a bigger version of the earlier photo. this i made to put in my profile. also made me realise, i dont have a good profile picture of myself. 

my photo at empire state building. this was the second time i was in nyc. this pic cost me 20 bucks. i love myself 

aménagement

landscaping
i spent the weekend at roni's palce. abha is in india, so it was just the 4 of us. we spent sat lazning around and sunday we did alittle work on the front yard. the part of the yard near the drive way had a lot of weeds. roni use weedkiller to kill those a week back. we pulled out the weeds and then put grass seeds in and then top soil. i learnt a lot abt landscaping.
we went out to a mexican restuarant for dinner.i had the chili cheese releno(i think!). it was heavy and i am burping and belching today thru out.
roni dropped me at office directly in the morning today.it was a 3-3.5 hr drive. he will be one tired uncle after sleeping at 3 and getting up at 5 and playing golf the whole evening today with his office pals. atleast for that sake i hope his ranking improves. he missed a couple of rounds in between when he was in india, so he dropped from 2 to 5.

le grand vol de train

"the gr8 train robbery"
i finished reading this book on the subway ride to ny city. ppl were looking strangely at me. i dint realise why till i looked at the cover of the book. it was just coiinceidence that i was reading a train robbery book on a train. no wonder they were a little aghast.
this is one of the best michael crichton's i've ever read. it has absolute best last chapter. it is like lotr. the last chapter is worth the whole book. in this chapter the master criminal explains the way he carries out the robbery. and he also tells the whole world that he is about to escape and does so. it must've made a good movie. i am hoping to see it in the next few months.
the plot is to rob the train containgin 12000 £ .the key is to obtain 4 keys put at diff places. the objective is attained with great precision and care. the way obtained is also explained in great detail. the book makes a nice reading.i enjoyed it thoroughly.the master criminal in this, we can draw a parallel from sherlock holmes. though in a negative connotation.
i must've made quite an impression on the train while reading the last chapter.
:)

the subway

yesterday after work i had taken the train to new york city and from there to roni's house. the new york city downtown i.e manhattan is connected by a subway(an underground rail service) called the shuttle. of course,i wasn't aware of it. shuttle ,in india, means a bus shuttle. so when a few wel;l informed passengers told me to take the shuttle and point downwards,i misunderstood as to there being a kind of bus service underground. when i found out that i had to take the train to get to penn station,i did take it.only i wound up in times square. by a stroke of luck i heard someone say that there would be another shuttle which takes me to penn. i ran and caught it. i was getting late for my 6:50 train to smithtown. after getting a little wet i reach penn station to find out the time is 6:49 and i was at the entrance. that wud sound as gud news if i had a ticket on me. i got on the train in a flash,running down the escalators and all a la filmi style. i did buy a ticket onboard.
every time i'm in ny, travelling alone, something happens.
first time roni drops me at jfk airport and my flight is overbooked. they(north west airlines) put me in a cab without my lugguage and i am rushed to la guardia with a weird lookin' lady. she was tatooed all over and she was pierced all over too. by the time i got over that shock i realise i mite be late for that flight too. i reach safely, call my ride from detroit to toledo and everything is fine.
the next time i take greyhound to ny city and spend the day site seeing: empire state building mostly. as im abt to take a train to white plains(roni's office), a latino dude bumps in to me. he makes hell of a noise abt me bumping into him and walking away. he made me stand in the middle of the road with abt 200ppl watching shout back at him that he was as much in fault as i was , if there was a fault ever. we resolved the issue with each of apologizing to one another and leaving. i think he dint want trouble with cops over such a matter.neither did i,but my concern was more on missing my train.
and now this.
i wonder what will happen should i ever get a job in manhattan.
GOD SAVE NYC.

la cloche sur le cercueil

"the bell on the coffin"

as i was reading the book "thre gr8 train robbery"(i've lamost completed it..review in a day or two), there was this very peculiar subject that mr crichton broached upon. the novel is based upon the victorian era of the english. when ppl died they were put in a coffin. that is a regular practice. once a 10 year old boy suffered this same tragic fate. ppl assumed he was dead for almst four days. so on the day of his burial at the cemetary, his guardian after putting the first fist of dirt on the coffin got the shock of their life when they could hear the boy shout"why ar eyou burying me?". the health care in those days wasnt the best and doctors assumed he was dead since he dint move for 4 days. but he was in a state of coma ofr those days.
this created quote a wildfire as ppl went back to the cemetary to chekc on thier loved ones..though they were 9 feet under..(or is 8 feet under?).
so a new invention by the ever-so-clever anglias was to put a bell on the outside of the coffin attached to the body inside. so that ever the slightest movement would trigger the bell and cz an alarm. this was a fad and the inventor made a lot of money within london itself.
a slight varaiation of this device was a tube through the coffin for the mortally-challeged to speak through. servants of the rich were made to sit at the cemetary waiting for the buried to speak for a period of almost a month after the death.
the return of the loved one...
the things ppl do for that one last word or sentence...
is life worth it..the agonizing pain..the denial..the suffering...
you betcha....it definately is...though i can't speak from personal experience....
take care and think about this next time you ring a bell
{ding dong}

partie deux d'homme d'araignée

the highlight of this day is as the title mite conceive spiderman II.
the movie was all i expected, in a good way. yet it disappointed me. the movie lacked that killer punch. the movie had some gud dialogues i wud like to post on the blog.maybe when i get the video. the movie was along the lines of the narration. the start was (titles) was great. they showed the movie spiderman in a cartoonish way. the drawings were great and the upside down kiss (spidey and mjw) - the cartoon version still lingers in the brain. the dress color mjw was wearing is what is striking.
spidey is the loser dude. a lot of sympathy is being created or the driector was trying to create this. then he gives up the show.he's fed up with all.they actiually show him losing his powers. through the movie the villain docock is shown . he's nice guy turned bad turned gud at the end. spidey learns thru aunt and mjw and others that spidey is what is needed. surprisingly peter parker is revealed as spidey. does that warrant a spidey 3. never know. maybe so. at the end doc ock and spidey save the day together. peter ends up with mjw anyways though she's suppsoed to marry an astronaut.surprisingly the freind osbourne is shown with the green goblin outfit.he not wearing it but u read it first here if u see him as the goblin in the sequel.
ppl rate this better than the 1st. well,they are diff in a sense, though i wud rate the 1st better. i like cartoon heroes as the previos post's point. dont misinterpret me. the movie is worth a watch defintely or more than a watch. ill probably end up with the div-x anyways.

informaćion

always a lover of information,i am really happy when the advent of news has come tothe forefront. it is really pleasant to see the likes of google giving importance to news. they have used their search capabilities to good effect.( or is it affect?). they google news is dependant on that the most popular news that is being read through the globe is posted ont he news.google.com site. that does mean that the posts are themost popular and not always the most sensible. the avd is that i get to read what the online-world thinks is important.
another source that has appeared through these conquests(mine) of info is the site www.xinhuanet.com. its a chinese site so the content is in chinese.so u'll have to know chinese to read it .ok im just kiddin' they do have a anglais version also. http://www.chinaview.cn/. its a site where you get the most unexpected news. so good some bad.but definately something you wont expect.from chinese site atleast. hey im not against chinku's, but you dont expect news about indian polit5ics on the macro level speculation in that site.
well u have to have them all to make the web.

have a look at the wonder...grand canyon in winter... 

"enregistreur d'enchaînement".com

the title translates into "web logger".com which can be abbreviated to blogger.com
i am pleasantly pleased to see that blogger.com has made some changes o the way you blog. they have introduced more options in the create window. apart from the regular bold, italics, font, underline, they have the regular word style stuff. for a second, i expected something more. they disappoint me. well, its a start none the less .
actually as i delve through these , i do find some more options. ihave the option to upload to blogger,which was previously avaiable only through hello,their picture program.
UPDATE: google has bought picasa the picture(hello) program i was talking about.
today's blog isnt much large. just saw the new viedoes of thierry henry on the web on nikesoccer.com. he's one amazing athlete.i am losing some sleep on the thought of patrick viera going away from arsenal. though i dont think it will happen.
trying out a few c programs for a change today instead of the regualr java. got my old turbo c compiler running and stuff.checking out my old program is fun. though im sure i lost a few of them when my computer was last upgraded. :( too bad.
my other blog the photoscope hasnt been doing too well as it has not had much attention. maybe thru the weekend. also i got a new slogan for my blogoscope and photoscope.
bad news on the reading scene.no progress at all. while i was surfing i read another blog where la femme was listing the books shes read thru the year. her premise is 52 books in 52 weeks. not bad. shes doing well too. gud luk to her

[[last slogan:Hi...inspired by a friend who was inspired by another ..i have decided to blog... as he said... lets see how long it lasts...]]

"proie"

"prey"

the book i had already read once before.i like it.its thumbs up.there are a few very interesting conclusions in this book. a few passages are very enlightening. of course, its a fiction book. but a few passages(if they are not fiction) are very though provoking. the book is a typical crichton.
the hero is jack.he's a computer-bio mix engineer/programmer.he's developed stuff on distrubuted networking and predator-prey kind of algorithm's. his wife works for company called xymos.which makes a special kind of neuronano particels which cause some problems. so jack is called to the fab lab to help since his team designed this code.
when he gets there.everything is suspicious.there's been a leak and a few artificially inteliigent particles have escaped and started reproducing and controlling their own behavous. first he doesnt beleive it. but then the particles/swarm attck him convincing him of their nature to destroy like preadtor on prey.
jack tracks them and dertroys them in a comlicated fasion.when he comes back tothe plnt he realises his wife is the reason for the chaos and she's been infested by a variant of those particels which have co-evolved with julia(his wife) and others in the fab lab. he and a beautiful,cute(the side heroine) mae destroy the lab in a explosive way and the day is saved. avg story if u think abt it.but thought provoking to say the least.
this passge is in particular:

"If you compressed the history of life on earth into 24 hrs,then multicellular organisms appeared in the last 12 hrs,dinosaurs in the last hour, the earliest men in the last forty seconds,and modern man less than a second ago."

or this one
"there's an old question in ai abt whether a program can ever be aware of itself.most programmers will say it was impossible. ppl have tried to do it , and failed.
but ther's a more fundamnetsl version of the question , a philosophical quesiton abt whether any machine can understand its own workinggs.some ppl say that will be impossible too. the machine cant know itself for the same reason you cant bite your own teeht. and it certianly seems to eb impossible: the humanbrain si the most complicated structure in the known universe, but brains still know very little about themselves."


now that ive finished reading this..i dont know what ill do now..i know..i'll start on the great train robbery.my next book :p

update: after a few days of this post,this comes upFT.com /Management/Science & health

ooh..look at that look 

she likes her chocolate 

Aishwarya

another dazzler 

aishwarya rai at her gorgeous best 

homme d'araignée

yesterday nite, i hooked up(to the net) and checked out the trailers and clippings from spiderman2. i have always been a fan of comics. and iam happy they are creating a sensation again. i do wish superman comes back as well and the others.batman..and they shud be more professional like the spidey series. peter parker(tobey) has been showing up a lot more now, for movie publicity most liekly. he's confirmed he will be making spidey3 with kirsten dunst. it shud start shuting early 2005.meanwhile i cant wait to see this movie.one of the stunts was terrific. the one on the clock tower.if u'veseen the movie u will appreciate it.me having esp already sense it to be the best scene of the movie,unless there's more of "less-clothed" dunst.

On the books scene: i am reading "prey" by crichton.ive read it bfore and rate it average. ill write the review when im done reading it. this weekend was mostly @ home. i spoke to roni m who had gone to india. vijaya a is coming on wednesday.she stayed back to see chintu. chintu is shooting a movie in ladakh,mom tells me. he's going places. iwont be surprised if he starts directing on his own. he reminds me of vikram(columbia) ,sudha a relative, now working for the un. when i worte to him in fall break asking him if he had holdays. he replied,we dont have fall break at the u.n. funny guy(in a gud sense).

one awesome looking blog showed up recently...
http://sacrificezone.blogspot.com/
its like a console terminal..definately worth cheking out.

l'homme terminal

fool that i was. i sat down to write this blog when i looked down memory lane to see when i first wrote my 1st blog. fool that i was..april fool's day...more significantly it was also the day google launches their new email service..gmail..evryone thought it was a google prank..well it dint turn out to be so..did it,gmail invitees?

i keep getting letters from ppl for invites.i give as much as i can. i dont want to make the whole world prestigious.i for onwe like gmail adn evrything google stands for. i am volunteer in their quest for information in their effort to localise the google site in various languages. i have converted some part of the google website into telugu,my native tongue.

i have been to splashdown( a water park, where i lazed around), new jersey(edison, nj temple--i bought a shirt there) and the fireworks in fishkill creek for the long weekend. also and more importantly, i have finished mr.crichton's the terminal man. abt the book:

lets just say its definately crichton not at his best. his other books have had more punch in them. this seems to lack that punch. the story seems run of the mill. of course, i cud be wrong. it was one of his earlier books and he dint have his style of writing yet. also the concept cud be novel at the time of publishing , but not now. i know what wud happen even before half thru the book.

the book is about a guy, harold benson, who has motor epilepsy. he keeps beating ppl up and doesnt remember it. so he goes to this fancy hospital,nsu or nsa(or somthing acronym-ical), where they decide to do a stage three - control his brain thru computer when he has his seizures. unfortunately the computer take control of him instead. he has 40 electrodes in him and the detail of the operation/surgery is noteworthy, if not boring and trite. he escapes kills somemore ppl .also he has a hatred of machines and thinks machines are gonna take over the world. combine the 2 plots and rmapage follows. he kills somemore..and kills somemore. i thingk a total of abt 5-7 ppl are dead and lote more injured ultimately. he gets killed in the end by the heroine . i forgot abt her..there's a heroine who's a psychiatrist.she's all she needs to be.sexy,brainy etc etc
cya harry..ur dead.

update: funnily..even crichton agrees withe me..
What is your least favorite book you have written? Actually, it is TERMINAL MAN. I worked on it for 9 drafts and never felt I got it quite right. I don't to this day know what I would do differently, or what I should have done.

ha ha ha


while lookin for this book's link i founf michael crichton's link
http://www.crichton-official.com

and also sidney sheldon...he's from the male species, not female, for ppl who keep arguing sidney is a girl's name...

http://www.twbookmark.com/features/sidneysheldon/
there's an excerpt from his new book there.

also there was one nice part in this book..i cant remember..i'll come back to it later..]
till then then