staying.cool

a year and 60 days after my warranty expires, the nvidia 8400GM graphics card on my hp laptop has fried. no matter that i have pointed out to HP more than once that the laptop does get pretty warm, and i have been using a  cooling pad/table since. no matter that graphics cards should only get fried if i really abuse them. no matter that hp’s solution to all problems is to have me send it to them, so that they can do nothing at all. maybe i should have done it earlier. maybe i should have lived without a computer for 15 days while finally tell me i need to use a cooling pad. the support team was pretty nice though, and very helpful. i am just pissed at the quality of the laptop build. $1250 for this ?

what does matter is that this laptop has been pretty jinxed from the word ‘go’. i wonder if this is a hint to move to a super-powered desktop. maybe this one. or, even better, this one.

i sad

why would apple expect the iphone 3G with its unsurpassably (crappy) features:

Surprisingly, some of the niggling features that were missing in the iPhone 1.0 continue to be overlooked. There’s still no copy-paste functionality, no MMS sending, no Flash capabilities, no A2DP (stereo Bluetooth)… Yes, at Rs.31,000 and thereabouts, the iPhone dangles a hefty price tag…if you take your eyes off its $199 pricing in the US and judge the iPhone purely on the heft of what you’re acquiring in terms of a gizmo, perhaps the picture won’t look so disappointing after all. After all, when has Apple ever sold sundar, tikaoo maal that was sasta — especially in India? Woefully however, the carrier lock-in story for the handset continues… You won’t be able to swap Vodafone to Airtel to Idea willy-nilly –– or when you are travelling abroad, to Matrix to SingTel. You will have to stick to that very Voda/Airtel SIM you’ve plugged into iPhone even in your wanderlust. That, for a 31K phone, is a mite distressing.

to be so wanted in india ? the country where the N96 is to be launched early. seriously. you might as well ship them all back to the US and keep selling them to people who have close to no idea just how convergent a device a phone can be.

now, this… is just awesome.

i’m sure something there was lost

i watched them.

the boy stretched out his hands, barely able to reach what was being held out to him. his tiny fingers grabbed onto the older mans’ hands and tugged down to be able to see better. a wizened face crinkled as the boy managed to get things into view. gnarled hands were searched by tiny fingers for a gap, for a single opening… wrinkled fingers were selectively pulled at to test the strength of the grip. the smile widened as the boy found a finger that seemed possible. more height was needed, and so little feet clambered onto larger, older ones while an aged back strained to bend down and show the boy what he wanted. pull.. pull.. a finger came free from an age-old grip, and the little face shone with delight as he watched knotted hands unravel a seemingly impossible formation while he held onto a single finger, a fore-finger. yells of delight as the boy jumped, and then tugged down again. the aged body could take no more, so he sat down.. and watched the little one struggle to put hands and fingers into an impossible formation. weathered eyes shone with delight as the boy presented his ‘puzzle’. very carefully, the wrong finger was chosen, to further yells. the old man sat back, beaming with joy as the young boy ran circles around him proclaiming victory. all at once, he reached out and encircled him in a hug the kid couldn’t wait to get out of. even as the kid ran away the man looked up to see me. and smiled. a smile that i see too, too rarely nowadays.

the smile of a grandfather playing with his grandson.

smei = root of the word ’smile’

..at all.

i love it.

i’ve always dreamed of making movies.

not acting, not composing.. actually making them. i’ve imagined placing the camera at that corner, and have it pan across the scene as it happens in my life. i have played out endless chase sequences, millions of scares and too many fight scenes to count. with very distinctive and yet realistic sound effects. there have been times i have wondered what life would be like were i star of my own truman show. there have been other times i have wanted to recreate a car chase down to the smallest detail.

but i don’t have the money.

it never stopped me thinking about them though. my sequences were grandiose, my scenes were spectacular. any battle of my gi joes with the evil forces of evil never ended on a tame note of the leader being knocked over. no, there were long drawn out battles… with many mini-battles happening within them. the evil overlord took a lot of killing though. there were never enough bullets or missiles to do it. it took a couple of hundred explosions to get parents riled up about all the sound that was being made though.

i have formed ideas for movies, formed trailers, formed whole acting careers about these movies. the genius that lay in every one of them had to be seen to be believed. no-one ever saw. i gave voice-overs, i acted, i directed.

i have a list of movies to watch that never seems to diminish. it doesn’t take a lot to get on the list, just the fact that the movie might exist has sent me on insane hunting sprees. i indulge it, it is a mania that i enjoy. the movies always deliver. there is the final takedown sequence in ‘the dark knight’, the final attack of the lions in the ‘ghosts in the darkness’, the velociraptor in the kitchen of ‘jurassic park’, the horse race in ‘ben hur’, the war from the ‘lord of the rings’… the list goes on.

which is why when i watch 2 guys start with a camera, some duct tape and some streamers and end up with ‘ghost busters’…. it means a lot. thinking up the angle of the camera so that you can shoot a pianist playing his final song… blowing up a mini-city to simulate king kong — it doesn’t matter.

its all possible.

as the movie closes to a captive audience watching a projection on a screen.. applauding every dialogue, believing everything they see.. it shows you the magic.

the magic the movies have always had. and always will.

From Be Kind, Rewind.

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The Las Vegas flights are known for the unavailability to book flights at the last minute. Most of the airline’s tardinesses makes it possible for one to get seats on Orlando flights and even the flights to London.