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ரொம்ப நாட்களுக்குப் பின் தமிழில் ரசிக்கும்படியாக ஒரு முழுநீள நகைச்சுவைப் படத்தை கொடுத்ததற்கு இயக்குனர் கே.ஸ்.ரவிக்குமாரைப் பாராட்ட வேண்டும். படம் வந்து பல மாதங்கள் ஆனாலும் இன்று தான் பார்க்கும் வாய்ப்புக் கிடைத்தது, படத்தைப் பற்றி பலர் (கேபிள் சங்கரின் விவரமானப் பதிவு இங்கே) எழுதிவிட்டதால் என் கருத்து சுருக்கமாக கீழே.
படத்தின் முதல் காட்சியிலிருந்து காமெடியும் ஆரம்பித்துவிடுகிறது, குறிப்பாக கடைசிக்காட்சிகளில் சிரித்து சிரித்து எனக்கும் மனைவிக்கும் வயிறு வலித்தேவிட்டது. கமல், த்ரிஷாவை விட சங்கீதாவின் நடிப்பு தான் அபாரம் – மிக இயல்பாக தனது பாத்திரத்தை செய்துள்ளார். கப்பல் காட்சிகள் கண்ணுக்கு குளிமை, அருமையான ஒளிப்பதிவு. மொத்தத்தில் ஒரு நல்ல பொழுதுப்போக்கானப் படம் – ரொம்ப யோசிக்காமல் பார்த்து ரசிக்கலாம், சிரிக்கலாம்.
When I was a small boy Cassette tapes had become mainstream, but in our house we still had many Gramophone Discs and a player to play it. So I have had hours of entertainment listening to Illayaraja’s Tamil hit songs and BoneyM songs from the LP records. But in the 1990s the player broke down, the discs scratched and lost, leaving me only with the memory of them. I felt LP records carried in their music a bit of magic, it was fun to pick up the needle and place it gently on the record with care not to hurt it-just like a bee drinking honey from the flower we needed to take the music from the record.
All this came back to my mind when I read the article on Gramophone in one of March issues of Mint newspaper titled “The house of vinyl” by Shamik Bag. The article talked about how Gramophone is coming back to life as a nostalgic gadget and A.R.Rahman’s upcoming album will be the first LP in 13 years for India’s premier music house (Saregama). Reading this I decided to buy a Gramophone player for myself. Since I wanted to listen to LP records with ease, I went with a modern version of the Turntable (Model TT-29) brought from Europe to India by Saregama against antique versions. I ordered the player online from their website for about Rs.8000 and it got delivered in few days.
Getting the player and installing was easy, but I couldn’t play it as I had no discs to go with it. I couldn’t find a single Vinyl record from Saregama’s online store, tried in local music stores, Chennai’s Electronic Bazaar (Ritchie Street), Moore Market – no luck. Saw some Vinyl in the new Odyssey store in Express Avenue, but it turned out each of the few records costed Rs.2000 or so (One-Fourth of my player cost). Giving up I called my Uncle, luckily he had few records in his attic which he promptly sent to me (thanking me for vacating some space in his attic). Later I found there are some Vinyl records available in Flipkart.com – I have ordered Vande Mataram for Rs.767.
Now I am happily listening to the music from my new Gramophone – and it does sound just as good as I remembered, I love the hisses and the imperfections.
Wanting to have a different evening snack I went to “The Soup and Salad Cafe” at T.T.K.Salai, Chennai. Ordered myself a El Bandido Veg soup (Mexican spicy) & The Kaamatein High salad (Rajma, Corn, Channa, Peanuts & Potato Chips). The Soup was quite good and the salad was very nice (the potato chips added a nice bit of crispiness).
You may ask why am I taking about a restaurant under a title of “How is Wisdom different from knowledge?”. It is because of this nice caption that I saw on the restaurant wall (photo below) which goes like “Knowledge is knowing that a Tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad”.
Over the millennia many scholars have preached the importance of Wisdom over Knowledge. The one I can recall immediately is the well known talk by Shri C.Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) who was Post independence India’s Governor-General. In the talk (Audio, Full Text) which was an introduction to the devotional hymns of Bhaja Govindam audio recording by Smt.M.S.Subbulakshmi, Shri Rajaji says “When intelligence (knowledge) matures and lodges securely in the mind it becomes wisdom” . But I think the above Tomato is a fruit explanation is the simplest and the direct that I have heard/read.
Take a single word “Loneliness” (being single and having lost someone you loved), tell the story finely through the happenings in a single day and it will be the movie “A Single Man”. The movie is starred by Colin Firth, who acted brilliantly in the recent OSCAR Award winning “King’s Speech” movie.
Having read about the Plot I was expecting “A Single Man” to be dull, a little drag and slow, but when I watched it today I found it a fine story telling. The story happens in 1960s Los Angeles and the director seems to have brought out the costumes of those days quite nicely. The story of is of George Falconer (Colin Firth), a middle-aged English college professor living in Los Angeles. George missing his long time partner, Jim (Matthew Goode) Eight Months earlier plans to commit suicide that evening and the story is all about what happens. An unexpected climax at the end!
Yesterday I got tickets by chance to see the first cricket match of IPL 2011 season in the stadium. The match was between CSK (my home team) and KKR team. I had taken my son for the first IPL season but then he was not old enough to understood much and so didn’t enjoy. Now he is 7 Years old, plays Cricket in the street and so was super excited to be there in the Chepauk Stadium. For me it meant being away from the comfort of home – AC, TV & Snacks. Anyways, the atmosphere was electrifying in the stadium and I was so happy that CSK won the match.
You can watch the highlights of the match from the official YouTube Channel here. 1st Innings of this match here, 2nd Innings of this match here.
In the past I have seen many bogus emails claiming to be from US Income Tax (IRS) Department, most of those emails are poorly crafted and are immediate give-away for trained IT eyes like mine. These SPAM emails are sent by modern day crooks through Zombies to fish (phishing) your personal information like credit card or bank account passwords. Today I got an email claiming to be from Indian Income Tax department it looked so genuine at first site but for two sure easy give-aways. See the original email I got below.
Two items in the above email raised my suspicion are:
1.Income Tax Department when they are able to send a personalized email with exact amount of Refund (Rs.36,120.25) surely knows my name or my PAN Number (Unique number for every Tax Payer), but this email says Valued TaxPayer. Indian IT Department normally address the tax payer as “Assesse”.
2. Moving my mouse over the link (not clicking on it) titled “To Submit a request click here” shows a web address which is different from incometaxindia.gov.in or *.gov.in. See the screenshot below. Copying the base web address alone from what was shown and visiting the site (please don’t try this at home) takes me an Arabic Website which does looks genuine but seems to have been compromised (hacked into) and infected with malicious code that if visited can come down and infect your computer as well.
So this is certainly a fraud email and please delete it immediately without opening it. If you opened it and not clicked on the link nothing much may have happened. Run a scan of your machine and relax. If you are curious on what the page would have done here is a screenshot (please don’t try this at home, I have taken this from a safe Virtual PC that I have destroyed immediately after the screenshot), it redirects to another website which shows a cloned webpage of IT Department then sends you to your Bank’s website for online transfer. If you come this far and typed in your password, your money is gone. You may want to complain immediately to your banker and to nearest Police station or Cybercrime branch – but there is very little of chance of your money coming back, as all these crimes are done across international borders.
The sender (spammer) of this email has done some things correct like the design of the email, sourcing the image (LOGO Image file of IT Department ) from IT Department’s official website itself.
There are of course more technical ways to identify the sender (and hence the authenticity) of an email through SMTP MailServer headers and so on, you can use a simple Bing! search to learn more.
Inviting me to do a Keynote for a workshop beginning on April first, I thought it was an April Fool’s joke. But it turned out Anna University new Department (Information Science and Technology) Professor Dr. S. Sendhilkumar was for real on this. And so yesterday I was honoured to be the Chief Guest for their Mobile Application Development two day Workshop on Mobile and asked to deliver the keynote. The inauguration event was graced by Dr.S.Shanmugavel (Registrar Anna Unviersity) & Dr.G.V.Uma (HOD Dept of IST, Anna University).
In my keynote address I talked around two main ideas:
The first was how during last decade innovation in Mobile Phones technology happened in Fareast (Japan & South Korea), but now United States is back in the driving seat with iPhone & Android. In India we are being known around the world for second largest user base (~600 Million Mobile subscribers) and for our Government’s bungling on how they handled 2G Spectrum allocation. As the Morgan Stanley reported pointed out in 2009, in last two years 5 trends have converged in the mobile world and they are 3G, Social Media, Video, VoIP & SmartPhones. If Netscape was the inflection point for Internet, then iPhone has become to be known as the inflection point (disruptive technology) for Mobile Internet. Before iPhone an average Cell Phone was being used 70% for Voice, now over 50% of usage in an iPhone is Apps & Data.
The second was about Mobile Apps (Mobility software), the potential and importance of it. A simple game from Rovio (Finland) “Angry Birds” has been downloaded over 47 Million in first 15 Months and the company with ~50 Employees is valued at several hundreds of million dollars. If we thought that is out of this world, look at this – a recent game “Tiny Wings” written by a single developer (Andreas Illiger) is the top grossing game in Apple App Store in February 2011. So conventional wisdom of Software Industry and big corporates don’t hold the key to innovation in Mobile Apps. It can be any person with meagre programming skills and a brilliant idea. So students in an academia environment like Anna University are well poised to become the next “Rovio” if they start thinking beyond their books and scores. Good Luck to all the students attending the Mobile Workshop.
_thumb.jpg "Dr.G.V.Uma (HOD Dept of IST, Anna University), T.N.C.Venkata Rangan, Dr.S.Shanmugavel (Registrar Anna Unviersity)")
_thumb.jpg "T.N.C.Venkata Rangan delivering the keynote address for Mobile Workshop in Anna University on 1April2011")
_thumb.jpg "Seen Prof. Dr. S. Sendhilkumar and T.N.C.Venkata Rangan")
_thumb_1.jpg "Dr.S.Shanmugavel (Registrar Anna Unviersity, Chennai) presenting a flower bouqet to T.N.C.Venkata Rangan")
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.jpg "Dr.G.V.Uma (HOD Dept of IST, Anna University), T.N.C.Venkata Rangan, Dr.S.Shanmugavel (Registrar Anna Unviersity)")
.jpg "T.N.C.Venkata Rangan delivering the keynote address for Mobile Workshop in Anna University on 1April2011")
.jpg "Seen Prof. Dr. S. Sendhilkumar and T.N.C.Venkata Rangan")
_1.jpg "Dr.S.Shanmugavel (Registrar Anna Unviersity, Chennai) presenting a flower bouqet to T.N.C.Venkata Rangan")