Quarter Century!!

A forward from my friend on my 25th b'day. I was happy to know that there is nowhere to go but up ;)

A moment to cherish!! (Part 2)

This is a follow up to my blog entry in February. India has finally topped the ODI ICC rankings for the first time since they were started in 2002.

Let's hope that India wins the next 2 games in Sri Lanka to retain the top spot.

Wildlife Safari Tour in Winston, OR

IMAX and 3D

I had the pleasure of watching the midnight premiere of Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince. The 3D version of the movie was released in IMAX after 2 weeks (due to some contract between IMAX and Transformers). I watched this 3D version last Friday. Only the first 20 minutes was in 3D. However, I realized the huge difference in experience between 3D and 2D movies. I have watched a lot of 3D movies this year (I can count at least 5), but this is the first time I was able to compare it to the 2D version. I was able to observe even the small details that I missed when watching the 2D version. Even after the first 20 minutes, watching the movie on the IMAX screen just made a huge difference.

Two weeks ago, I experienced a demo of a 3D video without wearing those 3D glasses!! It was just fantastic!!! I'm waiting for the day when all movies will be in 3D, all theaters will be in the IMAX format and we would be able to experience 3D without any special glasses. This day is not too far in the future. Our next generation will be laughing at the fact that we had to wear a stupid glass just to watch a 3D movie!

Wimbledon '09

The third grand slam of the year began today @ London. I would like one of these 3 lovely ladies to lift the trophy this time ;)

I know it is a bit of a stretch, but still........ Go Cirstea!! Go Sharapova!! Go Ivanovic!! and yeah, go Sania too :D (she survived the first round!)

Facebook usernames

Facebook announced on its blog today that it would introduce Usernames @ midnight on Saturday. The link to my facebook profile currently is http://www.facebook.com/people/Madhan-Sivakumar/715745522 The claimed reason for the introduction of these Usernames is to remove these numbers from your URL (makes my profile http://www.facebook.com/madhans for example) so that is is easier to type, share or search. Some people claim that this will make you more googleable. Huh....?? Googling for your full name already returns your facebook profile page! So, why are they introducing this now? One major reason 'might' be their recently acquired "twitter envy". All communications on Twitter are based on user names. For eg. to reply to a person you just have to tweet "@ message". My twitter page is at http://twitter.com/madhans. We should expect more changes from Facebook centered around these user names as they try to fight Twitter's rising popularity. So, grab those good user names while they last ;)

Twikini

I have been experimenting with some twitter apps for my Windows Mobile and came across twikini around a month ago. Today, twikini v1.0 was released. You can download it from here. I love the interface (especially the scrolling part as I hate scrolling on some Windows Mobile apps (designed for stylus use??)). You can configure the refresh interval, update your location automatically using GPS, upload pics to twitpic and tweet the songs you are listening to. Give it a try and follow me on twitter (madhans).

Summer Blockbusters are here!!

It's the beginning of Summer 2009... beginning of a good season of Hollywood blockbusters.. last Summer was pretty good starting with The Dark Knight. I have a big list of movies that I want to watch in the theater this summer.

• X-Men Origins Wolverine - 5/1 (Done!)
• Star Trek - 5/8 (Done!)
• Angels and Demons - 5/15 (Done!)
• Terminator Salvation (Christian Bale) - 5/22 (Done!)
• Up (Pixar) - 5/29 (Done!)
• Transformer 2 - 6/24 (Done!)
• Public Enemies (Christian Bale & Johny Depp) - 7/1
• Harry Potter 6 - 7/17
• Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarentino's) - 8/21

This is more like a personal note and some recommendations for you guys.. I'll keep updating this blog... Have a great summer!!

Rihanna's unfaithful in tamil - courtesy Vijay Antony

I've been listening to Suryan FM for the past few days - thanks to Loka. I listened to this tamil song (2nd video) being played on the radio. First, I thought it was some ad/promo. Then I realized that it was a song from a movie (Kaadhalil Vizhundhen). Deva's tradition still lives on in the tamil music world.... Remove around 60 sec from the beginning of the first video and you get the second video...

Unfaithful has always been one of my favorite songs, but to listen to this version just makes me puke. When will we get another Ilayaraja or Rahman again? Is anyone at least trying to be original?

MediaCenter, Xbox and my work

It's been a long time since my last post. It's just that I have become really really lazy.. Too lazy to even blog, chat with friends or do anything useful :P As usual, I'm just sitting on my couch and watching movie after movie, series after series, game after game......

One of my friends asked me to blog about my work. I thought I would start with that, without getting technical ;-) It's close to one year since I started work. The past year has been a lot of fun. Now, that we are 'almost' done with Windows 7, we can relax a bit before we start planning again. I spent most of my time working on the Windows Media Center - Extender streaming scenario. For people who are not familiar with that (most people outside U.S are not), go here. My idea of home entertainment has changed completely after I was introduced to Media Center and Xbox (I have been using my Xbox more as my home media hub than as a gaming console). This is the setup I have at home

These are some of the perks of working with this team, I get lot of cool stuff at home. I've never even imagined that I could enjoy HiDef TV wirelessly, streamed from my living room to my bedroom. It is fun even at work. I was working on a bug for close to one month. We were using a Seinfeld HD episode as our test stream. I ended up watching that episode a zillion times before I fixed the bug. I can tell you each and every dialog in the episode even when I'm sleeping ;) Now, they've given me a TV. I can watch TV 24x7 (or more precisely 8x5 a week!).

People in the U.S, please give the Media Center a try. You can use your xbox360 as a media center extender, stream live and recorded TV from your PC to the 360, pause, rewind or record live TV, stream videos from the internet and so on...... so, this is short summary of my work so far - fine tune the networking in the home media scenario. Hope you all enjoy Windows 7... I'm planning to write some more as we get closer to the release... Until then, enjoy the beta and RC versions ;)

CRASH!!!

Feb 19th '09 :(

Feb 24th '09 :)

Stalking??

I have picked up this habit of searching for people on the internet to know more about them. I don't mean celebrities/famous people, just normal people I meet in person. After I interviewed with Microsoft, I tried to find out more about people who interviewed me. I was surprised when I found out that one of them had written several books about Windows Sockets Programming / Windows Networking. Then, as I started to meet more people at work, I started searching to find if they have really acheived something :P Gradually, I fell into the habit of searching about someone right after I meet them for the first time. Recently, I was able to find out a lot of info about a person within 5 min after I met her - school, interests, achievements, facebook/orkut/linkedin profile, few photographs, videos.....

Then I started wondering... Is it rude to do this? Am I intruding in their privacy? Do they want me to find all these information just because they have posted it online? Have I become a stalker?? Wait, aren't stalkers obsessed about someone/something and follows them continuously? I decided to search for "stalker" on wikipedia. Looks like there is no clear definition for "stalking". Here is what wiki says -

Stalking is a controversial pejorative term applied to the behaviour of individuals (and perhaps to bodies of persons) towards others which has no universally accepted definition. The difficulties associated with precisely defining this term (or defining it at all) are well documented. [4] It seems to have been first applied to the harassment (in a general sense) of celebrities by strangers who were described as being obsessed. This usage of the word appears to have been coined by the tabloid press in the United States[1] and has been adopted as a term of art in psychology and, in some jurisdictions, as the name of a criminal offence.

It has been applied to the obsessive following, observing, or contacting of another person, or the obsessive attempt to engage in any of these activities. This includes following the person to certain places, to see where they live or what the person does on a daily basis, it also includes seeking and obtaining the person's personal information in order to contact him or her; e.g. looking for his or her details on computers, electoral rolls, personal files and other material containing the person's private information without his or her consent.

Who cares if this is stalking or not. It helps me find out more about a person and I am happy to take advantage of the Big Bad Web!! If you don't want others to find out something, think twice before uploading anything. Now, I understand why a lot of bloggers remain anonymous and sites like this exist to determine if the blogger is male/female (I tried 5 of my friend's blog on this site and it gave me a result that all 5 were written by females - 0% accuracy)!!

P.S: The picture in this blogpost is nothing more than a picture!

Synchronize your life......

I've been experimenting with Live mesh for some time now. It is a very useful and extremely powerful tool to synchronize files between my PC and my laptop. Now that I've got a Windows Mobile I installed the live mesh app on my mobile. Now I can sync the pictures that I take on my mobile with my laptop and work PC instantly. Just click and its there on my laptop and my PC. Works like magic!!!

A moment to cherish!!

India has finally climbed above Australia in the ICC ODI rankings. It is now placed second behind South Africa. Kudos to Dhoni and his men!! This is after India's success in Sri Lanka (India leads the 5 match series 4-0) and New Zeland's good show in Australia (NZ leads the 5 match series 2-0). Australia is not in the top 2 spots after like forever.....

Time to dislodge the Aussies in the Test rankings too!!

Padma Shri

I really don't know why they keep giving out these awards like candies. Just take a look at this page. This year's notable winners:

• Akshay Kumar: This year, he gave us some of the best movies of all time - Singh is Kinng, Jumbo and Chandni Chowk to China. Yeah! Doesn't he deserve the award for acting in all these movies and raising the standards of Indian movie industry??
• Aishwarya Rai - Don't even get me started on this ******** whatever.....
• Helen - Remember the item girl? Yeh mera dil from Amitabh's Don??

Just when I thought no one can make it worse than this, our Indian officials say "Yes, we can!!" Take a look at this. They gave the award to the wrong person.

"The Padma awards committee seems to have conferred the prestigious Padma Shri award in the field of art and culture to a man who turned out to be an exporter of shawls and not a national craftsman. The blame game has already begun with senior government officials saying they had never recommended Hashmat Ullah Khan's name in the first place. Khan was nominated for the Padma Shri under the art, culture and literature category. Then it was corrected to the craftsmen category, but when the hunt for Khan started after his nomination, it was found that no craftsman by that name existed in Jammu and Kashmir."

Congratulations to all the winners!!! Jai Hind!!

Microsoft Tag

Just wanted to try this... Try it out if u have a Windows Mobile. Download the app from here to your mobile. Open the app and point to the bar code below. It will take you to my facebook page :)

Again, instead of working with the traditional barcode, they have opted in for a proprietary format. I don't think this will even take off.

A new way to connect to the world

Finally, I got myself a smartphone. It's Sprint's HTC Touch Diamond - connected to the web 24x7 now!!

India @ Golden Globes

As I was watching the Golden Globes today, I was amazed at the Indian representation there. It was because of Slumdog millionaire. I blogged about this movie last month - definitely one of the best movies of last year. I did not expect it to win to 4 awards - best picture, best director, best screenplay and best original score (A. R. Rahman).

It was great to watch Rahman receive the award watched by almost the entire Hollywood. When the movie won the best picture award, everybody went on to the stage to collect the award including the hero, heroine and Anil Kapoor. Shah Rukh Khan was also on stage for like 1 min introducing the movie (Knowing that he will never have the opportunity to win something like this, he makes use of his PR skills to get himself onto the stage). BIG CONGRATULATIONS to A.R. Rahman and to the crew of Slumdog Millionaire. The movie is opening this week in India and I'm sure its gonna be a big big hit as the news channels will be covering this story for at least 2 days.

Heath Ledger won a posthumous award for The Dark Knight. In the television category, 30 Rock (I blogged about this show in November) won a lot of awards - best show, best actor (Alec Baldwin) and best actress (Tina Fey).

Let's see if Slumdog can repeat this for the Oscars!

Go Gators!!

Yesterday, the Gators won the NCAAF National Championship by beating Oklahoma 24 - 14. This is their second win in three years. They won the championship in 2006 (which was my first semester at UF). They also won the NCAA Basketball National Championship in 2006 and 2007!!

When the Gators won the Championship in 2006, Tim Tebow was a backup quarterback to Chris Leak. He went on to win the Heisman trophy in 2007 (even though it was a pathetic performance from Gators that year). This year he was one of the four finalists for the Heisman. He lost it to Sam Bradford of the Sooners, but led the Gators to a victory again the Bradford's Sooners. I hope he returns to the team next year! Here is a small video that I put together with all the pictures I had. I'm having fun with the new Windows Live suite. Its awesome!!