We hacked this

And here is Nikhil's credit card information and SSN.
Click here to access it

Maya

No! I am not talking about some movie character from a cheesy flick like "Dil to Pagal Hain". I am talking about the fitness instructor in a new xbox "game" that we are trying (Btw xbox is working fine now. [loud applause appreciated]).

This is a fitness program called "Yourself! Fitness" It can be personalized nicely and is pretty well made in general. Downloadable soundtracks or custom soundtracks would have been great but the included music works fine too. Please visit the website if you want to know more.

And I added Axe's blog link in the links section. Axe is a friend from BITS and we (used to)share one common interest, online gaming! Ever since he got caught in the web of World of Warcraft (WoW), he has stopped playing xbox though. I am scared to even try playing a MMORPG(Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) like WoW as they are notorious for making you an addict. If you think I spend a lot of time with my box(less than 8 hrs a week nowadays), you should see the levels of addiction of these players.

Check out this article and comments
Seriously, is there a law that allows such arrests?
Everquest Widows (private group. check out the description)
Chinese Gamer Sentenced to Life


DISCLAIMER: Yes, I know all these risks. I do not overdo it. I have fun. But it is always good to know ends of the spectrum.

Federer Express

Apna Raju Hero Hain..aur Hum Raju Ke Fan, Ki Raju Ban Gaya Champion!!

Ladies and Gentleman, Roger Federer has won the Cincinnati Masters..Yeee Haw!

It will be sufficient to say that for me what Tendulkar is to Cricket, Federer is to Tennis. Ever since I saw him play his first Wimbledon finals, I have been a big fan of his. It is true that I will not know who to support when he plays against Andre Agassi but (un)fortunately, Andre withdrew from Cincinnati Masters this year.

Let me begin the story of this year's Cincinnati Masters.

The first semi of Federer against Ginepri was to start at 2:00 pm and I started from Louisville around 7:45 am. My wife was extremely disappointed for not being able to make it this year. She was more vocal than me (and everyone in a 50 feet radius) last year when we were watching Agassi-Rodick. After about 10-15 miles, I realized that I had forgotten my wallet and turned back. It was for the better as I could talk to an old school friend when I came back. I reached Cincinnati at 10:00am. My first stop was Cincinnati library to borrow a book we want to read, "The Agassi Story". I was in the tennis mood and I picked up another book "I've got your back" by Brad Gilbert (ex-coach of Agassi and Roddick). After dropping my car off for servicing, I spent some time in the Kenwood mall reading the book by Brad Gilbert. At 1:00 pm, my friend picked me up and we reached the stadium at 1:15p.

( I have quite a few pictures, I will upload all of them eventually, this one will have only a select pictures, They are pretty huge so Full Resolution on demand :)..).

In came, Federer and Ginepri. This guy, Robby Ginepri, was a wild card entry and he had defeated Marat Safin in straight sets, under an hour, on his way to semis. He has had a great year so far and he had also managed to beat Roddick at Indianapolis.

Robby had the advantage of not having played Federer enough in the past.

To the loud cheers of the crowd, Robby broke Federer in the first set and claimed it 6-4. The ever-cool Federer was cool and both of them held their serve until 5-5 in the second set. (the following pic is in full res if you click on it)


To be frank, I was getting a little bit worried at this point. After the rain delay, Federer happened. There was a loud shout from the stands "Come on Roger, Remind us why you are number one" and he did that in style after that. Federer has an amazing ability to pull his game up when he is under pressure. It is said that most tennis matches are lost, not won. He made Robby lose the match. He kept his game at a high level and refused to move down. Ginepri did. In the third set, after three unforced errors on his serve at 4-5, Robby lost a well-fought match. We thought the Hewitt-Roddick semi would be better than this, but Robby proved us all wrong. He must have felt worse when it the thunderstorms started about 5 min after the match ended. If only he had kept his cool in that game!!

It rained pretty heavily for about 30-40 minutes and we decided to take a stroll when it cleared up. There were a bunch of people waiting at the players' entrance and we figured that Robby and Roger had not left the stadium. Just like the kids and few adults who were waiting to get autographs, we waited to get their photographs. After about 10 minutes, Robby came out. He signed just one autograph and although people were cheering and consoling and encouraging him, left without signing any more. I could not get any good picture of him here.

Then we waited.

And we waited.

After about 1 hour and 15 minutes, we were losing our patience. But there was nothing better to do. The other match was not going to start until next 45 minutes. But we were tired and decided to leave. The moment we moved, I saw Federer's girlfriend come out of the door. Watching all those grand slams had paid off. I could identify her. We rushed back and could see him from about 2 feet. I got a short and sweet video clip too, I will upload it somewhere and let you know, meanwhile here are the pictures. (first one in Full Res)





After signing as many autographs as he could, Federer left the stadium. All of us were still in awe as we watched his back. I shouted " Thanks Roger" and he put his hand up in acknowledgement. Paisa Wasool!!

We got our money's worth after the match and then we saw the Roddick vs Hewitt formality. Frankly, I did not care who won. Andy had the crowd support and as Hewitt noticed, also the support of the linesmen. Two calls went against him but knowing Hewitt, he managed it very well. Andy won in straight sets.



I went to my friend's place and slept like a baby (given that babies wake up after every couple of hours or so, I am not sure why they say that...but you get the idea). My friend was supporting Roddick and I was supporting Federer. He thought that Federer was going to win and after watching both of them play in the semis, I thought Roddick would win. (At the very least, I did not want to jinx Federer the way I jinxed Paes, Bhupathi and Safin)

We reached the ground anticipating some good tennis and Federer once again reminded everyone why he is numero uno. Even God would take some time off to watch him when he is on a song. And to Andy's disappointment, he sang a few upbeat songs on Sunday. There were quite a few "WTF was that?" moments, ones I was looking forward to. Fed saved breakpoints in the first set and broke Andy twice in the first set to claim it 6-3.

[Above Pic in Full Res]Andy, after all, had the disadvantage of having played against Federer a lot. He seemed to have lost half the match even before he stepped in.

The next set started with usual holding of the serve until 2-2 and then the unexpected happened. Roddick broke Federer's serve. There was a thunderous applause followed by "Come on Roger" from a few.

Then once again, in the very next game, Federer happened.

He returned a 140 miles serve and got that point.
Then he returned a 125 miles serve for a winner.
Then he got a point off a 140 miles serve to break Andy.

That, I think, was too much for Andy and he started making unforced errors. Federer was making him lose the match. The final score was 6-3 7-5.
[Following Picture in Full Res]


I must give full marks to Andy for not fighting with the linesman or the chair umpire even once or kicking a sideboard or shouting in his towel (he did the last two last year against Agassi). Even during his post match speech he was quite gracious and he recognized the talent he was playing. I might even start supporting him now ( when he is not playing Federer :) ) Federer had a few wisecracks up his sleeve with his " I enjoy playing against Andy. It is always a fair game.. not because I win but.." That drew some laughter and I have it on a video clip.

Both of them signed some autographs and I got my photographs.






Watch a live cricket match of India (Check. Check. Check..)
Watch a test match at Lords (Check)
Watch Andre Agassi in action (Check)
Watch Federer kick a top 10's butt (Check)

What were the odds

Paes lost the quarters in a 3 setter.
7-5 6-7(6) 7-6(5)

Bhupathi lost the quarters in a 3 setter.
6-3 1-6 6-7(3)

Safin lost the first singles quarters of the day.
2-6 3-6

May God help the rest of my three favourites!

Federer, Roddick and Hewitt... you guys have a very tough day ahead.

Are you bored?

Well me too.. a lil bit!

The news from Cincinnati Open is Federer, Roddick, Hewitt, Safin, Davydenko and three others have advanced to the quarters. If I am lucky, the first four gentlemen will advance to the semis and I will be set to watch two nice games on Saturday topped with a final on Sunday.

The love-hate duo of Paes-Bhupati are playing with different partners and they are in different pools. Both of them are in quarters and with some luck, I will be able to see them play against each other. Its going to be tough for them to thump each other after a point though.

I watched two hindi movies this week. Dus was recommended by a friend and Sehar had decent reviews.

I have always wondered what makes a movie great. What is more important? Story, Dialogues, music, direction, acting, editing or something else? Do different aspects appeal to different people? What appeals to me? I always find myself liking movies just because I liked one of these things or hate a movie just because I hated one of these parameters a lot, even if others were ok. Sometimes they balance each other out and the verdict is "watchable once" with some nice moments. Dus belongs to this category. This has some good acting, some natural dialogues and pretty upbeat background score at times. Action balances itself out. Editing is pathetic. There was one sequnce that I was 100% sure was someone's dream until it clicked to me what led to it. It was not a dream. The last 5 minutes are forced. Also Bollywood overuses that blast-automobile-20feet-in-air technique. It is time to learn something new. Also the explosions should be consistent. Something that was supposed to take out half a soccer stadium should not be as powerful as 15 frags. Anyway, lil B seems to be getting better and that is good news. Isha Deol must have spilt some hot coffee over directors pants for the treatment she got in the movie, especially the climax. But I could sit through the movie very easily.

Sehar: Arshad Warsi plays a UP cop. There are two things that made the movie one of the better of the current lot. I am tired of movies showing Bumbaiyya Gangster Hindi ( I hope RamGopalVerma is reading my blog). This was set in UP with the UP lingo and trust me, it felt good. Secondly, Arshad Warsi is not a supercop. His character is very believable. He does not have those dialogues targeted towards Presidents award for "Best film on National Integration". It does not go that extra mile to be politically correct. Some gory scenes and violence.. but overall a very good attempt given it was the director's first film (I think). I like movies where at least some cops are shown to be this dedicated. Reminded me of a movie called Bomb Blast (the one with that rap song "a for apple, b for..")

If you are still bored, or you got bored reading this, you can try to remember the URL of this site. You got 10 minutes or the time it takes to load the front page, whichever is shorter.

And did you know why Georgie likes Karl Rove? Take a look at this.

Can you Guess..

..what is the first result in Google when you search for "Failure"?

Update:
If your first thought was "This has to be hard-coded by Google, take a look at this explanation."

Now if you want to really know how this is done and not get lost in Google's "need to know basis" answer, you can look at this news article or this wiki.

Ashes 2005

This has to be one of the greatest Test Series that I have seen!!

All the people who mock test matches for the duration should look at the match 2 and match 3 of Ashes 2005. Just like most of the world, I want England to win this time as we are tired of Aussies winning.

England is giving their 200% this time. There is just one problem: Aussies are also giving their 200%!! And for that very reason, with some grudge, they will always be the most respected team for me. The fighting spirit, the dedication to fitness, the ruthless team selection and selfless batting is unparalleled. Whether it is short version of the game or long, ruling the scene for so many years implies they are doing something right. They supposedly were the weaker team this time and see the way they played on the last day of the last two tests. I will be waiting eagerly for the DVD to come out.

I am hoping for some similar stuff in the last two games. You know that something special is happening when just looking at the final scorecard gives you goosebumps.

Tennis Warm-Up

We spent the first half of this weekend at Cincinnati. Cincinnati Masters qualifiers started this Saturday. We had a couple of free tickets thanks to my wife's employer. She could not come thanks to her employer so I went with a friend of mine to catch some pre-tournament action. We will be there next weekend also to watch the semis and the final.

Our tickets explicitely stated that they were valid for any court except the center court. But since not many fans wanted to brave the 100 degrees F to watch the qualifiers we could go to any court and sit wherever we pleased. We watched two center court matches from the best possible angle.

It's the third year for me at the Cincinnati Masters and I enjoy every moment of it, no matter who is playing. Last year has been the best experience so far with an Agassi-Roddick nailbiter that Agassi won.
The first qualifying match was between Croatian Ivo Karlovic and a Frenchman Gilles Simon. Karlovic is 6'10" with Roddickesque serve and Simon, who I learn is 6'0", looked so small in front of him that we dubbed him as "baccha". Karlovic had a powerful first set and won 6-3. Both of them held their own to go to tiebreaker in the second set and Simon won the tie-breaker 7-5. By this time, 90% of the audience were supporting Simon. His serve is not at all powerful but it has a lot of spin and kick to it. Karlovic sucked at net game. He would hit 4 out of 5 volleys in the net or wide. Simon kept his cool in the third set and won the match. Karlovic looked happy that the match ended, given the heat. It was tough to sit in the stands, playing must have been a torture. Simon won his second match and will play in the tournament starting Monday. (In the picture Karlovic is serving)

The second match was between Jan-Michael Gambill from US and Tomas Zib from Czech Republic. I wanted to watch Gambill as he features in my tennis game. He has won three ATP titles and has a very powerful serve. It was not his day. He lost in straight sets. We left the courts after Zib broke Gambill in the second set and Gambill threw his racquet for the third time. There was no way he could have won yesterday. (in the picture, Gambill is serving)

We returned home Saturday night and Sunday morning got a nasty shock. A rabbit had eaten off all our 6-8" rapidly growing flower plants. We have decided to grow the plants in pots in our patio and transfer them to the flower beds only after they are a little bit bigger and more importantly, when we put some sort of protective fence around the flower beds.

XBOX DVD Drive Update

I got the DVD drive that I bought from Ebay.

My friend Nikhil Sukhtankar and his wife are visiting currently and yesterday was the only evening we could spend with the xbox so the timing was perfect. Nikhil and I put the drive in and reconnected all the wires, prayed and started the xbox.

It worked.

Now the bad news! (You knew that was coming, didn't you?) The drive is also giving me some problems. It is definitely better than the last one as it even reads DVD-R and DVD+R. But my TopSpin game froze a couple of times.

We then switched to ESPN NFL2K5 and played one game without any interruptions. Feeling confident we started watching KillBillVol2. The movie went on smoothly but then froze when I paused it once. I could not come out of the pause mode.

Then I tried Halo2 and it did not read the disc on the first try. It gave me that dreaded bad disc error. The next try it was fine and I could play for 20-30 minutes without any screen freezing. But it looks like I will have to send this one back and get another one. The person I bought it from has a great feedback score and has been very responsive and so I hope that there are no further problems with the exchange.

Sarkar

Saw "Sarkar" yesterday.

RamGopalVerma diclares before the movie that this is his tribute to Godfather.

I will not go into the details of the story but "Sarkar" Amitabh is 80-85% Godfather and 15-20% Bal Thackeray.

Abhishek plays Michael.

The movie, frankly, is not as heavy as I had expected it to be. Some good acting, a time tested story and absence of songs make sure that you can watch the movie in one sitting and like it. Unfortunately, I did not love it. There is no "oh I want to see this one again" feeling. At times, it has its good moments but there is something missing that I might not be able to point out exactly.

Firstly, there are so many characters that there is no depth in character development that you would expect from a Godfather "tribute". I felt that Amitabh was underused. You do not feel the power that he is supposed to have. It is not very immersive. For the movie to be a super hit it was very important for every member of the audience to feel that power, to start losing it a bit and then suddenly find Abhishek give it back to them. Amitabh starts losing that power before you get used to it. Abhishek does have his moments and shines at times, but there is no subconscious " oh yeah kick ass now" feeling when he takes the rein. The feeling in last few minutes should have started the moment Amitabh is arrested (big deal.. it is not that big a surprise anyway). There is no scene where Abhishek takes out a gun hidden in some bathroom so don't expect it. Something similar would have worked wonders. Sometimes you feel that RGV was scared to make Abhishek's character more powerful in the second half of the movie.

There are way too many villains and some of them are quite irritating. I can accept two main villains, even three, maybe four, five is stretching it, but this one tries to handle five and a half. (Half for one who keeps going back and forth). I think this is where the director could have squeezed in more screen time for Amitabh/Abhishek and their interactions with people and family members. It is a good movie, but I would rate 'Satya' and 'Company' much above this. Amitabh or Abhishek do not rule the screen the way Ajay Devgan did in the first half of Company.

Remember Supriya Pathak in Idhar-Udhar or Vijeta. Someone took a bicycle pump and put a lot of air in her. She plays Amitabh's wife and waltzes through her scenes. It was nice to see her back.

BTW, Sarkar does not have any action. Incredibles is more action packed than Sarkar. But Godfather was never about action. It was about power, the confidence, the relationships. I think if you have not read/seen Godfather you would like the movie much more.

Damn that StumbleUpon

Nothing much happened on the personal front in the last two days (Btw,I bought the xbox dvd drive on ebay, and now I am keeping my fingers crossed), so I will dedicate this post to StumbleUpon and some interesting finds on the www.

The StumbleUpon tool, is an amazing way to find out some great pages that you would never be able to find otherwise. You specify your interests and it shows you what you are most likely to well.. like.

Now lets talk about simple online games. I found them through Stumble and slashdot.

1. The version of Yeti-Penguin that we enjoyed the most. My (and 3 of my friends') record: 323.5 Beat it and send me a screen shot to prove it. You must try on this version though.
http://www.ndtoday.com/games/files/penguinswing.swf

It is also fun to try for a non-zero shortest distance. Let me know what you get and I will tell you what the record is.

2. The ESP Game
I am sure this is used for some brain research but it is fun. This is how you play. You log on to the server at

http://www.espgame.org

Then you are matched with a random "partner". Not opponent but partner.
Both of you will be shown a random image. You must write what comes to your mind after looking at that image. You cannot write any words that are listed as taboo though. Your partner will do the same. As soon as, both of you have written a common word, you get points and you are shown the next image. The rules are better explained in the game page. You will get a hang of it pretty soon.

Hints: Whenever there is any text, write the word that is not a taboo.
If colors are not taboo, list them.
Man, woman, guy, girl, boy, lady are the most useful words.

Have fun. (My Highest: 2200)

3. The peekaboom game:

This is a game developed by the same team after they were done with espgame.

http://www.peekaboom.org

This is internet-pictionary with a twist.

"How to play" link does a great job there to explain the rules but I will try to explain the basics.

You are matched with a random player. One is a peeker and the other a boomer. The boomer sees a image and a word that is related to the image (mostly grabbed from the espgame guesses is what I believe). The boomer can then click on certain areas of this image. Only the clicked areas would be visible to the peeker, who is trying to guess the word. All the guesses are visible to the boomer and the boomer can give hints like hot/cold, related noun etc or request to give up in case it looks like a hopeless case. You can request to pass an image anytime if you think it is very difficult to save time. Trust your partner, there is probably a good reason for that request. Once you pass or the peeker successfully guesses the word, the roles are reversed. This continues until you run out of time or images. My current record is 1631 and yesterday we scored 1587 with 40 seconds to spare and I found out that we had passed on "Strings" on his request. The picture was that of a String instrument. He should have had more confidence in me after I guessed "Chandelier" in 6-7 clicks :) and no spelling mistake. We were lucky too as we scored on both bonus rounds, quite critical to get that 99 percentile.

I will let you figure out how to use the bonus stage. Or you can leave a comment (that will force you to leave a comment). One hint is to use hints, you get more points if you use hint.

Remember, you got 3:30 minutes only and you are playing with a partner. You might experience later why I am stressing that. It is frustrating and comical when the boomer clicks 2 spots and waits for your guess, then says yor guess is cold, clicks another 2 spots and waits again. It is as much a test of boomer's skills as it is of peeker's skills. Have fun, you might have to install latest Java Runtime to play these.

These games sound very simplistic, but you have to give them a shot to experience why people love these.

And lastly,

Try this exercise. It will really make you wonder how your brain works: While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles. Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand. (start with the top of 6 and come down, loop should be anticlockwise as normal people write 6, no cheating).

Your foot will change direction and there's nothing you can do about it.

A Few Tough Hours

Have you heard of this story?

Hunter to 911 operator: My friend had a heart attack and I think he is
dead. He is not breathing.

Operator: Calm down, first lets make sure that he is dead.

Hunter: (Two loud gunshots) Ok, now what?

I did something similar yesterday. Since my xbox DVD drive was about to die, I opened the whole thing up (bye bye any chance of letting MS fix it) and cleaned the lens and the mirror. I wanted to adjust the laser pot also but at the last possible moment, I could not find a 2mm screw-driver. So I decided to check if cleaning the lens worked or not.

I put it back together except the top cover and powered it up. Drive would not open but atleast there were no other errors. Then I took it apart and tried to "fix" the drive alignment as someone on web said that could be the cause. Checked that, it looked ok. Now things get bett..uh funnier.

I put it back and switched on the power, this time the drive was not even resting in its place. I wanted to test if it worked as soon as possible. For the second time in 2 weeks I saw fumes coming out an electronic equipment that I was using (first time was my work PC but that gave me a kick-ass Dell). This time, the xbox flashed error on screen. The error #12 means your DVD drive is screwed up. Not that it was a big news but that certainly made me think if it was really the drive or a cable attached to the drive. Time will tell. I will be ordering a drive today from Ebay, my first purchase there. But then, Rumor has it that xbox360 is going to be launched on November 4th.

Should I wait for xbox360 given RainbowSix3: Lockdown is scheduled to release this September. Can I live without any games for 3 months? I guess not. I will get on Ebay now.

Weekend Adventures

On the entertainment side, we bought a movie featuring a certain pirate captain called Jack Sparrow and that I think gave me the required push to create the blog.


Swapna and I did some yard work too. We skipped the mowing but used all the energy (that I later found that I lack sorely) to dig a flowerbed. Easier planned than done. It takes a lot of effort to dig a 7 feet X 1.5 X 1.5 flower bed. And then you are left with a lot of debri that you need to dispose off. Not to mention the trips to HomeDepot to buy a few bags of "quality soil" and getting those bags from the garage to their final resting place. Swapna had already planted some flower seeds in some pots and we had to transfer those delicate plantlets to their soft bed. We bought a sprinkler too.

I used to dig for 5 minutes and then rest for 15 minutes on the new patio furniture. We finally bought some this weekend. As soon as I figure out where to upload image files, I will include links to those in my posts. Meawhile imagine four cushoined swivel chairs and a table. It is one of the pleasures in life to have breakfast in your patio while browsing the web on a laptop. Masala Tea fits right in.

I played Halo2 ofcourse and the bad news is my xbox drive is starting to die on me. This is the original Thompson drive that I have. All these drives have a very short lifespan. MS realized this after about a year when people started reporting problems and then the newer boxes have Philips or more recently Samsung. I have no choice but to replace the drive or xbox. I might make my first purchase on ebay if my attempts at opening the box and adjusting the laser pot fail to fix it or more likely, make it worse.

More later, and yes, we conducted a small experiment this weekend. For a few decades human race has been trying to find the answer to a very perplexing question: How much does it cost if you leave a water sprinkler on in your yard overnight?

We are glad to tell you that we will be able to tell you the answer when we get our next water-bill.

Shree Ganeshay Namha

In the old days, when I did not know what "Blog" stands for, I used to google or ask people. The most popular answer was "oh blog?.. it means weB Log". That is similar to answering "oh it means Constant" when asked what is "const" in a C interview. A slightly better answer was "an online diary".

Diary! I know a few uses of a diary!
1. Give as a gift to your customers after mass-producing them with your ad on the cover.
2. Give as a gift to your friends/relatives as you know a lot of people who mass-produce them.
3. Give to your children to be used as a rough notebook.
4. Mainly in TV series or movies: Solve a homicide by reading someone's diary.
5. The most important use and the reason that I do not keep a diary is it proves to you that you have wasted a lot of time.

Anyway, "Blog" is NOT a diary in the traditional sense since it is a diary that you WANT people to read. Sometimes, if I do not get enough comments, I might even compel people to read it.

I will end the first post here. I have to write about my weekend.