Juno

Prasad Ajinkya2 Comments


Have any of you watched the movie Kya Kehna – its the one in which Preity Zinta gets pregnant while still being an undergraduate. The entire movie is one sob story followed by next, how the society shuns her, how her college shuns her, how Preity’s character simply buckles under all the pressure … well, I have to confess that I could not stand to watch the entire movie. I had to switch the channel, I do not like to watch people roll about in their self-pity.

That is precisely the reason why I loved Juno. The outline of the plot is the same … Juno, the main character of the movie, finds out that she is pregnant. The first 30 minutes go about in how the news has impacted her and all her friends … her parents, and their reaction about the news. The fresh perspective comes now … her parents accept it naturally and extend her the much needed support. Her friend also helps her out in her own inane way … by finding out a surrogate family to whom Juno can donate the child to. Juno meets the loving family, and decides that her baby would be safe with this family. The baby’s father is Juno’s good friend Bleeker (played by Michael Cera from Superbad) who is completely unaware and not there during the entire pregnancy. The movie has its fair share of twists and turns … where we are forced to think about relationships as the plot unfolds.

Juno is shown as the unpredictable, cool chick who is simply not ready for this, and yet she takes this on and goes through it … without victimizing herself. Without feeling sorry for herself at any moment. And thats why I loved it so much. Definitely a 8.2

IE8: We are not the Devil anymore

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Microsoft in an official release to the public has announced what features (read enhancements) they can expect from the much hyped Internet Explorer 8. This was at the MIX08 conference held at Las Vegas … you can read about the entire details here (beware, it is encoded with the usual marketing spin). Will list down some of the salient features here –

  • Activities – Users can add more extensions to their browser (the way Firefox does already). These activities would enable the users to do more, in short, Microsoft gets a whole new way to bundle their failed products with the new and improved browser
  • WebSlices – Users can subscribe to content from within a page. The moment the content is changed, the users will be notified in their Links Bar.
  • Automatic Crash Recovery – That’s reassuring!! This feature is being marketed actively instead of an implicit indication that it was always there. Anyways, how is this adding value over Firefox or Opera for that matter.
  • Safety Filter (thats Anti-Phishing) – This is to be improved and enhanced, which will block sites known to contain malicious scripts. No comments here. I am actually hoping that this works, people do not realize how important this feature is. And those who do, do not use IE :-)
  • Compliance – IE8 will now be more compliant to the CSS standards. Finally, some sense, these days too many sites are relying more and more on CSS instead of flash or complex javascripts for glitzing up their websites
  • AJAX Navigation – Hmmm … this is a nice touch I must say. In all the AJAX based portals, whenever we click the back button of the browser, the browser goes to the page which was last submitted completely and not the last AJAXed state. Having this might be a blessing for normal users, I know the techies had just learned to live without AJAX navigation
  • Integration – IE8 promises ready made integration with Facebook and eBay, et al. So, thats a plus for all facebook and eBay users … dunno how many of them will actually use it though.

All this and a lot more kids! These have been promised to the doe-eyed of Microsoft … you can almost see the bunch of users in the background using their respective other browsers waiting and watching to see what happens next. I am one of them.

As of now, if you do want to try out the beta, try the IE8 Readiness Toolkit and then proceed for the installation. One word. Apprehension.

Stiki! or Story 2.0

Prasad Ajinkya5 Comments

I was going through IIM Indore’s placement report which was released officially a couple of days back. Eager to know what my alma matter has chalked up, I went through the report. What interested me is not the fat packages and the multi-colored graphs done on the data, but the last part of the report.

The Batch of 2008 also saw two students taking the road less traveled of initiating a business venture of their own, as part time to start with. They have founded www.ourownbook.com – an innovative website that provides visitors a chance to participate in a collaborative book writing project, and get recognized as co-authors of the final book published.

A collaborative book! That interests me … back when we were students, we often used to pass around small scraps of paper where one used to read the current contents of the paper, add some of his own and pass it further. The final outcome used to be hilarious. Many such stories and poems even had been made and fondly saved by us. This idea of Our Own Book seems to stem from such an idea. Immediately, it struck me as a Wiki way for writing your story … a Story 2.0 or a Story + wiki = Stiki!

Some concerns about this mode of writing is that all the authors should be in-sync with each other’s writing style and mentality. If this is unknown, then the story can meander into unknown … it can take a life of it’s own. And thats the exciting part … I remember reading this funny mail about how a psychologist gave couples to write similar stories, and one couple ended up fighting about the content and outcome of the story.

I just added my first entry to the already existing entries … there are simple and effective control systems to take out malicious users from the system. Thats good.

Looks like some people do remember that I is for Implementation after all. Kudos Anubhav and Dhruv … sahi concept!

Dual booting Linux with Windows

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There would be probably zillion other pages on the blue nothing with similar instructions. Yes. But nothing beats doing these things yourselves … blundering through some and still coming out on tops and saying … whew!! I did it!! (ofcourse a little help from Google doesnt go unappreciated)

A lot of users go about the right way installing a dual boot system.

  1. Take backup of your existing data
  2. They will plan and create partitions
  3. They will first install Windows (WinXP in my case) on one drive
  4. They will then install Linux (Ubuntu here)
  5. Then relax, and configure both the OSes as per their desires

This is the simpler version of doing it. Its the real man’s way … a no-nonsense approach to getting things done.

And now there is my way. I have been using this laptop for about 8 months now … running it on Ubuntu. So after roughly about 8 months, I have a 5Gb home folder, some customized applications, some handy scripts, an up-to-date system … and with what internet speeds are in India, I do not wish to re-update my system again. So I decided, that I will try to rescue the Linux after losing my master boot record (MBR). So this is what I did –

  1. Installed WinXP on my 8GB FAT32 partition
  2. Put in an Ubuntu LiveCD and booted through it to Gutsy Gibbon
  3. Started grub and wrote that on the MBR. Now the windows was gone … sigh!
    1. For more detailed instructions, please visit Recovering Ubuntu after installing Windows
  4. Started my actual Linux (whew!) and edited the grub configuration file
  5. Made a manual entry for windows in this and booted
    1. This is not easy as it sounds
    2. You need to know on which partition of your hard drive was windows installed (for me it was /dev/hda4) … the grub entry which corresponds to this is (hd0,3) … keep that in mind (minus 1)
  6. This was the exact entry

title Windoze XP
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
makeactive
chainloader +1

It works!

Why did I install Windows again? … to play games :-)

Vanity Brands

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We were having a team lunch … the four of us, Manish, Mayank, Ranjith and myself. One of the rare occasions these days when all four had a free time slot in the middle of the day. So, sitting at Eat Street, Hyderabad near the Hussain sagar lake, having fast foods like the rest of urban India. As I reached for the Subway Cookie that I had bought, Manish remarked that I could have bought an entire packet of biscuits at 60% of that cookie’s price.

While the others were laughing, I informed him that the utilities in both the cases are different. In case of Hide&Seek, the utility is value-for-hunger, in case of a Subway Cookie, its more or less Vanity (well actually its not vanity, but I just like them). But then we got into a discussion where other well known brands are often flaunted for vanity. There are so many of them … Ferrari, Mercedes, Maybach, Apple, Tommy Hilfiger, Rolls Royce … effectively all brands that could be used as a status symbol.