Avatar is a mind blowing Matrix-Captain Planet-Last Samurai movie

Review in a paragraph: Avatar is a superhuman mind blowing free-bird creative expression by James Cameron. Do watch it on a big screen, with 3D if possible. It may not be the best movie ever made, but it is the best movie experience I've ever had. Two and half hours of non-stop awe inspiring graphics with every t crossed and every i dotted.

Contents: Storyline(possible spoilers)-Acting-Depth of graphics-Political statement-Reception of the movie-Trivia/Observations

Storyline:

The storyline is a mix of Matrix, Captain Planet and the Last Samurai. People controlling their bodies in another conscience, a sacred tree removed to benefit from the land and a last charge by lesser equipped beings against a superior force - it fits in perfectly. It is not chockablock with cliches to keep the ordinary guy chuckling, like single words dropped in tense situations to induce laughter('Hi... you don't need to stand up' or 'You guys aren't the only ones iwth guns here').

This soldier is sent to replace his brother who was a nerd unlike him, a soldier. He infiltrates the indigenous people because the living soul of the planet accepted him... So in 3 months he does what? Inducted fully, some intelligence regarding the structure of the tree(with all that firepower does it really matter if that tree is hollow or thick or spiral inside?) is got and he still hasn't gotten them to evacuate the area.

The tribe try their best to save the sacred tree from bulldozers(an episode straight out of Captain Planet), are unable and retreat deep into the forest. Our hero tries to convice them to get out, they don't, he is imprisoned, they escape because of one rogue officer and set up a mobile base to help the tribe again.

Everyone is rallied, they attack and take unexpected welcome help from all the animals around. When the scientist said the entire planet was a network of thoughts, I expected the trees and plants to rise up and march like in Two Towers, but instead it was the animals who responded to the call of the mother tree.

Acting:

Cameron said the faces of the actors were recorded on camera and mapped to the characters in virtual reality - well, we could make out anger, happiness, sadness and a menacing face. Beyond this trying to recreate and observe requires keen attention to the face which needs a second viewing. The human characters were, well, cliched. A man in charge who acts like a dumbo, the military guy stern, yes, in that sense they have performed well. Zoe Saldana is beautiful, but it's sad she isn't in the movie in-person.

Depth of graphics:

The first clips to emerge was the Thanator chase clip. That itself was pure awesome, with bubbles in the water sealing the deal. The different plants in the forest, their colours and response to stimuli are amazing. You can see the face muscles twitching and the muscles rippling when the avatars move their limbs.

The robots react nicely to the recoil of the gun - the more the power, the greater the load time and kickback.

The colours used are so rich they remind one of a rainforest - the birds, flowers, flying creatures, arrow feathers. Ash, embers, jellyfish-insects, leaves and the tentacles of the mother tree appear to be floating when seen in 3D.

Cameron said in an interview he waited for 10 days waiting for the right sunset for the famous arms-stretched-together scene in Titanic, so for him to manipulate everything in graphics is a testament to the advancement in technology and perseverance.

Political statement:

When the characters mention the offense as a 'shock and awe' campaign, call out the hero Jake for 'betraying his race' and are unconcerned for deities and show their ultimate goal is material gain inspite of loss to life, it is both obvious and inevitable that James Cameron is making a statement, maybe even politically. The military chief is bothered with a tactical success, elimination of occupying persons and securing the required area. The guy-in-charge is bothered about the 'cost to lives' and hopes not many are lost because if maybe a bad corporate image. That is a lot of not-so-subtle poke at materialism.

In fact, if those tribes were not on another moon but in a pocket of undisturbed land on earth, it is a story often repeated over and over again, where indigenous people want their lands to remain untouched. Did Cameron knowingly take a risky jab at all these events?

Reception of the movie:

It's been beyond expectations. Persons hellbent on it failing were impressed. Sandy predicted Avatar would out-gross Vettaikaran in Tamil Nadu itself. Keeping anyone still for 150 minutes isn't easy.

Trivia/Observations:

-As I said, the movie reminds me of Matrix, Captain Planet, Last Samurai and Two Towers.
-When Michelle Rodriguez doesn't press the button and withdraws saying 'I didn't sign up for this sh_t', obviously there would have been an inventory check of who's empty and who's not, revealing she hadn't fired. That didn't happen.
-Noone seems to bother chasing her when she hijacks the copter.
-I wonder what happened to the scientists who chose to stay back on Pandora - were they absorbed into the tribe too?
-The tribe have rituals akin to almost any Earthly indigenous tribe: treating the Earth and other beings to be sacred, observing a deity, spirituality, afterlife, living off the land.. Cameron's just taken an Earthern tribe and made their home Pandora.
-The concept of 'Bird of Prey doesn't look up' is well thought of and used.
-Wonder why the mobile base was not attacked by animals or the people.
-Floating islands, I remember seeing them years ago when people were setting up snazzy desktop backgrounds. I've searched, this is all I could find, but the description is photoshops of a beach in Thailand with the rocky coves made into floating islands.
-The insect which twirls and spirals when touched immediately reminded me of da Vinci's drawings for a helicopter.
-'Unobtainium' negative 50 points for the writers for such a stupid name.
-Minus 50 again for the most ineffective trailers. The movie is so good, the trailer couldn't keep up.
-Another negative 50 points for using Papyrus font for the movie title.
-Watching blurred background objects in 3D is painful, because you try to sharpen them when they aren't.
-I do not understand, and what is not explained in the movie, is how the human controls the avatar. It is just a mental link, but no explanation beyond that.
-Being brutally honest, the characters are practically naked. Couldn't resist mentioning it.

Pics used via Wikipedia, Official Avatar Flickr page.

Chetan Bhagat didn't get the memo on the Interwebs

I may have just realised that the author of Five Point Someone isn't that savvy afterall. Arguing on the internet? And losing? What a pity.

In the older pockets of the internet, i.e. Europe and America, it is well known that you do not argue on the internet(as this xkcd comic puts it aptly and is discussed at length), because it's more than a waste of time. That Chetan fell so quickly and easily into the trap laid for him is sad.

You see, on the internet there are a section of people called 'trolls' who will say anything simply to poke at the coals and fan the flames. Hey, the Wiki page on trolls itself is locked down - no points for guessing why. Fly You Fools is snarky enough to qualify.

If you want a simple answer, it is akin to leaving a comment on a Sachin Tendulkar fansite saying 'Tendulkar doesn't have proper footwork' -this is laying the trap. When someone takes the bait, it is instant gratification: You may or may not believe in Sachin's footwork, but you take immense joy in the walls of text dumped in favour of Sachin, when in fact it is a non-issue.

Taking a larger view, I don't understand what Chetan wanted to accomplish by blocking his detractors. Won't they or can't they create a new account and taunt him even more? Why was Chetan so bothered about someone replying to him? Why couldn't he just plainly ignore them?

Users on the internet are trigger happy - anything exciting to be accomplished by moving just your fingers and is plain simple to do is simply asking for trouble. The target here is big too - a much revered author.

There are two topics I would like to dig deeper into - the first is Twitter. It is a tool best for one to one communication with instant feedback. A prominent example is television personalities getting reviews the moment their show is done with - or even better, an immediate comment on a particular section. If you use is rightly, you can leverage it to crowdsource your needs or push information to them. It should not be forgotten - there is no gap between you and the end user. No newspaper journalist, no publicist, no email inbox to pad for an avalanche. When it comes, it is an unedited stream of raw emotion. An avalanche of what, depends on how you reply to the trolls and users alike.

The other is the question of piracy. Any reader of Techdirt will remind you that pirates are users whose choice of consumption has not been met or have not been marketed to properly. To expand my point, what if Chetan's book was available on every street corner like the pirated version? It's already been proven to work: c.f. Moser Baer. Low cost discs(movies as low as Rs. 50) have brought in huge revenues to the company.

Sifting even finer, a good lot of readers are those with little patience and so lazy as to not read a book. These obviously prefer ebooks. Case in point: My friends bragged about finishing 2 States in less than a day. Why didn't they buy the book? 1. It wasn't available on Amazon.com 2. The book was so hot they couldn't wait for a hard copy. So courtesy of a good samaritan who passed along the pdf they finished the book and wrote glowing reviews. Do these readers pirate the book because they want to bankrupt Chetan?

No, they love him so much they want it in the easiest way possible. Piracy and intellectual property is a huge can of worms made worse by a lack of online shopping capability as far as India is concerned. Fun facts: free ebooks have been 'pirated'. Even tracks given away by a band for free were distributed widely through P2P networks. Lesson to be learnt? People will do the simplest thing to get their stuff.

A wider post on IP and what to do about piracy later.

But as far as Chetan is concerned, I hope he is more wiser now regarding the known unknowns lurking on the internet and doesn't undertake silly fights. It's better to have the moral higher ground. A lesson for all internet users: DON'T FEED THE TROLLS.

Edit: This will be fun for a while: a genius sets up a site specially for #chetanblocks. Check out the 'best of' at http://www.chetanblocks.com/#cb2. Another lesson for all internet users: NEVER FIGHT THE INTERNET. YOU CAN'T WIN.

P.S. 'Interwebs' and 'internets' are slang webspeak for the internet.

Tags: Twitter war, Chetan Bhagat vs flyyoufools, chetanblocks, chetan blocks twitter user

Burmese Indians

I watched Motor Sundaram Pillai a long long time ago, but what I remember most from it is that Sivaji Ganesan used to have a factory in Burma. I have come across several references to the cultural and trading connections between Burma and India not only in articles but also in familial anectodes, mostly recalling the days of the Raj.

With pro-democracy protests and a military junta in rule, I wondered if there were any Indian-origin people still in Burma. A Google later there was a Wikipedia article, an Atlantic article from 1958 and a Time article from 1964.

Effective way of arguing

Internet discussion is all about disagreeing with one another, denigration is uncommon and unavoidable at times.

This image(click for larger view) coaxes us not to degrade ourselves and judge the efficacy of other comments. It is a one-stop guide to countering another person's argument - maintain the upper hand at all times.

Original text written by Paul Graham and image Loudacris. Image used via CC3.0.

Adblock Plus: Guilty pleasure

To use or not? Adblock Plus is an addon for Firefox which removes all ads from webpages by blocking ad links as it loads. That's just the simple part.

At first it didn't seem very different: I already use Flashblock to stop Flash content on a page from loading automatically and have blocked images from a handful of ad sites, leaving text ads to appear, but you will feel the change when you disable Adblock Plus.

Suddenly it will feel as though the webpage is cluttered and un-beautiful. Enable it back again and you will truly appreciate the addon. I is guilty pleasure: as it is most web content survives through ads, so if those ads don't reach the user, revenue will definitely decrease. Some sites even explicitly suggest that their site be excluded from Adblock Plus.

The debate rages on - on one side the 'net should be free' people(pirates?) who want only content with zero disruption in service, on the other content producers with revenue shortfalls.

The extreme cases are interesting: if all users use the addon, noone will see ads; the other is that content producers block users who have enabled Adblock Plus.

In my opinion, Adblock Plus should not be used by the avid user who knows the difference between content and ads. We should allow producers to exhibit ads, simply because we aren't paying anything. As long as it is free, complaining would be to listen to the street musician for hours and not even acknowledge him.

If at all it should be installed, it is for novice users - the young and the old who can be tricked into entering their email for a free iPod or subscription.

Ultimately, if you are using Adblock Plus, please disable it. As much as website maybe torturous, please bear with them. It's offered free.

Mrs vs Ms vs Mz

In a social gathering, referencing other people is easy amongst peers - you could even say 'that guy' or just call him by name, 'Bala'. With elders, though, it is difficult with the elderly ladies. I've always had a bit of hesitation in naming a person - 'Who prepared this dish?' 'Ms/Mrs XY'.

Depending on their marital status, the answer can vary: the Guardian style guide says use Ms unless they have specified Miss or Mrs; Time magazine in a non-article says anything is fine.

There is one more specific: British speakers tend to pronounce Ms as Mz, indicating their current marital status is 'unknown'. I've heard it a couple of times on TV shows, so at last there seems to be a solution: Mz.

Mirror mirror who do you see

While rearranging at home, we had to move a dressing mirror(tall one) outside, where the dogs happened to find it.

The Dachshund is ferocious by nature, while the G. Shepherd is semi-mellow. The difference with which they approached the mirror is a telling lesson in how we perceive others and how they reciprocate to us.

The Dachshund, sighting another dog in the mirror, immediately started growling and then barking. Luckily I was carrying it, else it may have charged the mirror.

On the other hand, the G. Shepherd went to the mirror tail wagging - bumping into it whilst trying to sniff, obviously not expecting the dog in the mirror to move as fast as it was.

Then it struck me: isn't this how we end up viewing others? Unbeknownst to us, people are sizing us up, with little help, based on our doing. Our actions may not seem much to us: a kind gesture here, a swift rebuke there, an innocuous tease - but they may be a lot to others. If one has a frown with an authoritative voice, like the Dachshund, there is no reason for others to speak to us softly or kindly.

While, like the G. Shepherd, smile, and the world smiles with you.

'Dams remove power from the water'

My physics teacher once narrated a tale of how politicians were misleading villagers by telling them 'remove power from the water', hence crops would not grow properly.

The politician was supposedly referring to the electricity generated upstream, hence 'power removed', there would be 'lesser power' left for the crops to grow.

So, my teacher said, villagers must be given proper information about dams and how generating electricity does not remove any actual 'power' from the water, and that scrupulous politicians were using the situation to rail against the dam.

However, in my opinion, the politicians were inadvertently right, and my teacher was wrong: putting up dams does actually remove 'power' or 'punch' from the water - silt and hence nutrients are held back - which could lead to lower crop yield. I have no idea which dam he was talking about and dams have varied locations and maintenance; so silt accumulation may or may not be a major problem, but in many dams this has been a problem(wiki, Aswan dam, 1, 2, KRS Mysore, Mettur dam).

To sum up, politician makes a seemingly inaccurate statement to further his goals; they could be ultimately true albeit in a different sense.

Playing cards racist, sexist: GPTP

Faux Wire Service

Wichita, KS. Sep 29: Normal playing cards, used by millions of people daily, are racist and sexist, the Group for Proper Treatment of People(GPTP) said in a press conference today.

According to spokeswoman Scarlett Butler, the suits in modern playing cards are in red and black and an absence of white suits indicated that these cards were intentionally ignoring that color.

"That there are two black suits and two red suits but no white suits proves beyond probable doubt these cards are designed to ignore the welfare of white people," Ms. Butler said. Her organization was formed for the very purpose of pointing out such anomalies to the larger public and had several thousand followers on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, she pointed.

Going further with their agenda, Ms. Butler also declared that the cards were sexist because there are two male faces (King and Jack) but only one female face(Queen). She suggested that the Aces should feature a female face or two of the Kings should be made female.

Noting that there are female heads of state too, Ms. Butler pressed upon the fact that a disparity in as small matters as playing cards should be the starting point for equality in gender and race.

However, during the Q&A session, Ms. Butler dodged many questions, referring them to her head office. In particular when it was indicated that playing card backgrounds are entirely white and it would not be possible to make a white suit and that most books are printed in black on white backgrounds, she said asking such questions amounted to 'racism' and that her head office would answer such 'frivolous' queries.

Ms. Butler ended the interaction when a journalist wanted to know if her organization was sexist because they had only women on their board of directors.

The GPTP did not return emails at the time of this report.

End

The above is an over the top work of imagination and has no bearings in real life.
-----------------------------------------
At first this article may seem moronic, but this post is not without reason.

This is inspired by these mainly: an email calling a blog targeting women sexist, commentators calling Obama racist and finally saying health care reform is Nazism, that too to a Jewish Senator.

You read that right. A guy calls a blog sexist because it caters to the tastes of women(notwithstanding that the site doesn't have overtly unique specialities apart from those who comment). A commentator calls the first black president of the USA racist inspite his having a white parent and grandparents one of whom fought in WWII. And somehow beyond belief a Jewish senator is accused of supporting Nazi policies.

If you just frowned your eyebrows, wrinkled your forehead, scratched your head with one hand and placed your chin in the other and said to yourself, 'Did all of this really happen?', I won't blame you.

PS: My earlier faux report was ultimately justified: PETA was unhappy Obama swatted a fly.

Indian badge in the US too

These pictures were taken on the premises of the Sri Venkateswara temple in Pittsburgh.



As you can see, those drivers didn't want to park some distance away, drove up to this spot, found the adjoining parking spaces occupied and decided to park in the No Parking zone(granted the pickup may not belong to an Indian). There were many more improperly parked cars all around.

It highlights the lethargic attitude and aloofness even though they, being in the US, know better. Had this happened in India I wouldn't have cared one bit, but this somehow it is assumed that we needn't care we come to know that it's Indian and not American. What is this, Indian when you blink, American otherwise?

Well there is the possibility that those vehicles belong to the temple trustees and marked the area so they could park. That, if true, is even worse.

Image credit: Sandy

Vegetarian? Don't go to McDonald's

If you are a pure vegetarian, please don't step into McDonald's. There's nothing in there for you. First off the personnel in fast food chains do not understand 'vegetarian'. You have to tell them 'no meat', otherwise you will end up like my roommates who ate a Filet-o-fish sandwich with the fish even though they said 'vegetarian'(and no meat I think).

The point is McDonald's doesn't have anything for pure vegetarians except salads, cookies and ice-creams.

So if you go to McDonald's and order a McChicken without the chicken, you will get a bun with lettuce and tomatoes. Sure, they will oblige to any request, but YOU WILL ONLY BE MAKING AN IDIOT OF YOURSELF, which is not worth it, SO DON'T GO THERE.

These engineers fail at basic safety

My first thoughts, aside from the insane heat generated from the processor and the materials lining the cooling unit, were, how badly they fail in basic safety.

Handling liquid Nitrogen is no small joke, mainly because it freezes anything it touches in an instant - so for these 'engineers' to use the flask without gloves and goggles should get them an F.

My friend Sunil had a one-on-one experience with liquid N, when he touched the outside of a flask filled with it. The split second touch with the non-gloved hand resulted in dark blood-clot like skin damage on the tips of his fingers, including numbness, disappearing in a few months. I asked him for a comment; his comments, edited only for netspeak:

that's dangerous sh*t he is doing

you need to have safety gloves and safety glasses

because if your skin comes in contact...... tissues will die and the whole area would be black and in severe cases you will not regain the feeling in that area..... i.e., area will be numb for life

and when he was pouring from the temp controlled big container to the thermo-flask...... he can just pour it like water...... he needs to have a nozzle for it

This is not even touching the aspect of safety which the BBC should have ensured, especially when their own shows double down upon it.

Maybe it's the reporter's duty to inform them.

Ah well, expecting that much of her is a lot especially when she asks if a hair dryer could be used instead of the blowtorch. Stay classy, lady.

Image used via: personal, non-commercial

The milk jug illusion

Getting milk in one gallon jugs and infrequent visits to the grocery store mean timing your consumption to coincide with a trip worth the time, so it took awhile to counter the milk jug illusion which tends to throw off scale visual levels for judgement.

These jugs(also called milk gallons) have pseudo-conical top halfs, so when pouring out milk, that half seems to empty faster, instructing you, albeit falsely, to slow down consumption by say one-eights so as not to make a specific visit to replace it. A couple of days later, the level reaches the cubical half, and then the level hardly seems to dip, panicking you to believe you will still have milk left when you get a new jug.

It's even worse when the level is so low when viewed from outside that what one might assume it will last for just one day actually lasts three times.

In essence, the milk jug empties out faster when opened and doesn't want to empty in the end.

Image via

Clearing flash cookies

I should have written this months ago, here it is, regarding flash cookies stored on your computer.

It all started when I reduced the volume on a YouTube video, then cleared all my cookies, temp files later and opened that site again. To my surprise the volume was still reduced, which indicated that the settings were stored elsewhere, not in the browser. A little searching showed that flash settings, including video players are stored in a flash profile under the Adobe Flash directory.

Sites recommend simple utilities like Ccleaner to clear those cookies, which I continued to use regularly.

Recently, the discussion has increased - why suddenly, I don't know, but it also turns out that those cookies store a lot more information than normal browser cookies, and that in some cases cleared browser cookies were reinstated by those flash cookies.

Hence, for privacy reasons, all cookies must be cleared reguarly.

Here is a scary demo: the Adobe Flash website can access all your cookies.

I would personally suggest that you dump IE for Firefox or Chrome, as even IE8 is clunky and tough to work with.

Tools:
1. Firefox addon BetterPrivacy shows you the cookies and offers to clear them when you exit the browser.
2. Ccleaner shows and clears temp files from a variety of applications including browsers and Office.(Applications-->Macromedia flash)

9/11, 2001

That fateful day changed the course of recent history in ways we would not have imagined. Two wars, a dramatic shift in geopolitics and an unprecedented election victory later, things are still not normal. Where was I that day?

An evening back from school, listening to the noon Newshour(with Julian Marshall I think) on BBC World Service, from 6.30 pm to 7.30pm. The first report was 'a helicopter has crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers', it was a normal breaking news, probably just an unfortunate helicopter losing control. Then it was corrected to a plane...followed by a second plane. He then announced that fighter jets had been 'scrambled' to intercept another plane. Still it was the normal routine: mentioning to top story, moving on the next, until my father called me out to see the devastating visuals of the towers engulfed in smoke.

The immediate reports were that 2 planes had struck the towers and could not be a coincidence; helicopters could not evacuate those on the rooftops because of the intense heat and smoke. Later cellphones and other communication devices were rendered useless because a lot of companies had towers on top of the two buildings.

The major news channel of the day, NDTV directly relayed live footage from CNN for the rest of the night. Sun TV had all but one story not related to the attacks.

The next day, the headline on The Hindu read "America under attack" with TV grab pictures of the towers collapsing. The day after it had the horrifying picture of people jumping out of the tower in desperation.

BBC World Service upended its entire programming - the whole schedule was news about the attacks now updated with the Pentagon and the plane crash in a field. One poignant story was that of a window cleaner, who worked on the towers, whom the Outlook programme had covered very recently. They announced that he was working there at the time of the attacks and did not survive. Earlier there would be hour-long uninterrupted programs, now every half hour it was time for a 2 minute news roundup, which still continues to this day.

Another report mentioned was that the architects of the WTC had in fact taken into an account an airplane striking the building due to fog and missing JFK, but as was apparent, the buildings withstood the impact but collapsed due to the melting of the intermediate sections causing the top sections to collapse. The attackers had planned their operations be high enough and out of reach of firefighters.

It took more than a week for regular programs to come back on air and I particularly remember one titled 'Understanding Islam' featuring introductions to the faith and their holy book. It was a time of great tribulations, with anyone with Arabic features including beards - like Sikhs being attacked, tough restrictions on travel, visas rejected, television and movie stars hosting telethons to comfort anyone calling in and the inevitability of war in the region.

What if is such a difficult scenario to address. We can't turn the clock back, but the attacks did bring to the forefront issues India has been facing for a long time: proxy war through extremism. That day is also indirectly responsible for the downfall of the LTTE - the first press conference by their chief followed a ceasefire declared in the heightened sense of insecurity in the following months. It will be the 8th anniversary - still a contentious issue amongst Americans, partly because of the wars, but it is as this generation's Pearl Harbor: 'Never Forget' is etched in stone outside many a public building.

What is your recollection of that day?