual user’s need for a personal storage drive just might go down. This combined with the fact that many websites are now showing a conceptual web-OS … like Desktop2 or Fanbox. Also, many SMEs are now opting for the Software As a Service (SaaS) model, where in the firm does not have to invest in the licensing cost of any software, but would rather pay a periodical amount for that service.
You could in fact, cut costs by having an hosted ERP, Google Docs, a web OS and dumb terminals hooked up to a hosted storage server all on the internet. Your capital expenditures go down, but the variable expenditures might go up. If the opportunity cost of your capex beats your opex, then you definitely have a winner here.
Think about an individual user, all media content available … on a pay per usage basis of course. For gamers, there is the WWW as your LAN … talk about one huge LAN party.
It does change your perspective on connectivity and storage doesn’t it?
Microblogging
No, its not blogging at 10-6 power. Its a new form of blogging which allows users to text in brief updates on their day to day activities. The post need not be pretty descriptive, in fact generally it should be a one-liner.
Services like Twitter are very popular these days.
Is it just another form of exhibitionism or another way of meeting people. Well, it could be anything, I am definitely a twit!!
Interviews
Have you ever been in an interview thinking “What am I doing here?” … its probably a good thing if you have not been in such a scenario. I have been unfortunate enough to be in such a situation while being on both sides of the table viz., interviewee and interviewer. Being the interviewer is much more fun and a lot more relaxing.
Some of the things to watch out for if you ever are stuck in such a situation –
- Ask yourself this – Are you that desperate that you want to be in such a situation to filter out those maybes from the definitely nots? If yes, then please fire away
- Look at the time, it is a precious commodity. If the person you are interviewing is tryign to mislead the interview, remember you decide when the interview stops, do not feel afraid of being too rude
- Some candidates can really be upto-no-good, drop them at the first sight. Do not entertain such people further … its an injustice to them if they think that they are worthy of showing interest. I once ended up wasting a good hour trying to find out why did the candidate apply for what he did … answer was simple … employment
- Have your HR/Recruitment guys screen them at the start itself, this eliminates all the definitely nots from the list
- If that person has applied for a role in your department, ask a simple question to yourself … would you want to see this face daily? There is a lot more to face value than just the face
Will post more my experiences as soon as I manage to reconcile those resumes.
Movie rentals
Normally I am not into this, I prefer to watch my movies on an IMAX screen, or off a .torrent. In fact, there is a VCD guy just below my flat that rents out good titles at a very affordable price. I generally do not rent out movies.
A couple of weeks back, I came across a site – 70mm. Its a portal where you can login and rent out movies, the ones which are on the catalogue. If its available, then they will contact you and deliver the DVD/VCD at your doorstep … Cash-On-Delivery (COD). How awesome is that!! I dont even have to get off my chair :-)
Since there is a dearth of marathi movies in Hyderabad, I did try ordering a DVD of a recent marathi movie – Savalee … lets see how this pans out. Will report on this further.
Power of Blogging
Just about a year back, we had a pretty shitty (pardon my french) corporate website. Since my hands were full with setting up FooStor, I did not look at anything else. And all was wonderful, some time after that, a blogger, wrote a post on his blog about how sad the website looked.