I am a huge fan of the naruto anime and was pleasantly surprised to find a new movie while looking for the latest shipuuden episodes. I downloaded it overnight with my dataone connection and was glad to see it done , in addition to the latest LOST episodes :D... nice weekend its gonna be .
The movie was awesome simply put. Some of the good things about this movie....
- I was sad when they showed Naruto dying right in the beginning, it looked like naruto makers had switched to the LOST style of narration showing tragedy and then working towards how it happened. But I am really really glad to say that at the end of the movie , he does nt die!
- The scale of the enemies is huge, bigger than the ones earlier, and there are a some similarities to "Lord of the rings", "minority report", and if you look many other popular media. For naruto fans it makes no difference, at least for me it doesnt!
- Naruto is easily the star of the show, with his stupidity, then his moving speeches and his crazy promises which he somehow manages to keep up! Remember Gaara coming back to life, and the Princess in the first movie? One promise which is pending though is getting back Sasuke .
- Theres a new combo Rasengan move which is an awesome way to end !
- Love interest? Sakura aside, girls seem to like naruto , especially the stubborn ones who then start trusting naruto because of his peculiarly attractive personality.
- Rock lee has got a good fight, could have been better though, the fight in movie 3 was awesome . Was wondering why he didnt take off his weights and kick the enemy's ass!
A nice break from watching very little story progress in the shipuuden series... highly recommended for naruto fans and newbies as well... also watch the other movies , all on dattebayo!
dattebayo!
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
Dubius dud : xtreme coder
This is the first in hopefully a series of cartoon strips about a bumbling software "professional" ... the "professional" indicates exactly what its going to focus on... so please leave behind your comments and if possible tell me of funny incidents at your workplace which I can use as a story line ;) .... enjoy the first one
If you are having problems reading the text , download this image from my picasa web album...
- railmani
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Dial ATM for murder...
If you think the title of this blog is dramatic, wait till you hear the reason behind it. It was a weekday like any other . After spending most of the day in front of the computer in my workstation , my colleagues and i decided to step out int he open . After walking for some time inside the iisc campus , I realised i needed to increase my liquidity and the nearest atm was the sbi one at the main gate. Since tat was out of order i decided to use the one next to that , the canara bank one which looked quite harmless mind you . Once inside I inserted the card and it was promptly sucked in! I then remembered tat it was quite standard for atms to do that , and the surprise was because the ones i normally use are the non sucking ones. I was looking at the money counter waiting for the money to come out , but nothing happened. Although i am an experienced programmer with user interface , i forgot for a moment to look at the screen and missed the message which said "please take your card " and then i heard a beeping sound and assumed it was processing some more and after a few more seconds it stopped and the screen said "Your card has been withdrawn for security purposes". And that was the last i saw of that card.
After my fiends had laughed their asses off , I finally got in touch with the canara Bank help desk person who asked me to go to the nearest bank branch , which was in the campus luckily , the next day and get my card. I was relieved and let the incident go as a slight mishap. Everyone at office had a good laugh at my expense and then later my family.
The next day at the bank , a lady told me they didn't have the card and that I had to contact some third party guy who now take care of the missing/captured cards! Missing? captured? As if the innocent cards were criminals or something ! Anyway I could nt do anything further there and contacted the canara bank "missing card \" dept.... that's when I got the shock of my life. I informed him about the incident and asked him when I could get my card back and he said "You card has been shredded". You could imagine my surprise at that moment . After arguing with him and telling him that the system sucked big time especially since shared atm charges were going to plunge following the union budget 2008, I came to the conclusion that there was indeed a lot of difference between user convenience and what the card company's provide in the name of secuiruty.
Looking back at the incident , I could not help but wonder how much a person in dire need of money at that point of time would suffer in such a case. Would you expect a person entering an ATM for the first time to understand that you need to grab the card before its pulled back in ... all that while operating a touch screen or a button on the side user interface which is sometimes even more confusing? I agree that most of the time it would be fine and you would get your money and keep going , but considering tat I am not the stupidest or the least sensible or even most gullible guy walking the roads, there is a high probability that you could lose your card in the same way! And when that happens , here are the damages you are going to entail :
1) If you lose the ATM card in your bank's atm , you might get it back after some amount of id verification. Apparently citibank guys wont do that even because they fear that some one could misuse your card and you would have to anyway get a new one from them ( Rs.100 ) , yay!
2) If you lose your citibank card in a canara bank atm , its gone forever , and you need to get a new one . IMPORTANT ADVICE : Be sure to encash all your reward points before you tell them you lost your card ,or else be prepared with your tpin which then becomes paramount for
verification for them to transfer your reward points to your new atm card!
3) Mental torture, calling up people from different banks and some of the trained people at citibank can be amazingly rude. A lady from the Chennai call centre for citibank was talking to me like a school teacher and like I was a stupid kid . And the worst part was she just could nt get it into her head that everyone does nt know about all the intricacies of credit and debit cards like herself who would have been asked to mug it up many times over. Anyway after a long , distressing talk with a woman, which I am quite unfamiliar with , I decided I am going to start using the frigging tpin from now on at least until i have a frigging citibank account.
Now I am just waiting for my debit card to arrive , in meanwhile I wonder how much things have changed since my dad's time when I used to accompany him to the bank, write a pay out slip and wait impatiently for the teller to announce the token number.... ah those were the days!
After my fiends had laughed their asses off , I finally got in touch with the canara Bank help desk person who asked me to go to the nearest bank branch , which was in the campus luckily , the next day and get my card. I was relieved and let the incident go as a slight mishap. Everyone at office had a good laugh at my expense and then later my family.
The next day at the bank , a lady told me they didn't have the card and that I had to contact some third party guy who now take care of the missing/captured cards! Missing? captured? As if the innocent cards were criminals or something ! Anyway I could nt do anything further there and contacted the canara bank "missing card \" dept.... that's when I got the shock of my life. I informed him about the incident and asked him when I could get my card back and he said "You card has been shredded". You could imagine my surprise at that moment . After arguing with him and telling him that the system sucked big time especially since shared atm charges were going to plunge following the union budget 2008, I came to the conclusion that there was indeed a lot of difference between user convenience and what the card company's provide in the name of secuiruty.
Looking back at the incident , I could not help but wonder how much a person in dire need of money at that point of time would suffer in such a case. Would you expect a person entering an ATM for the first time to understand that you need to grab the card before its pulled back in ... all that while operating a touch screen or a button on the side user interface which is sometimes even more confusing? I agree that most of the time it would be fine and you would get your money and keep going , but considering tat I am not the stupidest or the least sensible or even most gullible guy walking the roads, there is a high probability that you could lose your card in the same way! And when that happens , here are the damages you are going to entail :
1) If you lose the ATM card in your bank's atm , you might get it back after some amount of id verification. Apparently citibank guys wont do that even because they fear that some one could misuse your card and you would have to anyway get a new one from them ( Rs.100 ) , yay!
2) If you lose your citibank card in a canara bank atm , its gone forever , and you need to get a new one . IMPORTANT ADVICE : Be sure to encash all your reward points before you tell them you lost your card ,or else be prepared with your tpin which then becomes paramount for
verification for them to transfer your reward points to your new atm card!
3) Mental torture, calling up people from different banks and some of the trained people at citibank can be amazingly rude. A lady from the Chennai call centre for citibank was talking to me like a school teacher and like I was a stupid kid . And the worst part was she just could nt get it into her head that everyone does nt know about all the intricacies of credit and debit cards like herself who would have been asked to mug it up many times over. Anyway after a long , distressing talk with a woman, which I am quite unfamiliar with , I decided I am going to start using the frigging tpin from now on at least until i have a frigging citibank account.
Now I am just waiting for my debit card to arrive , in meanwhile I wonder how much things have changed since my dad's time when I used to accompany him to the bank, write a pay out slip and wait impatiently for the teller to announce the token number.... ah those were the days!
Saturday, February 09, 2008
At the master's feet
Ah the leash , a part of me,
It was before i learned to pee
On two legs leaning to one side
With my legs open wide
Oh how i love to sniff and smell
Not to mention Lick
Its garbage on the road? Oh hell
What about your junk food ... you humans are sick!
Mmmm Bitches , I love them
But thanks to u losers
I never ever get close enough ... ahem
If only labs were choosers, I know I would ride...hehe
Yum! bones , nothings better
I think the whole world is a stage
And goats and chicken come to age
To satisfy my discerning hunger
Alas, At my master's feet,
I have to sit forever ...
For walks , bones and to bitches meet
Coz its the fate of a male fawn labrador
===============================
Remo's point of view from a particularly frustrated perspective, otherwise hes one hell of a fat , happy dog ... like the doggie version of garfield!
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
Continuing education ...
By the slimmest of chances, a colleague and I happened to meet a friend of his at the IISc Canteen today, ( I work inside the IISc campus) who was planning to apply for a short course on "Unix Internals" at the Computer Science department,IISc. On looking at the prospectus, my colleague and I -who are in the process of applying to B schools - were pleasantly surprised. Surprised that after having been in the campus for all these days , we had nt found out about this opportunity to learn right under our noses... and pleasantly so because this was a piece of serendipitous luck! Building a resume is hard enough working in software where there is hardly any recognition for hard work ... thats when chances like these are important to show prospective employers or colleges that you are willing to go to some trouble to learn new things.
And so we are now on the way to enroll for one or more of these courses ... from among "Intellectual properties " , "Software management" , "Unix internals" and several other technical and managerial courses. Further updates on successful registration!
And so we are now on the way to enroll for one or more of these courses ... from among "Intellectual properties " , "Software management" , "Unix internals" and several other technical and managerial courses. Further updates on successful registration!
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