Moved!

I have moved to http://bookseeker.wordpress.com . My new RSS feed is http://bookseeker.wordpress.com/feed/

Please bear with me...

A bike for new year

Bought a Bajaj Discover for new year. Happy New Year to you all.

Rama, Seven Samurai and Nanowrimo

Rendezvous with Rama (First in the series)
Arthur C Clarke has indeed gone above in my popularity charts for science fiction authors. There is simply more to read, and he writes the proverbial science fiction when it comes to space. Also, I have felt them as extremely light to read. Take for instance, the first book in the Rama series.

In a not so distant future, when humans have started living in Moon, Mars, Mercury and some moons of Jupiter and Saturn, an unnatural asteroid arcs across the solar system. Having run out of Roman and Greek names, it is christened Rama, and suddenly becomes the hot topic of the worlds when it is discovered to be a spaceship built by an alien race. The book explores the mystery of this huge spaceship which in itself is small world. But the reader must be warned that, the book is no thriller. One must read it for the pure fun of the prospect of stepping into unknown and unpredictable territory. It is simply filled with the thrill of exploration, and that which is unique to space exploration. Imho, the book ends in a very satisfying fashion and is closed in itself. But it does leave a lot of questions unanswered. They are addressed later in the series.

Seven Samurai

Seven Samurai is referred to as the best movie by renowned director Akira Kurasova.

Rashomon was directed by the same director, which is the other movie that I have seen from this Great Master.

Seven Samurai is a classical mixture of the popular and art movie genres. Some poor miserable farmers employ seven jobless samurai to defend themselves from bandits. Extremely enjoyable and long. The interactions between the farmers and the Samurai, the effects of Samurai's arrival at the village, the fight sequences and some very good acting, all these will capture the viewer's heart. Most of the issues addressed are really thought provoking. Even then, I will only put it second to Rashomon in my list, which is simply the best I have seen. I so wish, I knew Japanese and was transported back to the '50s just to watch these movies on the big screen :)

Finally, let me point you towards www.nanowrimo.org, where people are celebrating the Novel Writing Month. The point is to write 50k words within November end. (and if you can still think it holds good as a novel, you win). It is crazy adventure and I am in. (And it is still 3 days with zero word count :) ). Let us see what happens.

(Images from wikipedia. easily captured and blogged using flock.)

Ubuntu 5.10 and flock

Installed Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger on the laptop.

Had to boot with acpi=off and irqpoll option, and everything works. Everything that matters atleast, like sound, usb mouse, and wireless(!). Except ofcourse my cd/dvd writer does not work properly ..yet. This version looks clean, and i had to install only once, unlike 5.04 which I had to install thrice.

And I am blogging this from the Flock beta browser. Maybe, when it matures from it's current buggy age, I will switch to it.

Some very good movies

I have been watching a few good movies nowadays. Here is a list of the important ones, that you must not miss.

1. Princess Mononoke

A movie by the master of Animation, Hayao Miyazaki, it talks about the adventures of a tribal prince. He is infected by a poisonous stain when he saves his village from a boar spirit. The search leads him right into the middle of a grand conflict between Eboshi - the Lady of Iron Town and Princess Mononoke - the princess of the forest. The movie symbolizes the tussle between nature and the resource seeking destructive humans. Gods of Wolves and boars and apes and their tribes (who appear intelligent) lead the fight to the ever-greedy humans. The best thing in the movie is that all characters possess both good and bad sides, which will put the audience in a moral dilemma. If you liked this movie, you can watch Spirited Away by the same director too. (A friend told me that it felt like Alice in Wonderland in a different setup,... Maybe. Maybe some Wizard of Oz too. But it was thoroughly enjoyable and refreshingly different.)

2. Memento

Christopher Nolan (of Batman Begins fame) directs(& scripts) this beautiful movie where the protagonist suffers from short-term memory disorder. The hero cannot create new memories after he is injured when he tries to save his wife from getting raped and killed. He can keep a context only for a few minutes(after which he forgets everything after the incident, and starts with a fresh "Now where am I?"). He is out to avenge his wife's murderer. This is a very intense movie. Please donot expect it to be a normal thriller.

3. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

This is one brilliant movie. You will see Jim Carrey in a really different role. He does serious roles as easily as he shines in comedy. Kate Winslet plays her part to perfection. The plot of the story is again based on memory. Both of them have managed to erase each other from after they have a bitter fight. I should not say any more, or it will spoil the fun. Charlie Kaufman won the Oscar for writing this story. And rightly so. Of the three, I liked this one the best.

Please approach this movies with patience, and without any expectation. (because that is how I did it). And ofcourse your mileage may vary.

Laptop Update: Wireless in Ubuntu!

Finally found a way to make wireless work in Ubuntu on my Acer 4601 NWLMi.
The problem: A hardware switch which turns wireless ON and OFF. Otherwise linux has drivers for my Intel Pro B/G Wireless card.

How I did it:

• Booted with irqpoll kernel parameter (I donno if this helped)
  
• Installed latest version of acerhk driver (acer hot keys)
• After loading the module, did

$ echo off > /proc/drivers/acerhk/wireless_led (Surprise, isn't it)

• pressed wireless hardware switch till iwconfig showed TxPower= "some value other than off" (should work on the second time or so)
  
• turned eth0 (wireless device) ON in network-admin( Restart it)
  
• Set iwconfig eth0 key s:(ASCII WEP key)
  

ESSID is already set using network-admin.
After this wireless works. Acerhk driver version = 0.5.27, ipw2200 version = 0.16
After doing all this circus, that bloody hardware switch will work perfectly minus the yellow led.
So only way to know the status is to ping. (And hope for the best)

In other news, today is Onam, Kerala's harvesting festival. So I had a nice little OnaSadya at a nearby place with friends. It is remembered as the day of return of the great Emperor Mahabali from Netherworld to visit his subjects. Nothing really goes without the religious twist, isn't it? But it has really become a festival of coming back. Lot of people go back during this time to their homes in Kerala, due the vacation. So it's celebration time for all people, regardless of religion.

Finally, the point of this great paragraph is, I am stuck here with work. (*grinds his teeth)

Wish you all a nice and sweet Onam.

Dune Saga

Dune Saga

Finished the first Trilogy of the Dune Saga.

Reading these books has been a great stress to me. They have sapped all my attention and time these days. The one word description for these books would be "Grand". Frank Herbert has an extremely grand way of telling a story. Everything in the story is just epic proportional, and you can say the same about the reading pleasure you derive from it. Almost all sentences are worth reading twice. And that is exactly what I did.

Dune's world is one of the most complicated universes I have read. Asimov's Foundation world is much like ours,it is driven by science & technology, but minus all religions. The big difference being the curious science of psycho-history which predicts the behaviour of huge populations very effectively. Extremely enjoyable plots arise from this setup making Foundation series much enjoyable. A.C Clarke's universe is almost the present cleverly extrapolated( Odyssey series). Reading Odyssey is extremely enjoyable because I almost could believe all those things happened. Dune's world unlike these two is extremely cleverly and comprehensively crafted. Science and technology still plays important roles, but not as important as the people running the show. Religion is again brilliantly used to conjure the required plots. Utmost importance is given to people and their skills and their decisions, so that beautiful drama is derived from strange and fascinating situations. You can describe it as some sort of futuristic politics.

Spoiler warning (next three paras)!!

It is set in a far away future, where men have already fought a great war with thinking machines and won. It is now taboo to build a machine in the likeness of men. People have diverged out to fill up the gaps. A mentat can function as the greatest computer analysing logical data from real people-involving situations and provide you with brilliant answers. The Spacing guild has grown to monopolize space travel in such a way that all inter-stellar travel and even satellite monitoring is dependent on them. Shields have been developed to thwart projectile attacks. Result: people have to rely on poison, hand to hand combat with blades. Society has split to wealthy and powerful families known as the Major/Minor houses and those who serve them (their army). The world is still run by an Emperor and the houses have formed the Lansraad council to balance his power. Behind all these actors is the Bene Gesserit school of witches - highly trained women, brilliant, powerful, seductive and completely loyal to their common cause: to bring forth the Kwasich Haderach or the male Bene Gesserit. B.Gesserit Reverand mothers can turn back and recollect the lives of all their female ancestors, but not male. This K.H. superman can look backwards into both lines of creation as well as see the future through prescient visions. Hence, this school of women is conducting in secret, a great breeding program on all the humanity to produce this superman. Religion, superstition, politics, etc are used to achieve this. There are still more groups of stranger people who make interesting appearances in the books.

All of this complex world is somehow centered on the spice melanche produced from the planet Dune. Spice is what drives this world. Spice gives longer life to normal humans and can affect each of the above groups in a specific way. Everyone in this world is utterly dependent on it.

On this crafted world, the author has set a great struggle for power, which unfolds into the grandest drama ever. If you have the patience and are ready for some serious prose, you will enjoy reading those brilliant sentences again and again. The author has used the concepts of religion in a very effective way.

I have heard that the later books are slightly less interesting than these three. But they are said to provide a nice completion to the questions raised by the first three books. I hope to catch up with them at a later point, since it is almost impossible to read these books continuosly.