(New?) WordPress Smileys!

Is it just me or have WordPress Smileys have “upgraded” over the past few days?

I noticed some brightened up smileys as I was browising through the My Comments section…and at the back-of-the-mind thought something was wrong! Took me a sec to realize what that was

In any case, seriou bloggers don’t tend to use those smileys. And again there are some ppl. who can’t seem to get enough of them…so much so that almost every sentence is laden with those yellow creatures! Thankfully, I’m not one of them

Oh and by the way, I’ve returned from my half-yearly vacation. Unlike in the past, this time it was just a week . More on what I’ve been upto in a later post

P.S: The new-er smiley’s bad! I prefer the older one!

Movie Review: Terminator Salvation

How do you (almost) ruin a movie franchise whose need of the hour was to break away from the hangover of the Star Actor who has been its face for the past three installments?

You include a bad CGI version of the actor in one of the fight sequences! That’s what McG has resorted to, likely as an homage, probably as an after-thought. In case you’re wondering about which movie I’m talking about, its Terminator Salvation.

The fourth installment in the Terminator series takes us into the future – 2018 – when Skynet has become all-prevalent and the human resistance forces have had to stay hidden in small pockets across the world as the bots and machines take over the planet.

John Connor (Christian Bale) is waging two battles – one with the machines and one with his fellow commanders, who choose to ignore him as the ‘leader’ of the resistance and pay no heed to aid him in looking out for someone. Into this mileu comes in Marcus (Sam Worthington), a survivor, a man on a mission…one that he himself isn’t much too sure about. Is he a friend? Is he a Foe? Only time will tell.

The resistance have managed to lay their hands on a potential weapon that will destroy skynet and its upto John Connor to stop the attack until he gets out the human prisoners out safe….and take the help of the mystery-man Marcus. Trust and belief have to be placed in the very hands that might bode the doom for humanity…..and that is a difficult choice that John Connor must make. To ensure the survival of the human race. To ensure the struggle against skynet isn’t ended tamely. To ensure that the sacrifices and actions of Sarah Connor aren’t wasted. To attain…Salvation!

Unconnected II

Its wierd how when someone’s building something, that can play a major part in breaking something totally unrelated (Heck! Come to think of it, that’ sounds a lot like Software Engineering…build some, break something else )

Anyways, the building I was referring to was the construction work going on at the head of the street where I reside. In their eagerness to erect pillars, the construction workers had inhumanely slashed away all the non-electricity wires snaking through their airspace and poof! went my Internet and Cable connection…

I was hoping (which later gave way to yelling at the repairmen) that it would be fixed by the weekend, but alas, the repairmen turned out to be more moronic than the workers. They simply “patched up” the wires and left them dangling just above the airspace of the second pillar! The result, it was gone again the next day! Of course, the fact that the connexions were all-too-similar to this, didn’t help either.

What I’ve been upto…

Google Squared – Searches in Grids

Seems Google is taking the fight to Bing! Or maybe not! Given that this was announced more than a month ago…

Google’s new new search ‘tool’ (or call it toy) – Google Squared went live in the Google Labs yesterday and at first sight, seems a nifty way to categorize information. To quote their own help pages:

Google Squared is a search tool that helps you quickly build a collection of facts from the Web for any topic you specify.

• Facts about your topic are organized as a table of items and attributes.
• Customize these Squares to see just the items and attributes you’re interested in.
• See the websites that served as sources for the information in your Square.
• Save and share Squares with others.

So what they do is restructure the search results into neat little grids or squares, each with its own category & label. And the user can add/remove the necessary rows and columns and when they do so, Google automatically gets that information (if available) and populates the squares. One can add as many items or columns in one’s search and what’s more, can also save them for future reference. But of course, the information should be available on the web for Google to retrieve in the first place.

To illustrate that, I’ve saved myself a neat square for Hyderabad. Go to Google Squared and type in Hyderabad. The areas by popularity (or search results) will be listed out as items, with few attributes as columns. I chose to add items that included areas/places of my interest and also changed the columns to show the attributes that I needed and voila! Again, information I desired, but was not available on the www (like population or nearest chemist, for example) will not show up in the grids. Check out the image after the jump…

Movie Review: Angels & Demons

After what seems like ages (but was 2 weeks exactly) the much-awaited Angels & Demons hits the screens in India; only single screens though, no multiplexes…though how Prasadz counts as a single-screen-theatre beats me! Anyways, the movie’s kinda worth the wait and is a thrill-a-minute roller coaster ride. Well, not exactly thrill-a-minute since there are few scenes filled with long-drawn speeches and explanations. of the happenings in the past, goings-on of the present and expected events in the near-future.

Simply put, the Vatican has just lost its Pope to death and amidst the Conclave to choose the successor, it emerges that an old enemy – The Illuminati – has resurfaced and wants revenge. Death awaits the four preferiti or the preferred cardinals, each of them at four churches symbolized by the four basal elements – Earth, Air, Fire & Water. Added to that, there’s an anti-matter-bomb waiting to explode at the end of it all. Much against its wishes, the Church approaches Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) to help solve the mystery, and to balance the lead cast on the sexual scale, there’s Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zuerer), the scientist overlooking the LHC Project from where the Anti Matter was stolen from. Together they dig into the Vatican Archives, unearth seemingly invisible clues, trace the subtly hidden paths across Rome and attempt to save the four kidnapped cardinals and also save the area from being wiped off by an “explosion equivalent to 5 Megatons of ‘something’ ”

…and its Barcelona!

FC Barcelona are the winners of the 2009 UEFA Champions League.

They beat holders Manchester United 2-0 to win their third Champions League trophy and cap a memorable year in which they won the La Liga as well as the Copa del Rey. The two goals were scored by Samuel Eto’o (10th minute) and Lionel Messi (70th minute) but the game was won from the midfield – Xavi and Andres Iniesta being huge! United’s midfield was less effective and they simply couldn’t string together a decent attack.

Both teams have now won three trophies this season – World Club Championship, Carling Cup and Premier League for Manchester United and La Liga, Copa del Rey and now, the Champions League. The last one is the biggest of them all and Man U will have to wait another year to lay their hands on that…

Phew! That brings to an end a humdinger of a soccer season (well, there’s the FA Cup Final yet but that’s going to Chelsea anyway!)…bring on the French Open, World T20, Wimbledon and The Ashes!

UCL Final’s just a few moments away…

It just doesn’t get any bigger than this! Two of Europe’s greatest football clubs take centrestage in one of Europe’s greatest city of Rome in what is being labelled as the greatest football match! Okay…enough of greatness…

But the winner is destined for Greatness, that’s for sure. Manchester United can win their second successive UCL trophy and their fourth overall – earning them the right to retain it. Barcelona are looking for their third UCL trophy and are aiming to become the first Spanish team to complete the treble of the La Liga, Copa del Rey and Champions Cup.

I’m looking forward to what promises to be an exciting football match. I want Manchester United to win but one can never discount Barcelona! Bring.It.On!

My Prediction: 2-1 to Barcelona