During the early 90's before Michael Learns to rock hit India with a boy band status, I heard them through CDs that my friend's friend got from the US. Johnny Hates Jazz (remember the shattered dreams number) was a similar band with great numbers on their first album. MLTR's Colours was their first biggest hit and it was released in '93. The next album, Played on Pepper, had a great number That's Why.

With Paint My Love album the ind-teens and MTV celebrated them as an usual mushy mushy boyband and chicks went gaga for them. But thats when I started to hate them.

Last week, I put together a 90's pop hits CD and MLTR's songs were also some of them. My first favorite was Sleeping Child but I have out-grown that song now and just can't listen to it. Someday Someway and 25 minutes are two numbers that I keep humming usually. Wild Women is a philosophically cool number but Paint My Love sucks, big time.

Great memories of my first Sony CD player and MLTR CDs. For now, someday is the one on the hotspot.

In my search for freedom
And peace of mind
I’ve left the memories behind
Wanna start a new life
But it seems to be rather absurd
When I know the truth
Is that I always think of you
someday someway...

lazy geek | # | Comments (3)

Where are these so-called-kings ? The Super Kings of Chennai. Chennai Super Kings' site still throws a - The page cannot be found. Khan's Kolkatta team has their site atleast half-built.

There is a huge opportunity to blog this IPL cricket fever. Afterall movies and cricket unite us more than anything else. I'm sure there are companies out there cracking their minds to build sites and business models around this. Blogging will certainly play a huge role as the crowd becomes information hungry.

It's not a stock market. No one is going to be benifitted on the short run. Only blogs that have a regular postings, great user interface, less ad-blocks and bite-size information will sustain the long run. But if you are crazy about cricket and would like to have your say on this arena of the blogosphere, just book your domain and start typing. If you are smart, I'm sure you wouldn't want to start a IPL cricket blog on wordpress.com or blogger.com which are mere sub-domains. It's already over-crowded there.

If you are bunch of college grads and would like to start a cool company around this IPL phenomenon, a blogging network, which hosts a blog/micro-news-site for each of the teams would make a great deal of sense. You don't need tons of money to start this. All you need would be one hosting account these days, to host numerous sites.

As IPL grips India, the early birds to this IPL blogging will have a great say. So if you would want to start, today is the day.

P.S - BTW, I recently booked Go Chennai Super Kings !! [Go CSK] just so some damn domain squatter doesn't walk away with this golden domain. I'm probably not going to do anything with it so if in case you really want to create a blog around this domain, I can certainly part with it.

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THE UNFORTUNATE DEMISE OF THE TAMIL WRITER SUJATHA – from the news-channel eulogies, though, you’d think the man was merely a screenwriter, giving shape to the visions of Shankar and Mani Ratnam – has occasioned a steady outpouring of how-I-learnt-to-read-Tamil-with-his-books memories, and while I know from experience that that’s true, I feel no one has zeroed in on why this is so. After all, there were so many other Tamil writers – the great modernist god that was the early Vairamuthu, say – who were Sujatha’s contemporaries and who were certainly no slouches when it came to a certain felicity of expression that could make any rank newbie fall in rapturous love with the language. But I think what made Sujatha stand apart and speak to so many of us who grew up in the seventies and the eighties was that his writings were instantly appealing to a generation that could understand Tamil and speak Tamil and read Tamil and perhaps even write Tamil – but thought in English. I’m not just talking about the sci-fi setting of En Iniya Iyandhira and its robo-dog named after the Roman goddess Juno – all far, far removed from the sociopolitical and moralistic scenarios that constituted a lot of the writing in the local magazines of the time – but Sujatha’s Western sensibilities would peek through even his pieces on ancient religious texts.

Baradwaj Rangan wrote those lines in a sort-of-obituary column on Writer Sujatha. While it was nice of him to write about Sujatha for a large audience, two things about it that didn't gel very well.

One. Check out this line -

you’d think the man was merely a screenwriter, giving shape to the visions of Shankar and Mani Ratnam – has occasioned a steady outpouring of how-I-learnt-to-read-Tamil-with-his-books memories, and while I know from experience that that’s true, I feel no one has zeroed in on why this is so.

Sujatha himself has written about this a number of times about writing in Tamil for thinking-in-english generation of Tamil Nadu. So this isn't a very new thought on the horizon.

Baradwaj writes - I feel no one has zeroed in on why this is so. That's probably the easiest way to go beyond all the lengthy texts Sujatha's fans have ever written on his demise. And a subtle path to take-by-force, an established writer status.

To answer him, nobody zeroed in on this because its the first thing that hits you when you even glance Sujatha's writing at the first place. Also, there are quite a few people who wrote about it. Maybe nobody "zeroed-in" on this in English as Baradwaj has done here. Take that credit, BR.

Then, Two.

As an aside, maybe that’s why Mani Ratnam felt the time was ripe for his kind of cinema – because he had in front of him a young audience that wasn’t especially “Indian” when it came to, say, respecting authority figures. Do you think a filmmaker from an earlier era would have given us the scene from Roja where Arvind Swamy’s mother speaks of his smoking habit as if it were a minor annoyance

Just this simple reason that a film reviewer recollects this scene even after 15 years goes onto show that this was even a shocker scene during its release. If such a scene were to be a part of 80s flick it would have still been viewed with the same emotion.

It's just that it wasn't made before doesn't mean the 90s generation was the first non-"indian" generation. And when Baradwaj gets to read Sujatha's first novel Nylon Kairu or Kanavu Thoyirchalai, it would evident that Sujatha created a variety of such westernized characters long before Roja.

lazy geek | # | Comments (9)

Yahoo India Maps has a new(don't know how new it is) feature which can show the directions in vernacular language(Tamil in Tamilnadu) plus it also gives you the approximate autofare for a particular map. The autofare feature is a joke, atleast in Chennai.

Kalakkal Maa !!

P.S -

Check out this snapshot. Congress Party is probably getting to do a major dharna opposite to Yahoo India Office. Get ready guys.

lazy geek | # | Comments (3)

The search by time-frame filter has been used for Google Web Search. This filter has been there on their Blog Search and News Search but this is the first time I see this applied to their Web Search.Use this link to get to this new search page.

I'm sure people getting some good google juice(read page rank) are going to be upset with this. Blogs are here to be benefitted by this. Especially retaillers who might loose some customers as customers start to search by recently updated websites. Even Google might be stumbled by a different company's search algorithm in the future. Well, that's the game. Keep Playing !!

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Popular science fiction writer, Arthur C Clarke passed away today[March 19] in Sri Lanka.

Goodbye Clarke. And thanks a ton, for the superb odyssey.

lazy geek | # | Comments (4)

Do you know Dr.Vijay(yes, he got awarded a doctor degree while you were busy working to get your next paycheck)is becoming the star ambassador of Chennai Super Kings Team headed by Dhoni (why is he not a Dr. yet?) himself.

From Hindu -

“Being from Chennai, I wanted to support my team,” said Vijay, who will be involved in promotional events for the Super Kings. “I’ve always liked cricket, and in the last few years I’ve started watching more of it. I’m very proud that we have [M.S.] Dhoni, who is a strong leader, to captain our team.”

Super Kings Brand Ambassador and Former India captain Krishnamachari Srikkanth said Vijay would draw youngsters to the tournament. Asked if cricket needed the prop of cinema to lean on, Mr. Srikkanth said, “This is about the Chennai Super Kings, about kings in every field. And we have the Super King of Kollywood with us in Vijay.”

This proves why Pepsi and Coke go with cricketers and movie stars all the time. Because they go well with each other. I wonder if Kolkatta team will have Mithun as the their star ambassador.

I personally like India Cements owing the Chennai Super Kings. My college, Guru Nanak College is the home ground of India Cements team and I'm happy all the machis and chicks of Guru Nakak will get to see the stars practising everyday like we did those days.

Two things. One, Why Chennai Super Kings ? Why not Filter Kings ?. Two, if you didn't know this already, the star ambassadoress(!?) for Chennai Super Kings is the latest action queen of kollywood, Nayanthara.

lazy geek | # | Comments (5)

I unable understand the emotion with desis who are gloating over the fact that there are 4 Indians on Forbes Top 10 List of Richie Richs. Well, its defintely an accolade for those individuals but what has it got to do with the national pride. It seems to me that this is becoming the same case as the privately controlled cricket board. While there is a subtle difference between being patriotic to a country's team and individual country men, I don't get the yap.

The country has been on a vicious circle path of rich and poor, for who knows how long. And not many have bothered about how the 80-20 rule has been affecting the economy for sometime now.

There are other things, beyond being rich, like giving back. I'm sure Ambani brothers would agree with that sooner or later.

P.S - Here's a great article, not on getting rich but about giving back.

lazy geek | # | Comments (2)

There were speculations that the next hardware upgrade to Nintendo's Wii will be sometime in 2008. Though unbelievable, I wanted to believe that so I could wait longer to buy a Wii. But unfortunately its not happening atleast until 2010.

Here's a list of what's happening in the World of Wii during 2008.

So if you haven't bought your first Wii yet, its not too late. Rush to the nearest gamestop.

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Though the ad was clearly hyped and totally cliched, I still liked it for the lyrics and animation. Especially the tamil version of this named as, திறமைப் போர் was terrific. Any idea which Ad agency made this one? Some commented on the youtube page that it was made by Piyush Pandey of Ogilvy and Mather.

Couldn't find the Tamil version of the ad on Youtube but a pretty timely ad for the cricket-hungry countrymen.

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Aararai Kodi Paerkalil Oruvan
Adiyen Thamizhan Naan Ungal Nanban
Aana Neengal Aavanna Naan Thaan
Neengal Illamal, Naan Ingu Illai.....Illai

Naam Iruvarum Saerum Samayam
Nam Kaikaliley Varum Imayam
Naam Thottathu Ethuvum Amayum
Ithu Anbaal Innaindha Idhayam

Remember these lines from Rahman's Anbe Aaruyirey. He is getting to what he has been promising for a long-time now.

A R Rahman kick starts his KM Music Conservatory, an organization that teaches music in Chennai. It's an appreciable effort and I hope they keep proceeding as planned. Looks like it is a joint venture with Audio Media Education which is the first Apple authorized training centre.

This is what he had to say about this organization, "There are 1.4 billion people in India and thousands of musicians but there is no symphony orchestra with our very own musicians while even smaller countries have their own orchestra. So, the reason to start the KM Conservatory is simple. Most of the young aspiring musicians want to learn more of electronic stuff. Acoustic instruments are of no interest to them. We want to start a course where students learn acoustic instruments as well as electronic instruments. It is important to raise awareness about different kinds of music," he continues. "

Giving back to the society is such a noble motive but I only hope the naturally talented guys get selected instead of just the rich kids. BTW what does KM mean ?

lazy geek | # | Comments (8)

Why is rediff churning out such junk? Do they even know what they are talking about. Come on, this is the list of contemporary hottest jodis of kollywood and they have cheran-sneha on page 2. Cheran ?? Sneha ???

Looks like pageviews still rule the rediff team. That's probably why they have one photo per page and some vaguely written text surrounded by tons of adblocks. Keep them coming !!

lazy geek | # | Comments (1)

Anil Dash from Movable Type wrote a blogpost that took over its competitor, Wordpress. He explained with pointers as to how Wordpress upgrade is getting tougher by the day and not as simple as advertised. Wordpress founder, Matt Mullenbeg responded on his twitter that Six Apart(Movable Type's company) is getting desperate and dirty.

While it may be true that Movable Type has some of its users to the Wordpress blogging tool, it doesn't mean they can't strike back, taking their competitors head-on. Anil's post didn't have a single loosely written line. While there may be factual errors or not, he did not behave like a cheapo. Matt did. And he is pissed.

Matt is pursuing Typepad Users(a part of Six Apart) like Seth Godin to move their own domains and install Wordpress to run their blogs. When Matt is adopting public/no-so-public ways to attract users, shouldn't he be ready for the same methods by his competitor.

BTW, I like Wordpress as much as, and sometimes even better than, Movable Type. This blog still runs on Movable Type for the last 4 years. The irony is that it runs smoothly because of Akismet spam catcher which is a product from the Wordpress company. Tells us that none of these guys are perfect yet.

The web market is still nascent. The perfect blogging platform creator is still playing soccer at Madison or Florida or Madras and hasn't the heard the word, blog, yet.

lazy geek | # | Comments (1)

[thanks- vikatan]

Ananda Vikatan publishes Sujatha's final column named Apollo Dhinangal.

He wrote this column on the 18th day of hospitalization just before slipping away into coma.

Desikan, Sujatha's official biographer and good friend writes about the Sujatha's final moments in a touching column that throws light on a different/unknown side of Sujatha.

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