tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-106302832008-08-30T03:30:45.479-07:00My Goodness My Patang!Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comBlogger88125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-74307107224969634772008-07-08T02:21:00.000-07:002008-07-11T08:47:01.160-07:00

Yes, I cannot tell a lie - I saw both these movies back to back. Yes, voluntarily. No, you may not ask why. Anyways, on with the reviews. JT...YJN is an insufferable bore of a movie. The story is cliched beyond belief and thanda like kulfi. You can see the end coming just by reading the tag-line of the movie, which in effect makes this movie an exercise in patience. Not that there isn't enough

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-90577375629266170182008-06-16T03:42:00.000-07:002008-06-16T04:35:42.212-07:00

This post is for all you people in Linuxland who stare enviously (and furtively) at Mac users with their TextMate. I know you've seen all the screencasts with some geek with a MacBook and TextMate doing their nifty snippet things and going clickety clack on their white keyboards. Well, I know I have and I said, yeah emacs is cool and all but why can't I have some TextMate coolness? Then I

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-43156776795141491222008-06-11T13:02:00.000-07:002008-06-11T21:54:32.985-07:00

As you may have noticed, Aamir is getting a lot of buzz in the press. For example, Taran Adarsh writes Films like Aamir are more for the discerning audience, for the thinking viewer. It's a film that attacks your mind, rather than your heart. It's a film that pricks your conscience. Not one of the reviewers will tell you about all the pitfalls of this movie - its meaninglessness and the utterly

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-89213110911183950272008-06-07T13:31:00.000-07:002008-06-07T14:43:07.052-07:00

In 1993, Chick Corea put together the second version of his Elektric Band and recorded what has turned out to be one of my favourite jazz-fusion discs of all time - the seminal Paint The World (those who have been following this blog might remember this post). The lineup replaced uber-shredmeister Frank Gambale with the little known Mike Miller, a studio musician from the Los Angeles scene. I

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-38373400714751918192008-05-26T12:09:00.000-07:002008-05-26T12:34:54.306-07:00

Who is it helping the most? Large consumers of petrol. i.e. Ford Endeavour owners blasting the AC with a special power point for the computer. Or, people like my boss who drive a converted Merc van with a DVD player and a drinks cooler. These are not the people who need subsidies. These are the people that must be discouraged. A quick back of the envelope calculation reveals that petrol retails

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-72492176116520317752008-05-25T11:39:00.001-07:002008-05-25T12:14:09.017-07:00

$135 a barrel. Headline news worldwide. World poised for the outbreak of fuel riots. All of America on the abyss. Is it really happening? It would be to boring to get into an introductory discussion about peak oil but the uninitiated can follow the discussion at http://theoildrum.com Peak oil is an inevitability. Whether we are living through it at this very moment or not might even today be

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-48192831127383933892008-05-05T12:13:00.000-07:002008-05-05T12:31:54.836-07:00

It was jusgt a few days ago that I told someone - sometime before 2009 is over we will see extreme poverty being brought about by nothing more than a collapse of the world's monetary systems. Seems like it is coming to pass already. GWB's recent comments regarding the alarming rise in food prices has sparked off quite a controversy in the papers here in India, as well as I suppose in China. Of

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-22936653232380185762008-05-01T00:24:00.001-07:002008-05-01T00:28:31.869-07:00

There is a particular kind of nerd that is so smug about the number of things he knows that he forgets that facts are for analysing, not for remembering. Like Borges's Funes the Memorius, this nerd keeps collecting information without ever being able to hew a coherent whole out of the assortment of facts. Add to this some facility with the keyboard and a staggering command of the english language

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-37691305788852410412008-05-01T00:17:00.000-07:002008-05-01T05:40:32.928-07:00

I'll say it again - economics is a religion. It is not a science, it is not art, it is not a social science. It is, essentially, a body of knowledge designed to provide ideological backing for the rule of a certain class of people thereby allowing them to control the actions of vast multitudes of people. It is a religion. Both religion and economics started as ways of explaining the world. While

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-75318060630430687502008-03-11T21:31:00.000-07:002008-03-11T23:15:23.087-07:00

Recipe for an Oscar - take a script that bashes what passed for Socialism behind the Iron Curtain, make it long and boring, toss in some cardboard characters, add dollops of melodrama and voila - turn up to collect your golden statuette. Seeing as how the vast majority of reviews for this abomination of a film were so overly gushing and full of praise, it can only be concluded that the entire

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-42485444496929005562008-01-08T01:24:00.000-08:002008-01-08T03:24:25.488-08:00

Of course the Tata's fabled one-lakh car is a civil disaster waiting to happen. Looking at our choked streets, and in Mumbai at our choked six-lanes-each-way Express Highway, it is not apparent to the casual observer that what is required here is more cars. Infact, an alien from outer space would easily surmise that cars are robbing people of their mobility instead of the opposite and what is

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-72458316021130117062007-12-26T22:06:00.000-08:002007-12-26T23:02:34.484-08:00

The other day I turned on the TV to watch the last round of the Lead India campaign on Star One. There had been a bit of a buzz in the office about this, with people saying that oh, any educated leader is better than the uneducated louts we have now while I waged a lonely battle on the "disagree" side. I only get to hear of happenings from my wife who does read newspapers, so I was vaguely aware

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-58835689615564582752007-12-24T08:24:00.000-08:002007-12-26T23:11:13.162-08:00

Welcome to [Main Sponsor] Lead The World - A [Promoter's Name] Initiative's special Hall of Fame edition of [Main Sponsor] Lead India - A [Promoter's Name] Initiative. So, we have with us today amongst the finest of leaders, political philosophers, thinkers and writers of all ages, and we shall be testing their skills in our crucible of fire, roasting their nuts so to speak, about the burning (no

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-72311784318843402462007-12-22T02:55:00.000-08:002007-12-22T04:37:32.623-08:00

The last few months have been months of rediscovery for me. On a whim, in October, I decided to download Ubuntu Linux. It was cropping up more and more frequently in web pages I was viewing and as an old (albeit lapsed) Linux hand - my first Linux box was in 1995. I wept when I got it to answer the phone - I was curious to try it out. Thanks to India's shitty broadband, it took effing forever to

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-1929817545543239092007-11-05T22:53:00.000-08:002007-12-11T02:47:33.447-08:00

As we stand on the brink of the second major economic collapse of this century, it would behoove us as thinking people to ask what is happening, why is it happening and what can be done about it. By the time you are done reading this, you should hopefully be thinking that I am crazy. That the world can't possibly be so screwed up - but, you say, we have responsible people, adults, experts running

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-4184929579303146172007-10-11T03:00:00.000-07:002007-10-11T04:58:24.058-07:00

After several months of intensive coding, an upgrade to Project Carpool is now available. The url is http://patang.org/projects/carpool/ Many new features have been made available. Some of them are Wikimapia search interface - search for any place on Planet Earth using text.PhpBB Integration - Users are signed up and for the accompanying phpBB forums automatically. Login is automatic. phpBB

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-76457354271710536552007-02-08T22:31:00.000-08:002007-02-21T21:09:10.085-08:00

This is a post announcing the release of JazzHead - A Music Screensaver for iTunes. It comes with the following features: displays album cover and song details downloads random artist images from the internet and presents them as a slideshowdisplays artist-related news provides one-click access to the artist and album's allmusic.com page Here are some screenshots: In shuffle mode, next five

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-1167423877578121022006-12-29T12:24:00.000-08:002006-12-29T12:24:37.590-08:00

Dhoom 2 was better.

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-1163275365693704772006-11-11T11:55:00.001-08:002006-11-11T12:02:45.693-08:00

NY 7th November 2006. Oh, to see II some day....

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-1155664771693762782006-08-15T10:54:00.000-07:002006-08-15T10:59:31.713-07:00

I'm sure there were more....what have I been doing with my time? Kurt Rosenwinkel w/ Tonhino Horta, Ben Street, Rodrigo Silva Donny McCaslin Quartet (Ben Monder, Scott Colley, Antonio Sanchez) Dave Fuzscinsky's KiF (Steve Jenkins, Skoota Warner) Bela Fleck and the Flecktones Paul Motian Quartet (Chris Potter, Kikuchi Masabumi, Larry Grenadier) L Subramaniam

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-1154534612423074552006-08-02T09:01:00.000-07:002006-08-02T09:03:32.443-07:00

Each morning same story. Wake up. Cock an eye at the clock. Panic, then realise its not late at all, close eyeszzz.z....zzz..... Open eyes, panic! It's late! Rush, rush, brush, flush. Pack laptop, pop tap locks, take helmet and bike past fellows well met but who I don't like, out the door and into the street, automatic doors slide aside and introduce you to the heat. H E A T. Murder by degrees as

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-1145822231053714002006-04-23T12:27:00.000-07:002006-04-23T13:26:13.380-07:00

Is this all just pure coincidence? http://www.patnadaily.com/news05/october/100605/bjp_leader_shot_at.html http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/apr/22shot.htm Twice in six months? Sure sounds fishy to me....is someone trying to assasinate him? Who could it be? And for what earthly reason? At around the time of the Reliance Petroleum (that word again!) IPO? Could his brother be some sort of scapegoat

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-1145012289592264942006-04-14T03:38:00.000-07:002006-04-14T04:24:46.226-07:00

It's nice to see so many movies with a political message come out in the same year. Starting with Good Night, and Good Luck and Syriana (I have newfound respect for George Clooney which will last I suppose until he too is co-opted by the liberal media) and now V for Vendetta - 1984 meets Batman. Of late I am turning into an anarchist. As the abuse of power grows around the world and the hard

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-1144861791671922752006-04-12T09:57:00.000-07:002006-04-14T04:18:12.813-07:00

What a great film! Top writing, amazing production values and that certain je ne sais quois which imbues every frame with meaning far beyond it's 1/24th of a second would warrant. The film deals with the nasty politics and business of oil told from the viewpoints of pretty much everyone who's connected with it. From the oil men - both those in their suits and private jets to the contract worker

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10630283.post-1144194541097525582006-04-04T16:34:00.000-07:002006-04-04T20:08:10.190-07:00

I hadn't been this excited about going to a show for a long time. I've been a fan of Mike Stern ever since I heard his album Play. Play was particularly important for me because it pulled me out of a long funk wherein I had completely stopped listening to music. Mike's weird bendy notes and long eloquent lines reminded me again what a joy a great album can be. Thus it was that I was all agog with

Patang!http://www.blogger.com/profile/12582413749894054157noreply@blogger.com