Quantum of Solace: Another perspective of 007

It looks like ‘change of flavor’ is the theme of the season. Be it the 44th Prez or the 22nd Bond franchise, this theme reflects clearly. How many Bond movies take off as a sequel to its predecessor? How many Bond movies has given the talented Judi Dench more than a couple of frames? Well, this movie does. A 007 is supposed to move on, but Quantum of Solace hold him onto something from the past, which typically, James Bond would not do.

Trade off’s:

I was of the firm opinion that Brosnan had stamped the touch of suaveness and elegance to 007, which any other actor would have needed tremendous effort to re-create. The same holds for Craig. But here lies the difference. Craig does not try to emulate the persona of 007 which Brosnan had created. Instead, he lends a completely different angle to it. He made it clear in Casino Royale, but he was playing a hit-man there. Now reformed as 007, he makes it very clear that there is no point comparing him to his predecessor as they are in completely different styles. Craig’s physicality does the work here. No longer are the gadgets needed. Cars are a mere means of transport, and there is no time for the females. His cold demeanor announces the new side of James Bond, who in spite of being sinewy and brutal, places regard to the choice of hotels and carelessly manages to look the way the world’s best dressed secret agent should look. The new Bond is more believable as he displays emotions throughout. No longer does 007 represent the escapades of a super spy, which normal agents could only fancy. The car chases, the escapes and the fights look as if it is being done by a very real person. Bond just got more real. Having said this, I must add that the Pierce Brosnan touch to the Bond character was very much likeable and that is what made the Bond poplar as he is today.

Fights get real:

Craig relies on his incredible fitness to come out of all his fight sequences. Guns and torpedoes are not in the picture. He makes every fight look brutal and it truly complements the theme of the movie ‘Revenge’. Gadgets are not in place either. All the gadgets are sensibly used, like GPS; nothing fancy. Craig has the injured face throughout and yet, he manages to look clean shaven and comes out every time shining.

Lines go missing:

One thing which I missed the most was the amazing lines which the very charismatic Brosnan used. The peppy charm and effervescent punches which Bond used to attract the ladies is missing. These are replaced by stylish but coherent conversations, retaining the character and mannerisms of James.

Villain disappoints:

The makers need to realize that the villains need to be given more importance. Remember how Electra King or Gustav Grave provided a competent touch to the movies. The villain this time is a lame character called Dominique Greene, who neither looks menacing, nor really challenges Bond in any way.

Bond with a motive:

The makers decided to shift the paradigm from a stand alone plot and took is as from where Casino Royale left off. The plot is the main thing here which is gripping. The very fact that an organization larger than MI6/CIA is operating, lends a curiosity as to how will the story falls into place.

Footnote: Sequels are more to do with human psyche:

One thing which I have noticed about sequels of action movies is that, they tend to deal with human emotions and no longer are affiliated to the adrenaline rush alone. I saw this in Spiderman 2 and I hated the movie for it. Superman Returns was inclined as well but it was likeable. Maybe it had more to do with my preference for Diamond Comics rather than Marvel, but with yet another sequel of sorts, it has worked fine this time. Quantum of Solace is thoroughly enjoyable. It boldly brings to us a new James Bond, who truly is on his way to create his own space among his predecessors.

Obama: What lies ahead of him?

As I write this, Barack Obama was elected the 44th US President. At the age of 47, he is one of the younger presidents to be elected as the leader of a nation, whose election campaign and exit polls are followed as closely as our own country’s polls. Surprising, isn’t it? Wonder if the folks in US follow our election rallies as we do theirs? Let’s leave that for now and focus on Obama. Almost months of strategic campaigning and very interesting face-offs, he has emerged as the undisputed winner this time around. He takes on the baton from Bush, whose stint in the White House was marked by controversies, catastrophes and not-so-friendly war policies (anyone remembers WMD’s?). Obama has the best opportunity to stabilize the US relationship with the rest of the world. The first black president also marks the rise of a minority which in itself is a soothing antidote to the hatred towards a Yankee nation which many countries and many communities hold in their hearts.

The America that Obama has to hold the reins is very different from the last time Bush took over. Amidst the entire financial crisis, how will he approach the economic policies? All this, when the world is reeling in a spin of recession. Obama has a challenge ahead, which I hope he tackles well.

I will look at it from an Indian perspective. Let’s face it, the Asian countries, especially India and China have a substantial say in how the world economy shapes up. The economy of India has slipped too, owing to the recent US markets turmoil. Which in turn means that Obama has to run a country which is under severe economic strain and more importantly, which is no longer a single power call, now needing to collaborate with the emerging economies of the world, which was not the case a few years ago? This definitely sounds good for India, one may think? But Obama was in a complete support for the jobs to stay in US, which would mean, less outsourcing, which in turn would spell doom for many services based companies in India. But on the other hand, there are very positive signs for India. The ties between the most influential democracy and the most powerful democracy of the world are likely to deepen with his victory. The nuclear deal which was signed a couple of months ago was a forerunner to these ties. India will be a close ally if we look from values of democracy and human rights. Not to mention the fight against terror which we both share.

An Obama victory is the very thing which can change the world perception of the United States which has suffered terribly under the Bush administration. The lack of confidence in America hopes to increase in the due time. Of course, he cannot change the country overnight. But at best, his promises of jobs in US, staying in US, strikes a very healthy chord. Especially for Indians who graduate from US universities, hoping for a job! Am I sounding selfish? Well, let’s see…

The economy: 2008

Ever wondered why every headline over the past few months warns us about some sort of economic crisis? The stocks markets have plummeted, there is this big credit crisis and some big firms have filed bankruptcy. As I write this, the Indian rupee is at all time low at Re 49.3. This is almost 20% dip which seems quite disturbing. I just want to present a brief summary of the things which have happened over the past year and tell what i think of all this.

Early 2008:

The United States began blowing up a real estate bubble which sky-rocketed the value of property. This went on for quite sometime before it collapsed. Owners were forced to lay it off as they ran into a mortgage debt which was much greater than the value of the property itself. What followed was the fate of the sub prime mortgage industry, the ones who had spent heavily banking upon the ever-so-booming property values. Few prestigious firms went bankrupt and a few were rescued by the Govt. loans. Panic spread all across.

Mid 2008:

The US budget reeled out the numbers and the recession was set in officially. This resulted in sharp budget cuts and hiring freeze. Foreign institutional investors pulled out close to $10 billion from India, dragging the capital market down with it. Indian banks suffered, many of them are likely to under perform this year.

‘Now’ 2008:

The rupee depreciation is at an all time low of 21%. The IT sector, which should have been benefited from it theoretically, does not exactly do so. The prime source for them is US, added with banking and financial services. But the Wall Street crisis and the U.S. slowdown will surely affect it as a result of deferring long term projects for software companies, especially for the services based companies. The US government has pushed a $700 billion bailout package. But that will not be the solution as the fall of the big-shots in the US financial services sector means trouble for the Indian software industry. After all, we are export dependent sector.

Why did all this happen? Were there not fore signs to all this, looking into which all of this could have been avoided. Of course there were. The reasons for all these maybe be really in a very wide range and not all can comment on why this is happening. But there are a couple of things I can understand from all this. Much of the action happens because people tend to panic and overreact. The stocks fall for a day, people run helter-skelter, and go on to dispose off all their stocks at a much lower value than it should have been sold off. I agree, not all do that. But a good chunk of small scale investors do that. Their investments may not be of that magnitude to send ripples across the Stock Market, but cumulatively yes, it is capable of producing some effect. People in US spent ridiculously huge sums on money on houses and on real estates, only to realize later that they were not at all worth what was paid. Now they can’t afford to keep it. So what do they do? They incur loss by selling it off at a much lower price, or they end up foreclosing. Again, as a result of over estimating the investment.

I was never an ardent follower of either the global economics or the stock market. Only recently have I been trying to follow the pattern and have been trying to understand the manner of its working and maybe that is why my reasoning might sound flawed. But then, I DO believe that this is one of the prime factors. One wealthy prick starts a trend; hundred ordinary folks follow, maybe with a lesser magnitude. Ignorance is one of the key factors here. Keep your money in a safe place, invest it in safe bets. Venture into stocks and shares if you have the penchant for it, but also keep in mind that it also needs a bit of knack and some sort of backup plan, which I feel many of the small scale investors lack.

Firebug: Web Applications made easy!

If you are in software industry and if you are a Web Developer, or involved in any of the Web Applications, then you must use a very useful tool called Firebug. It is an open-source debugger for HTML, JavaScript, and Ajax that works inside of Firefox. In fact, it is available as an add-on (one of the many which Firefox offers), and probably the most useful tool for debugging. Java Script is one of the widely used application language for the Web; so it becomes really handy to have this tool to modify, test, and debug Web applications.

Firebug was developed by Joe Hewitt. He was one of the original creators of Firefox. He now works as a programmer for Facebook. Firebug allows debugging, editing, and monitoring of any website’s Style Sheet, HTML, DOM Structure, and JavaScript, and provides other web development tools. The official site for firebug has the full info about it.
http://getfirebug.com/

Here are some of the best features of Firebug.
·    DOM Inspector
·    Command Line Java Script Interpreter
·    Java Script Console
·    Logging Ajax requests (I have not used this feature)
·    Inspecting HTML and editing it.
·    Pin-pointing the error.

The power of Firebug added with the functionalities of the most popular browser makes it one of the best tools for analyzing Web Applications. If you do not want to use Firebug, you can easily disable it. Or instead of disabling firebug for all the pages, you can also specify particular sites for which you want it disabled, or specific sites for which you want to enable Firebug inspecting. The status display at the bottom right will immediately tell you if there are errors on the page or not. Also, it has these cool extensions to it which allows managing cookies and syntax highlighting (Rainbow). One of the extensions is YSlow which analyzes web pages and tells you why they’re slow based on the rules for high performance web sites!

This is one of the good articles I found which helped me a lot to understand how to use Firebug.
Firebug Tutorial – Overview of Firebug

A small price to pay for this comes with the fact that it slows down the browser sometimes. But with the capabilities it offers, this is a small overhead! And since almost all the users of Firefox are on Firefox 3, this is where you get Firebug compatible for this.
Firebug for Firefox 3

61 Years of Freedom. And a blog on d run!

It has been 61 years since India gained its independent status. We were free from the rule of the British empire. And it has led to the progress of our nation socially and economically.

One thing i still feel bad about is the mentality of the people in our country, and i include myself in this. We never feel confident about the fact that by being responsible individually, each of us can contribute to the society. All of us keep on thinking,’if i alone stick to my own lane on road, i’d be the only one left behind.’. So wat do we do? We break from our lane on road. Each one of us thinks,”wat’s d point if onli i refrain from littering the roads?”. We again end up, dirtying our streets. I just want to tell tat if we al just do our own things in a responsible manner, it’d lead to large scale improvements. And i mean those kinda improvements which we all want to see in our country. I use this blog to implore all of us to stick to wat we believe, is the right thing. Without caring for others mindset of course.

I’m somewhat excited about this particular post because i’m posting it through my cell phone. Gprs, of course. This is one good thing about mobile phones. Although i don need to connect online so often(i’m nt such an important person), i end up surfing from my phone every now and then. I really cant avoid it.

Btw, its my friend’s birthday today. I wish him al d best in his new year of life.

BIA – Infrastructure vs Hazards?

Recently, I had to go the international airport in Bangalore few times. That is when I thought some things about it. All the initial hype about the infrastructure and the facilities did not impress me as much as few other things made me think.

First things first, the BIA is approximately 55 kms from South Bangalore (I live there!). The drive so far takes around 90 to 120 mins on road depending upon the traffic and the lane in which u drive (and of course, the lane(s) in which drivers around you let you drive:P). The traffic till Hebbal flyover is a bit heavy. Of course, after you cross that, the road is just so smooth. And upon entering the airport diversion, it is another 10 kms ride into the parking lot and the actual terminal.

Now, the new airport is much better than the HAL airport in terms of space and facilities. Lots of shops for all needs and ATM’s and kiosks are there. But what makes me think abt going so far is the fact that we go to the airport to see off people we care about. But just waiting at the entrance and to see them go inside, with a thick glass partition in between?? Is it worth going so far? We all know that post 9/11; there is no visitor pass to get inside. So all we get to do is to help our people load their bags onto the trolley and see them go inside. If you are late, all you get is hurried goodbyes and cya’s.

Just to think, people traveling to places like Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai spend about 90-120 mins in plane. They spend a lot more time than that, traveling to the airport at Bangalore. And of course, some more time to get to the actual destination from the airport at the other end. In fact, going to Hyderabad and Chennai by road will take lesser time than flying. Apart from the comfort factor, there is no other reason to fly to nearby places. They say, there is chopper pick up and drop for ppl who can afford it. But obviously, not all can go for that. And moreover, there are a lot, when I say I mean it… a lot of cabs of all kinds available now. So going by our own personal transport might not be all that necessary unless otherwise we are so keen to see off our folks.

And one more thing, this airport has a digital weighing meter. Of course, this is to double check the bags so as to adhere to the weighing restrictions). That is the place where u get to see some fun. I saw some group of morons who apparently had not gotten themselves weighed in the recent times. So, they began to stand upon the weighing meter and began to note down their weight. What more, some crazy woman who wanted to note the weight of her kid, tried to get that kid upon the scale. She was unable to do so. So, she took the kid in her hands and took the combined weight. Then she herself noted down her individual weight. EINSTEIN.. And that too, with all the stupid giggling and shouting. And not only that, there were a couple of ppl waiting to get their bags weighed. I could not help but laugh at them. At the same time, I felt so sad that these are the ppl who give us the infamous tag “He’s an Indian”.  Hope things get better with times.

Why so serious?

I saw this movie “The Dark Knight”. Amazing plot and a fantastic portrayal of villainism. I claim that Joker is one of the best villains i have seen. Being a batman fanatic, i was so glad to see this movie being so so cool and brilliantly made.

Who:

The Joker made his debut as a murderer and smart robber. He used to announce the name and exact time of death of his next victim-to-be beforehand and to challenge the cops and Batman. His main weapon was Joker Toxin, a kind of poison which he used to inflict upon others.

Origin:

Joker originally was some thug who, while trying to escape from Batman, jumps into some chemical concoction. Upon coming out, his hair is bleached and his face is distorted to give him a permanent grin.

Why:

Joker is Batman’s equal in terms of intelligence and wit. He is a different kind of villain, the only one to genuinely bother Batman.  He truly lives to be Batman’s arch-enemy, and his life has little meaning without Batman. This is the reason why, in the comic book’s Batman was never killed or physically hurt by Joker in spite of the numerous chances he had! Joker tortured Robin, Batgirl, and even the police commissioner Gordon.. But he never did all that to Batman. It is the purpose of Joker to match Batman in each and every step of his intelligence. Without Batman, his life would have little purpose.

USP:

The best part about the Joker is that he is not a regular breed of villain. He is someone i feel, is unaffected from seven sins namely Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride.

How his mind works:

The reason why Joker thrills is because of the fact that his purpose is like no other enemy. His motto is to bring out the villain in everyone. That is exactly what he does to Harvey. Each and every action of his is meticulously planned so as to match the wits of Batman. The manner in which he plays with everyone, be it Harvey and Rachel, while keeping them in midst of fire, or be it with Batman, when he tries to capture him after being unable to run over Joker even though he had the best chance, or even his sense in the last few lines before he actually dies, is incredible. In fact, in the comics, before dying, the Joker’s last words are “I will see you in hell”, which is said to Batman. This is a perfect example of his mental pattern. He tries to play around with people’s minds.

I recommend everyone to watch the movie. Not only is this for Batman fans but for all others who want to see extraordinary mindgames and an out and out excitement! Please see it.

It had been a while…

I thought I’d get addicted to the habit of blogging as I had gotten stuck onto many things in life.. But it was not meant to be. I guess there are better ways to emote than spill out your guts on the Internet… I just am writing this blog because it had been a really long time since I even thought of blogging and actually went onto to register myself in WordPress. A lot, when I say I mean it, a lot has happened between then and now.. There have been many a drastic changes in my life since then..one too many..

Well, there is going to be a wedding in my family in some time now… and i am really excited for my brother… but just thinking abt it a bit more, i feel so scared to think abt the changes it is going to bring about in the household. They say changes are inevitable, but when I imagine myself living with a new family member after 23 years of me, my parents and my brother… well I am not so comfortable thinking about it. I am equally sure that this will be the same thought brewing on in my sis-in-law-to-be’s mind. I just hope things take a smooth transition.
Apart from it, a lot of my friends left for their masters, with all the aspirations and ambitions… to join the long long rat race… it’s a race which will begin with scurrying around for bread crumbs here and there… and finally settle for a big loaf! I really wish them all the best! To think of it, it is a really lucrative option… I mean the returns are really attractive… Well, with the current economic state, it may not be so self assured, but I am sure, with perseverance, it is a safe bet. I miss them sometimes, I mean hanging out with them and all, but then as I said, “Change is inevitable”.

I am a software engineer by profession… my job is to work on software, develop it, make it better and resolve all the issues on it… This might seem like some interesting stuff… Well, this is interesting… but I add to it that it is not as difficult as it seems. Basically, there is this thing called re-usability of code which makes things easier. Not exactly re-using the same ol’ thing, but whenever I get stuck at a point and do not know how to approach a particular problem, I see some other piece of code which does some similar piece of functionality and then I can do what I originally intended to do easily..   This has worked for me so far. And so far, so good. I think being a software engineer is not all that difficult. I mean there are no demarcation btw standards. A guy in my college who had like graduated with many re-takes is a software engineer… Of course, there is this fact that I am in a very good company which gives me an edge. But I do not see how that will make a difference after some years. Sometimes I get apprehensive abt being in such a ‘clichéd’ industry and makes me feel like being a graduate will just not be sufficient. I have not been able to come to any conclusion till now.

Sophomore in the world of bloggers!

Well, they say there is a first time for everything. This is my first public blog. Let me see how long will i stick to it:)