The Roads Less Travelled …

Yesterday evening was most productively spent in attending the play “The Woman in Black” written by Stephen Mallatratt based on the novel of the same name by Susan Hill and excellently directed by Robin Herford, who incidentally has directed every single cast of the play at West End since 1989.

The plot is gripping. A young solicitor, Arthur Kipps, is asked by his senior partner to settle the papers of one of their clients, the recently deceased Alice Drablow. Mrs Drablow lived in some of part of the British Isles which Mr. Kipps admits he had “never heard of till an hour ago”. He however sets out in his errand in rather high spirits thinking that it will be nice diversion from the fog and grime of London. How little he knows what fate awaits him in the Eal Marsh house beyond the Nine lives causeway where Mrs. Drablow had taken up solitary residence till her death. Years later Mr. Kipps now an old man, takes it up to tell his story to his near and dear with the help of an actor who will play Arthur Kipps. It is actually from this point that the narrative starts and the continuous switch between the real and the acted parts makes for a interesting aside in the play.

The Woman in Black does not rely on magnificent and huge props or sets for the effect. Rather the chilling and sometimes terrifying atmosphere by the means of innovative lighting and awesome sound effects. Indeed, the characters take a dig at the use of lavish props when discussing how the hell will they get a pony and trap onto the stage. And the acting was of the highest standard to say the least.

All in all it was experience to remember and I am rather grateful to Nishta for pulling to the last show of this amazing play, which otherwise I would have surely missed.

ps:: In typical British tongue-in-cheek style Robin thanked the audience at the end for making if aware of various aspects of Indian life including the ring tones of their mobiles.

Now playing: Epica - Feint

Finally got the metal storm radio thingy working … I had earlier tried with winamp 2.x and 3.0 but winamp 5 seems to have taken care of the problems.

Being on not a very high bandwidth line allows me to listen to the songs only at 24 kbps but it does sound pretty decent. The best thing about the radio station is that you can queue in your own requests and they have a huge collection to chose from. And that they do not stick only one form or style. Black, Death, Prog, Speed, Symphonic they play it all. Provided of course someone says its metal.

MetalStorm Radio rulez ……..

Now playing: Tristania - Crushed Dreams (Metal Storm Radio - Experience the Storm! 24/7 Requests!)

The moment I heard Real are buying Michael Owen, I was at loss to see any semblance of logic in the move. Owen is one of those players who expect their name to be on the team sheet for every match, and in Raul, Moreintes and Ronaldo Les Meringues already have three such strikers. Why then did they buy Owen? Clearly the number of Real Madrid T-shirts sold with number 23 did not satiate the appetite of Perez. Owen clearly is most recognisable face in football after Beckham in the Far East, where the T-shirt monies really are. What is sad is that if he continues on the same path as Beckham, we will be seeing the last of a extremely promising player in Michael Owen.

However their second and more recent English signing of the summer, Jonathan Woodgate, makes much more sense. Reals' central defenders last season were the primary reason they went trophy less last season. They have seen some sense and bought a brand new central defensive pair in Walter Samuel and Woodgate, arguably amongst the top defenders in Europe right now. Provided Salgado and Roberto Carlos maintain their form of last season Real will have a decent back line to bank upon.

However the team is far from complete. There are two major worry areas, the central holding mid-field and the left side of the mid-field. Real are not yet willing to accept the fact that Makalele's departure was also a major factor in their dismal season last year. All said and done Makalele and Flavio Concecaio, limited players that they are, provided the spine for the Los Galacticos to strut there stuff upon. Their chasing of first Soceidads' Xabi Alonso and then their eternal target Patrick Viera is understandable. What is incomprehensible is the fact they are going off the transfer window without getting a defensive midfielder in the team. I am hoping they are not banking upon Beckham oreven worse Guti to do that job. Both showed their woeful inadequacies in that position in terms of technique and physical strength last season.

Another problem area, though not so apparent is the left side of the midfield. Last season in the team sheet almost always Zidane's name was put there. But Zizou prefers to be in the centre of things and he showed that he can get away with straying from the left because he is Zizou, last season for Madrid as well as in Euro for Les Bleus. Though if Zizou plays a good game it is doubtful if Real will ever feel the need for genuine width (now also provided to a large extent by Roberto Carlos. Sadly even he is getting old), in a tight game where Zidane is not what he is expected to be things might turn in oppositions favour because of this. Solari is perfect replacement but then who will be axed. Figo, Raul or Zidane. Looks like Solari will spend another season coming on for Zidane in the dying stages of the game. Or Figo playing in the left with Beckham doing the honours on the right and Zidane playing in a slightly retracted role at the centre still pulling the creative strings. Figo might not be very happy with such an arrangement though.

Real as usual go into the season with a lopsided team, though less weighted than last year, while main rivals Valencia and Barcelona will be putting up much more balanced teams. And in Europe, well Milan still looks the best all round team in Europe. At least on paper.

Now playing: Dream Theater - The spirit carries on

In his blogs Sups has been putting up a series of writings on his experiences of the first Gulf War [find his blog here]. Basically an account of how Iraqs' invasion of Kuwait, where they then lived, changed their lives and how they fled the war torn Persian Gulf via Iraq and Jordan to India. He talks about mundane things like playing football in a refugee camp, his parents worrying about his sister (very young at that time), open air toilets and things like that. I on the other hand, then sitting at the comfort of my home, considered the war as something of a very interesting happening. I used to revel in my knowledge of the firepower of the Iraqi and Allied armies. I could reel off statistics to prove that the American Abrahms were better than the T-72s or that the Iraqi MiGs were no match for the F-117s. I could sit there and talk about the war for hours. At the end I would say that war was not good. It should not happen because x number of people were dead, y were injured. All arguments supported by statistics. All as human as the horse power of a Challenger tank.

I just finished rereading Vonneguts' Slaughter House Five (SH5). I would not be first guy to tell that the book is probably amongst the best war (more like anti-war) books ever written. But I would also rate it as amongst the finest humanist works. What is so great about SH5 is not that it describes the war with its effects and after effects in great gory detail. It does not rant about the great sufferings bestowed upon humanity because of wars or by preaching what can be done to prevent such a calamity. It rather accepts war, for what is worth as just an occurrence. By making it just an occurrence it deglamourises war to an extent that no amount of tear-jerking can achieve.

War is often seen as an opportunity for average humans to becomes heroes. Even in Catch-22 (another superb satire on war), Yossarian is a hero. Years after reading that book I sometimes still hope that "Maybe, I would also have behaved like Yossarian". But I will never think "I would want to be like Billy Pilgrim". Billy Pilgrim is weak, uncourageous, unimaginative and miles away from the "man" that war demands. The difference between the two books lies in the answer they give to question, "Why Me?". Catch-22 answer is enconsced in the philosophy that it is you because you were not able to do anything about it. And that if you had important things like luck, money, power and brains you can do something about it. SH5 answer can be best phrased in the words of the Traflamadorians "Because the moment simply is… Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why". In short we do not have a free will. Rather, we are just living our lives like a tape playing a cassette.

And the taking away of free will, actually frees the perpetrators of the horror called war, from any responsibility of their actions. It was as it was supposed to be. Dresden was fire bombed, Aghanistan invaded and Baghdad stormed because they were supposed to happen. There is no other "why". This simple reasoning creates a gaping hole in the arguments that are often given as a justification for such actions.

The essence of the book can be summed up in these words of Mary O'Hare (to whom the book is dedicated),

"You were just babies in the war-like the ones upstairs… But you are not going to write it that way, are you… You'll pretend you were men instead of babies and you shall be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra or John Wayne or some of those other glamourous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will loook just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought bybabies like the babies upstairs."

ps:: Kalyan has often referred to an article by one of his friends about SH5. Finally searched it out after writing this piece. You can find it here. Echoes the thoughts expressed above, though in a much better way.

Now playing: Dream Theater - Take away my pain

Went on my first bike trip to Chunchi falls and Mekedattu, some 100 odd kms from Bangalore, last weekend. You can find the log here.

I am a self proclaimed Harry Potter obsessed freak. But J.K. Rowling having published only five books there is only a maximum number of times I can reread those. When I was doing my internship in INRIA (summer 2002), a google search on Harry Potter turned up a link to a piece called "Harry Potter and the Jade Dragon" wherein Harry goes to China on an exchange program and manages to bash up the bad guys there. It had all the characters of the HP universe and the author had added some of her own creations. I spent the entire day reading up this piece and its sequel. After that I have spent a considerable time and effort in reading up a huge body of such works, commonly known as fan fiction. To the extent that I now get confused whether a particular character is from the actual HP canon or some fan fiction. And most of the stuff written is badly written and amateurish but some of them stand out, because of the imagination of the plot and the depth of the characters involved. Some (actually lot) of them do not even have Harry as the main protagonist. I have even read one with Hannah Abbott as the main character (Wondering who she is … she is the first student in Harrys' batch to be sorted … check out Philosopher's Stone …)

The main sites for HP fan fiction are: Fan Fiction (actually all fan fiction … including LOTR and Foundation series … though HP numbers beat the rest of them combined.). However there is a lot of traffic in this site and hence lot of average stuff. A slightly more select site is Schnoogle. For starters I am giving a list of my favourite fan fiction series (oh yes there are books in fan fiction also). All of the below are hosted on Schnoogle, which is my choice site. Go to the complete novel listing and search on authors.

1. The Draco series by Cassandra Claire [Draco Dormiens, Draco Sinister, Draco Veritas] - Often touted as the most popular fan fiction on net, this series of three books is probably the best in fan fiction one can get. The last book is unfinished since the last one year or more and I think CC has given up on HP fan fiction.

2. The Slytherin Rising series by J.L.Matthews [Sleeping Death, Slytherin on the Wane, Enemies of the Heir, Year of the Cat] - My personal favourite. Harry and friends are nowhere the primary characters here. Instead the story revolves around four girls who join Hogwarts two years prior to Harry, their families and their lives. This moves away from the canon quite a bit.

3. The Paradigm of Uncertainty series by Lori [The Paradigm of Uncertainty, The Show that never ends, The Hero with a thousand faces] - Harry and gang have grown up. Harry is snogging Hermoine and fighting dark forces. And Ron …. read the story to find out.

So enjoy ….

ps:: All three primarily the third have slightly more adult content than the stuff JKR dishes out. Believe me it makes things much more interesting.

Now playing: Keane - Somewhere Only We Know

Just saw "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind" starring Jim Carey (in a role which reminds you that he once did Trueman's Show) and Kate Winslet, again proving that she is not the dumb bimbo that people remember of her in Titanic. The story was greatly mutilated form of the standard Hollywood (actually Bollywood, Tollywood and any other kind of Wood you can imagine) love story we all know so well. Boy meets girl. They fall in love. Everything is not so rosy after sometime. They spilt. They realise their folly. They come together and live happily ever after. What however struck me in this movie was the way the same stories, the same plots keep coming back at us and we take them in with the same relish.

Just after seeing the movie I was feeling extremely cinematic and went to check out the latest edition of Senses of Cinema, wherein I found this article about Kill Bill titled "Tarantino and the Vengeful Ghosts of Cinema". One of the major thrusts of the article can be summarised in the following lines,

" Death and rebirth are at the heart of Kill Bill's vision of cinema: the vulnerability and resilience of genres that are all essentially dead. They exist either completely in the past or else the era of their history that Kill Bill specifically cites is no more. Cycles of revenge dominate the structure of the film: Bill's shooting of the Bride, Vernita's daughter's possible future revenge against the Bride for her mother's death, the Bride's revenge quest, the massacre of O-Ren Ishii's parents that turned her into a killer. The nature of revenge: one moment of the past played and replayed obsessively to the point of excluding present reality – the absolute domination of a past that not only won't go away but is not allowed to go away. Perhaps Kill Bill is the past of certain cinemas come back to take revenge on the collective mainstream of cinematic memory that has almost forgotten them. Rebirth against all odds is also central to Kill Bill. However much punishment she takes, the Bride keeps coming back – shot in the head, raped, buried alive, drugged, battered several times over, she refuses to let herself die. Her persistence is at once the persistence of basic cinematic narratives that won't go away, like the revenge story, and their destruction: her quest is, after all, to systematically eradicate film genres that are already, in fact, dead and, ultimately, to save her daughter from the clutches of cinema, to return her to a normal reality where the formal relics through which she has fought can find no nourishment. "

Clearly the author refers here to the now dead and buried genres' of Kung Fu flicks and Westerns, the two major shapers of the director we know today as Quentin Tarantino. And with Kill Bill they are thrown back at us, exageratted and gaudy in a brand new package and we lap it up. Savour it.

Reinvention of genres and plots is nothing new. A more popular example will be the slapstick comedy genre of Austin Powers which was again almost forgotten. What however is new is that film makers are trying to create identities of their own by their allegiances to these art forms. And these again can compartmentalize the genre not allowing any fresh perspectives or any new takes to be taken. A good example, of the opposite approach, would the movie "Dancer in the Dark", wherein the director appropriates the genre of musicals but refuses to accept it, rather taking a new look at it. With Kill Bill, however good or bad it is, I feel Tarantino fails to do that. However, what he does is good enough for a couple of visits to the cinema.

Now playing: 02 - Rammstein - Engel

Ajay recently posted a link how to make a proper schedule, fooling your manager and everyone else into believing that you are one smart piece of programming brain. The System Is Stupid, So Outsmart It!

Interesting read… considering the fact that in my last project I over shot my projections by some 300%. However that was not really something which went into the Talisma product and hence the flak I received for it was quite minimal. But the entire exercise left me with some really deep scars (or learnings if you may like …)

• Regardless of how well you think you know the language and the API calls there is bound to be some time spent in discovering nuances of these that you thought never existed. Even you have been coding in a platform ever since your weight burdened this earth, you are still human, while the thing in front of you is a bloody machine.

• If you are going from one thread to even two, better spend some time in the design phase running through all the conflicts, the locking, protection other such trivial issues. Incidentally allocate some time in your schedule in case baddies like Race Conditions and Deadlocks turn up.

• Microsoft dev is into something called as TTD, Test Driven Development for novices. An interesting concept, wherein you code your Test Cases before you start coding and your code base grows by ticking of each of those Test cases from the list. Though you might not go this extent having a clear idea of the usage of your deliverable goes a long way in improving the granularity of your thoughts regarding the code you are going to write.

• Lastly investigations during coding. Never. In case you envisage using a language feature you have never used before or an external library better make a few sample programs to check the functionality you are looking for. What you thought is there might not be what is there. But better than finding this out when half of your code is written or worse when testing.

And of course, the above will bloat up your designing time, but you will tend to save up on the coding time, the bug fixes and most importantly on the sleep that some people tend to lose in the coding phase.

—————————————————————————

ManU is going to have one hell of a year … RVN and Saha are out … Ronaldo and Heinze will be on duty at Athens Olympics …. and worst of all Solskjaer is going to be out for the complete season. Unless another crop of youngsters akin to the batch of 1992 (Scholes, Giggs, Beckam, Butt, the Nevilles) come up the rank ManU is going to find things very difficult.

Now playing: Al Stewart - Post World War Two Blues

Finally got a desktop tool for Blogging in blogger.com …. BlogJet looks the part till now. It even has a detect music feature .

Kudos to Nari for the discovery …

Now playing: Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond

The blogs I read generally are on technical issues and working on Windows platforms, I end up reading blogs of people in MS working on the various projects. These provide an insiders view on the various technologies that we are using. A notable feature in these blogs is the openness with which these developers, testers and PMs at MS discuss the various new features and tools coming out of MS in near future and on which they are currently working on.

It seems everybody who is anybody blogs in MS. And reading their blogs one gets a preview of the products in the pipeline that no official white-board or demo will ever provide. They discuss the good things (mostly) and bad things (sometimes) on their blogs about their features. As a result I personally now know what is coming out on VS 2005, in C# 2.0 and in Longhorn. I read the Joel on Software article stating how MS, by bringing in a new SDK (Avalon) in Longhorn and doing away with backward compatibility with older SDKs is going to drive away developers from the Windows platform.

My belief now is that blogs coming out from MS will to a degree stem this rot if it happens at all. Once a developer has access to the design considerations that have gone into the tools he is considering using, it gives him a better hang of the whole thing and he will be much more comfortable in using them. Such issues that will probably never ever pop up in text book. The MS blogs provide exactly that. They can become a resource which in time prove to be as useful to Windows developers as MSDN is today (slightly far fetched).