SEV

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Homepage: http://blog.severeanomaly.org

Posts by SEV

yes, i have a deadline

Mar 7th

Posted by SEV in staying.aside

No comments

…95 hours to go.

I wouldn’t hold my breath on draft posts making it to ‘Published’.

break, nothing to say, sorry

sachinism, the current religion of the indi-net

Feb 24th

Posted by SEV in staying.thoughts

3 comments

Stuff that struck me while reading about Sachin Tendulkar’s nearly unbelievable* feat, most of which will be repeated everywhere I look over the next few days/weeks:

On this day 21 years ago He completed a 664-run partnership with Kambli. Twenty-f*ckin-one.
His 200 contained 25 boundaries (the most by a single batsman in an ODI till date) and 3 sixes. The entire RSA team innings (in reply) had 30 boundaries and 3 sixes.
He has scored 93 international centuries (combining test and ODI cricket) until today. There was a time when He decimated an Australian team for a whole summer (yes, the great Sharjah innings), which was when I started believing that He would score over a 100 centuries before He retired. That day is nigh.
His closest competitors today (in terms of statistics) have to currently make
- Tests: 1588 runs to catch up His total of 13447, 8 centuries to catch up His total of 47.
- ODIs: 4170 runs to catch up with 17598, 17 centuries to catch up with 46.

He made an impeccable, near-perfect 175 while chasing Australia in Hyderabad last year.. only to have the Indian team let Him down and choke once He was out. I remember defending him when people said that the innings was typical Tendulkar – the century was great, but no use if He never finishes what He starts. I wonder if.. somehow.. RSA had successfully chased 400 (they’ve done it before), how sweet would this 200 be for the ungrateful Indian cricket fan?
The fact that He does not make the ICC list of the best players of all-time in either Tests or ODIs has to now rank as one of the biggest egg-on-your-face (or idiotic) statements until date for the ICC. For a man who is redefining every batting record there is every time He takes guard, a man who has surpassed His contemporaries in both longevity and performance… I guess He doesn’t need the ranking to make His mark in cricket history.

I ask you, does He really have to worry about never lifting a World Cup on India’s behalf? Can we quit wondering aloud about His performance every time He doesn’t make a century?

Will we ever get over Him?

Side note: I noticed that the statistically top batsmen who are still playing cricket today are all 34+ (age in brackets): Jayasuriya (40), Ponting (35), Tendulkar (37), Gibbs (36), Kallis (34). This is to be expected, given the amount of cricket these people have played in their lifetime… but it appears the old guard is never going to make way for a new one.

*I say “nearly unbelievable”, because it is Sachin after all. One can believe that He can pull it off.**
**Yes, the capitalization of ‘H’ is intentional. God, after all.

cricket, felt, genius, india, trivia

pubsubhubbub test #2

Feb 19th

Posted by SEV in staying.aside

1 comment

Testing latency of post-updating on Google Reader, using Feedburner’s inbuilt PSHB feature, turned off WP plugin.

Update: Even more instantaneous, published at 1439 hrs, appeared on Reader at 1439 hrs. I was PHSB enabled already (as I’ve been on FeedBurner for more than a year now), I just didn’t know it. Thanks to Louis Gray’s post as well as a 7 month old Adsense Feeds post which I completely missed. Google Reader, FeedBurner, Buzz teams all rock!

google, new features

pubsubhubbub testing

Feb 18th

Posted by SEV in staying.aside

2 comments

If this shows up in Google Reader within a minute of my clicking publish, then we know pubsubhubbub is live on staying.cool.

Fingers crossed.

Sorry for the “nothing” post.

Edit (18 Jan 2010, 2334 hrs): Just showed up on my Reader. Supposedly published at 2331 on my blog. Probably working.. now you guys get to know when I randomly write on-the-spot!

google, new features, rss readers, sorry

notes: buzzing around

Feb 17th

Posted by SEV in staying.interested

No comments

Google’s latest experiment – Buzz – has been launched to the world recently, with varying degrees of appreciation, hate, irritation and all the reactions that every new social idea is greeted with. Personally, it is a social media outlet/inlet that I can get on board with – seeing as how it integrates nicely into my existing Gmail/Google experience. It has its caveats though.. features/glitches/annoyances that I wish they had ironed out before getting it out the door:

Read On… »

Google Reader posts can be easily imported to Buzz – and comments on Buzz are back-ported to Reader. However, liking and reading of Reader imports in Buzz are not back-ported into Reader. Irritating in some cases, when there’s nothing much to see. Good in other cases, as I may miss something/want to re-buzz something.
Privacy settings from Reader are correctly applied for such posts (unsurprising, as the dashboard for Reader privacy is still through Reader) – so if I can’t comment on your shared item in Reader, I can’t in Buzz either. However, the status of those settings is not correctly shown in Buzz. Everything imported from Reader appears as ‘Public’, when in reality, only the item is public – the discussion ability is anything but for the ‘Public’.
Google seems confused as to what they want to make Buzz. A single life-stream source that you check for all your social updates? Or just another interface to their social services – to popularize them more? I would have thought the former.
Setting privacy settings in a particular way is not easy. Needs a lot of thought, as each Google service still makes use of its own privacy settings. For example, I didn’t want to see a particular person’s Reader shared items in Buzz. Unfollowing them has a global effect – I unfollow them on Reader too in the process. I ended up unfollowing them and adding the RSS feed of their shared items in Reader separately. Crude, but effective. Similar ideas have been suggested for re-buzzing.
A cool idea is posting via email to Buzz, but the functionality is more of a status update than a post — more like short updates posted to Twitter. The power of length offered by Buzz is not exploited as the body text is ignored for such a Buzz update. Sad really, as would have been such a simple yet refreshing re-buzz idea.
‘@’ replies are nigh-impossible when you do not know the person’s Gmail ID that is associated with the Google profile.
Muting is golden.

Feature requests I have galore: lists/groups support, ordering/collapsing messages, re-buzzing, additional import options into Buzz, selective streaming for my Buzz feed etc etc.

I’ve discovered whole hosts of new people (who have also discovered me) and have already had some interesting conversations using it. Most privacy complaints and issues I’ve read with are minor or non-existent: I firmly see BIG things in Buzz’s future.

If only it would get here faster.

(to be added to if I think of more)

Update (26 Feb 2010): Via Reader found a series of comments I had missed on a Reader-Buzz export. Searching through my Buzzes in Gmail showed me I muted this post. However, opening it up there does not show me any comments on it at ALL. According to this post muting a Buzz apparently mutes me from ALL future comments on that post in Buzz, to the extent that the related Buzz in my Gmail does not show the new comments after I muted it i.e. muting completely silences the Buzz conversation for me from that point on. Even if I’m ‘@’ mentioned in it. Need to use it more sparingly.

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google, online, social networks, techie, thoughts, user interfaces

my problem with hindi movies today

Feb 16th

Posted by SEV in staying.reviews

8 comments

There have been any number of reviews about the latest from the Bollywood stable (My Name is Khan) – ranging from vitriolic to sarcastic/mocking to adulatory.

I could write reams, spew abuse galore, and point out in how many different ways the movie gets it wrong… but I won’t. That’s too easy. Plus, people have already done a pretty good job of that. Quite simply, MNIK suffers from the problem that Hindi cinema has been suffering from for a long time. No, not the fact that SRK is in it, or that KJo is directing it… it simply takes itself too seriously.

You can make movies that are obviously escapist, sheer fantasy – and I’m willing to accept it. For example (just off the top of my head), Krrish and Om Shanti Om get this formula close to right. Then you have the movies that are more realistic (and ergo, more intelligent) – for e.g. Luck By Chance, Dev D. Then of course, the “off-beat” - Kaminey, Rocket Singh – they take advantage of it being “cinema”, but don’t push the envelope to the extent that you cannot accept what is going on. Penultimately, the completely unwatchable - Yuvvraaj, Love Story 2050. Finally, the awesome - Gunda. Obviously, you can choose to segregate movies differently, but this kind of classification can work for most movies in most languages.

Why all this background? Movies that belong to one class, but slowly devolve into a second class end up being neither here nor there. And lead to vitriol galore.

I went into 3 Idiots expecting an intelligent comedy. Within about 5 minutes, I settled back into “escapist comedy” mode. It’s not meant to be taken seriously. It’s sheer fun (note here that I think that people who thought 3 Idiots was “silly” were committing the other cardinal mistake: they were taking the movie too seriously). Ishqiya lived up to my expectations of intelligence. Chance Pe Dance lived up to my expectations to being nearly unwatchable. MNIK starts with merely wanting to be intelligent, then flip-flops between fantasy and unwatchable… resulting in something you eventually await the end of.

Read On… »

The premise starts out simply enough. A certain amount of realism is injected (not a lot, but a certain amount anyway). Soon enough though, things start to crash and burn as KJo starts to struggle to continue {acting/directing/writing} intelligently. He starts pandering to cliches galore. But powerful acting from that Tanay kid redeems some of it. Some silly explanations are given (which have been pointed out elsewhere) – to keep the story moving. The movie is sagging but expected chemistry between SRK and Kajol makes the cheesy romance work, but just barely. Sequences start appearing unwittingly funny as the movie traipses along (losing its plot) – quite simply the sequences are there for no reason at all. Back to getting things vaguely on track as pathos is injected for different reasons (9/11, death etc.). Until this point, I was willing to concede a vague amount of credit – and would have just talked about how KJo could have snipped a bit here and there and come up with a much better movie. Not hugely more watchable, but better.

However, MNIK then drags for another unforgivable 45 minutes which ensure that no sane person can really watch this movie and come out liking it. Or any of its very loudly advertised messages.

Back to my point. Making Hindi movies intelligent may not be the best thing – a large majority may end up never really watching it (case in point, Luck By Chance). But when you have a real box office draw in your movie, I thin KJo could have risked making it more intelligent: SRK’s draw would have overcome. Making a silly Hindi movie and then justifying it as “Hindi movies, ergo they can be stupid” is unforgivable.

Finally, the second biggest problem with this particular movie, and Hindi cinema today in general. SRK. The man gets on your nerves within 60 minutes of the movie. Why? He’s been on screen non-stop for 55 goddamn minutes. Continues to be so for the next 85 minutes (even Kamal Haasan has to wear different get-ups to justify such screen time). In the process, his performance goes from being barely interesting to highly irritating (never better illustrated than by the Mrs initially righteously justifying to me why his Aspergers’ must go undiagnosed for so long… and finally getting to the point where she gleefully applauded the fact that he might die near the end of the movie). He gets to pander to his Superman complex – he goes from being unable to verbalize anything properly to saving a goddamn town while being interviewed on national television (hey, if Aamir can deliver a baby in a storm.. SRK can..). In his big sentimental speech, he doesn’t even do a Hindi voice-over for a speech that should obviously have been given in English (SRK re-dub SRK? Are you crazy?) Hell, he even has Barack come back to meet him personally.

Hindi movie-makers really need to decide what they want to do with their movies – and stick to a single plan. You can’t really do everything in every single movie. SRK really needs to find himself some new directors. All the ones he works with (Chopra, Johar, Farah) currently seem to want him to do one ridiculous ham-heavy impersonation in the name of acting – and seem happy to call it “amazing”.

I really need to stop analyzing everything I watch so much. It’s not worth the effort. Oh well.

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frustration, in the movies, reviews, views

SEV

Posts by SEV

yes, i have a deadline

sachinism, the current religion of the indi-net

pubsubhubbub test #2

pubsubhubbub testing

my problem with hindi movies today

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