Safari 4 – Some Initial Observations

Apple released the public beta of its Safari 4 browser (which was made available for Windows users two yrs ago) yesterday. I’ve been using Safari 3 ever since it released but the usage is limited to WordPress (which, after its recent upgrade, looks much better on Safari than on Firefox), Apple Trailers, Flickr and few other infrequently-visited sites.

Safari 4 boasts of ~150 features amongst which there quite a few new ones…that is to say, new to Safari! Firefox, Chrome and Opera users will find these ‘new features’ quite ubiquitous. As is my habit, I’ll list out a few ‘sore points’ that make the Safari 4 experience a bit dampening (IMHO, of course):

GMail outage provokes mass frenzy!

It was just another Tuesday evening…with EoD deadlines looming large and the yearn to get back to home steadily growing bigger, I happened to glance at the TwitterFox icon on the statusbar and there were about 51 unread tweets. Now that might be not a big number for some heavily networked indviduals…but for someone with as small a ‘following’ list as mine, it sure was an ‘eyebrow-raiser’. A quick glance showed that almost all tweets were related to one thing – “GMail Down”

Movie Review: Kaala Bandar…Err…No, Delhi 6!

I Hate You. I Hate Him. I Hate Her. I Hate That Guy. I Hate The Neighbours. I Hate the People across the street. I Hate…

Oops! I let out the Kaala Bandar and look what it did! One lesson from coming back from the screening of Delhi 6 would be to learn to leash the inherent kaala bandar or the monkey of hatred that is said to be deep-rooted within each one of us. But I shouldn’t be starting at that point; let me shackle-in the monkey and I’ll brb with my thoughts about the movie…

Delhi 6 is the third movie from Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (who kinda started off on the wrong foot with Aks but redeemed himself and sorta liberated the free-spirited Indian audience with Rang De Basanti) which tells the tale of happenings in the cultural milieu of the Chandni Chowk area of Delhi having the post code 6, hence the title. ABCD Roshan (Abhishek Bachchan) comes to Delhi with his ailing grandmother (Waheeda Rehman) who wants to spend the rest of her life in her Delhi home. Her Son and Daughter-in-law are left back in US but the neighbours and locality people are more than just that, they’re ‘family’ too and welcome her back with open arms and warm hearts. Roshan initially struggles to ‘fit’ into this socially and culturally interwoven environment but warms up to the happenings around him in due course of time. Things start to go awry, partly as a result of Roshan’s open-mindedness and partly due to a certain so-called alien ‘creature’ labelled monkey-man. How it ends, I’ll leave it to the reader’s imagination (which, in hindsight, Rakeysh also should have done!)

Om Malik @ WordCamp India

It’s official now. The ‘suprise guest from US’ at this year’s WordCamp India is none other than Om Malik, of GigaOm. He’ll be joining Matt, Amit Agarwal and others at the two day event for Bloggers at Noida.

I’m modest enough but I’d like to think that I make a good guess . I guessed as much when I was reading the event announcement on DelhiBloggersBloc about a ‘suprise guest’ gracing the occasion. In fact, I’ve said so here.

Alas, I’m not attending the event

Windows Live Writer 2009; trying out few plug-ins

Long time since I’ve updated few of the s/w’s on moi laptop. I usually update the NIS and run Windows Update once in a while and that’s it! So I went on an updating spree today and downloaded & installed newer versions of some of the stuff. That includes the software from where I’m posting this! I Installed the Windows Live Writer 2009 today and going out on a whim, installed few of the plug-ins also. This post is just to tryout those and see how far usable they’re…

Movie Review: Billu

Erstwhile called Billu Barber, the latest Irrfan Khan – Lara Dutta – Shah Rukh Khan starrer is now called just Billu. Apparently some saloon and barber association requested SRK to remove the suffix since it was offending to their caste! And I learnt this after I’d booked the movie ticket . Priyadarshan’s movies are a good watch, not all of them but most of them are anyway. Most often than not, he packs his movie with some stalwarts and some bits n pieces actors and weaves a believable and enjoyable story around them in ordinary situations.

 

Billu is one such movie which revolves around an ordinary barber Billu Vilas Pardesi (Irrfan Khan), his doting wife Bindiya (Lara Dutta), his school-going kids and his struggle to make ends meet while running an empty saloon in a tiny village. Into this mundane existence breezes in the Super Star Sahir Khan (SRK) and causes an unwanted turmoil. People around Billu believe him to be a friend of the star and start bestowing goodies upon him in lieu of some favours. Little they do realize that Billu dreads even the thought of him meeting his so-called-friend. Is the star really Billu’s friend or was it all a blatant lie told with an ulterior motive? I’d rather not give the story away but I’ll tell you that I sat through it all just to know that very reason…

WordCamp India

Good news for Indian Bloggers who blog with WordPress: WordCamp is coming to India! For those who don’t know, Wordcamp is a getting-together of WordPress users and the creators in an informal yet informative way. Discussions range from everything WordPress, the technical nitty-gritties of it, ways to extend the blogging experience by means of plugins to various means of popularizing one’s blog as well as making it a strong and effective communicative medium. WordPress users across the World arrange these camps in association with Automattic, the company behind WordPress and the first-even Indian Wordcamp is being organized by the Delhi Bloggers’ Bloc at Noida on the 21st and 22nd of February 2009. The venue will be principal sponsor Adobe’s office campus in Noida and the event will be a pay-to-attend one.

 

Gracing the hallowed occasion will be Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress & Automattic and joining him will be an as-yet-unnamed ‘special guest’, a blogger from the US (why do I think it might be Om Malik?). The event will also have other speakers including DI’s Amit Agarwal (Labnol) and leading IP and Copyright Advocate Pavan Duggal. You can check out the full agenda over here.

Movie Review: Dev.D

The D in the title may as well stand for decadent (decadence wouldn’t go with Dev). Coz that is what the protagonist ends up as and that is what that drives the whole movie. Was it Emosanal Atyachar? No! More like Emosanal Hahakaar! Yes its the same old ghisa pita triangle of Love, Lust and Ego (you thought I’d say Devdas, Paro and Chandramukhi didn’t you?) but it is so refreshingly and so brashly presented before you that one can’t help feeling applausive of it.

 

The first few scenes itself set the tone for title character Dev’s (Abhay Deol) truant and brash nature as first as a kid he calls his parents by their names and then later on in London so uncoquettishly asks for a nude pic of Paro. His sweetheart Paro (Mahie Gill) is all that a typical Bollywood heroine isn’t – brash (I’m gonna use that word a lot, I fear!), in-your-face and craves for Dev and his love as much as we crave for good cinema! Alas, jealousy begets egoistical clashes between them and  causes them to drift apart and whilst Paro chooses matrimony, Dev slips into a dungeon of depression, drugs, daru and decadence (the 5D world, I call it!). Enter Chanda (Kalki Koechlin), a sleazy-MMS-scarred Indo-Canadian kudi who’s driven into being an escort by night while pursuing college by day. As in the original, Chunnilal (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) is the guy who brings Dev to Chanda but here, he’s also her pimp! Unable to forget Paro and starting to like Chanda, Dev slips deeper and deeper into the dungeon and loses everything…almost everything. Some steamed momos are culpable of bringing about a sorta happy ending.