Raju Shrivastav goes berserk at Star Screen Awards

I underestimated this guy.

Vir Das

I have seen Vir Das on "News on the Loose". The guy is hilarious. Today, he was on budget byte and again rocked with his one-liners. In fact, the female host of Power Breakfast (next up) was giggling un controllably, even as the other host introduced the next segment.

Vir Das, it seems, is already a well-known stand-up and looking for a break in Bollywood. He certainly has the goods. Watch out for him.

Amillia Taylor shouldn't be alive. She was born at less than 22 weeks - in the US, where babies aren't considered 'viable' until 23 weeks. But her desperate mother lied to doctors about how far gone she was, and Amillia is now the most premature baby to have ever survived. Aida Edemariam reports on her extraordinary story and asks: should we be saving such tiny babies? ...

I don't think we need to put medical science to the test, in such extreme cases. The baby wasn't meant to live and if it does, it faces insurmountable health problems - mental and physical. And that pain - the baby bears alone. Not even your parents can understand it.


Sometime back I wrote about the world's largest baby and world's smallest baby here

Funeral of a poem

Don't know why I wrote this, but anyway...
**************************************************************************
I fill it in my fingers
I fill it in my toes
Mud is all all around me
And so the filling grows
My stink is on the wind
It's everywhere I go
So if you 're really dirty
Come on and let it show
You know I love goo, I always will
My mind's made up by the way, with filth
You'll be so cringing, you'll be so stained
'Cause if I am pool, you'll be deep end


You've been defaced before me
As I lay on my turd
I cannot get to thinking
Why do they call me nerd?
You gave your disease to me and I gave mine to you
I need someone beside me in everything I do

You know I love goo, I always will
My mind's made up by the way, with filth
You'll be so cringing, you'll be so stained
'Cause if I am pool, you'll be deep end
I got to keep it moving
My stink is on the wind
Oh everywhere its goo
So if you really love me
Come on and dab some goo
Come on and dab it,
Come on and dab it,
Come on and dab it,
Come on and dab some goo

Hype or hype?

These days, I am working on a POC (Proof of concept to the uninITiated) on Informatica 8, studying its features, performance and doing a comparitive analysis. I have worked on Informatica 7, so I can only do comparison between the two versions and not between different tools.

Anyway, SOA is a big buzzword, doing the rounds of tech-forums these days. Informatica 8 also claims to have adopted SOA. Tell you what! After looking at the tool, it's just a superficial makeover. Infa Powercenter has Workflow Manager, Workflow Monitor, Repository Manager etc. All these are hosted as servers. They have just renamed it as a service. Does it make the mappings faster? Does it require lesser resources? Does it make these tools more accessible? No. Everything remains the same.

In fact, on promotional material, it looks like a breakthrough. However, actually, its useless. Infa is not an exception. Data warehouse is stocked with buzz words like SOA, CDI, ELT, DSS, ODS etc. It is odious.

All these consultant types are operating at a level, where they don't deal with the intricacies of actual development. And so, are never exposed to the tools at a basic level. Only when you really work on tools, do you realise that the hype machine is just basically pumping out hot air.

The "friendly-fire" death of a British soldier in Iraq

Just check this stunning video about the killing of a British soldier in friendly fire from US air-crafts. Not much details in the visuals, but the audio is chilling.

You can read the transcript here.

Random notes on Guru

1. I thought the attempt at humour failed a bit. Aishwarya Rai saying in the train "Hai re! Chain se ro bhi nahi sakte hum". Abhishek telling Motabhai "Tu itna badsoorat hai, is liye ro rahe hai", and so on, just don't work.

2. A better actor than Baby AB would have done justice to the role. Baby AB is unconvincing.

3. Aishwarya is zillion times more tolerable than in Dhoom-2.

4. Lot and lot has been written about the cinematography. Apart from the initial flourishes, it was pretty average. I especially dislike it when slow-motion is used and frames transition isn't smooth (less number of frames per second, which are unable to support them slow-motion). I don't know the tech jargon for this, but RDB also used it and it gets on my nerves.

5. The movie just talks in punch-lines. There aren't too many details about what Guru actually does to become that successful (Its literally a montage of 4 shots where his company grows from 10 people to 10000). I would have liked lesser time for side-plots, so that the main story was more elaborate.

Why?

I am literally stumped at this piece of news. Two days gone, and still no clues as to who murdered these 6, no now 7 people of Chinese origin.

Sumo ride

Had one of really great Sumo rides this Friday, while coming from Pune to Mumbai.
The Sumo was chartered by a group of political workers, who had gone to support their friend in Pune. Since most of the Sumo was empty, they took in 3 more as extra income for the driver.

The workers kept discussing the results and favor deals. At a break, started talking with another guy. He was a Sales Officer for Diageo, the owners of brands like Johnny Walker, Smirnoff, Guiness, Black/Red/Blue Label and so on. Told me a lot of stuff about distillation process, quality of liquor, taste, BII (Bottled in India), BIO (Bottled in origin) concept, the marketing. His info about licensing and excise regulations was pretty instructive. I told him how absurd I felt the permit law is (you have to own a permit to drink in India). I tried to defend the law, but I think I made him see some sense.

Later got talking with a software guy from Geometric. Turned out we had a common friend. He needed info on DB2. I said I had a book and can lend it to him, as I don't need it anymore. We talked work a bit.

Overall, was a pretty useful ride. Thought, I was implementing some aspects of the Future Manager's program (soft skills training) I am almost about to complete.