LOL

Gedo Senki - Tales from Earthsea

I Love Le Guin's works. Le Guin comes across as a very careful writer whose every word needs to be read with care as it is written with a lot of thought behind it. The Earthsea series is one of my favourites in fasntasy series, actually make that all of literature. I have enjoyed reading those books and I am currently reading "The Left Hand of Darkness" which so far has lived up to its expectations. I have read Le Guin's books at different times in my life and everytime, I have discovered something profound in her writings.

For people who know me, they know how big a fan I am of Miyazaki's works. Usually dismissed by people (who I consider to be idiots for stereotyping) as children's films, Miyazaki's animated films are brilliant and a rare breed of filmmaking and I rate his works right at the top of my list of great films. His movies usually deal with subjects very human and earthy but set in worlds that are fantastic, to say the least. He would have the been the perfect director for visualizing the world of Earthsea. And that almost happened. I say almost because the Earthsea series was filmed by his studio, Ghibli, but was directed by his son, another Miyazaki. I had to see it.

But the release of the film was followed by a lot of criticism that just did not suit the expectations I had. Ursula herself bashed the film with strong words -

"Both the American and the Japanese film-makers treated these books as mines for names and a few concepts, taking bits and pieces out of context, and replacing the story/ies with an entirely different plot, lacking in coherence and consistency. I wonder at the disrespect shown not only to the books but to their readers." [Link]

That sealed the fate of the film. I no longer seeked it as much I had.

Of course, that does not mean I would never see the film. Authors are notorious for hating the interpretations of their books. And after I watched it today, I had only one feeling left for it - I hated it. That is probably the worst handling of the series that one can imagine (I haven't seen the American series yet but I am sure that it cannot be worse than this). Le Guin's criticism which seemed harsh is actually bang on target and perhaps, a little lenient. None of the wisdom that I have come to love about Miyzaki's films was on display. In fact, it was a two hour film of pointless fantasy with an inane attempt to instill some aspects of spirituality into it by lifting ideas from the books out of context and making it almost religious. To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement. This really is a forgettable piece and is best not seen.

Lizards lay eggs

Funny story

A short life

I want to scream
They can make fun of me but I am better than them
You decide for me?
I am sleepwalking through my life
Who do I talk to?
One step closer to freedom
Is this love?
Fuck, I can't compete with that guy
I hate this place.
Finally, somebody understands

Money, money, money, it is no use
I want to do something.. not this but this
One. two. three. four. They said sorry
I get rejected and she's happy?
I need to move on, I need to dive in the deep end of the pool
I guess I am really on my own now.

A life
A short one indeed

Google busts my bubble...

Visitors to my photo blog might have noticed the nice little addon I put on every post - the little map of the place where I took the picture. Making it possible was tough. I had to hack html, javascript and the maps API together to ensure that each post could have its own little map and they would coexist. I was proud of this little thing that I considered to be unique to my little blog. But now, my blog's uniqueness is threatened. Now, any average Jo can do it.

<sarcasm>Thank you very much Google!</sarcasm>

Another Blogger tip

I have always wondered how many people were subscribed to my blog. Blogger has the feed option but it does not tell you anything about subscribers. Feedburner does but the problem is you have to burn your feed into a feedburner one and feedburner would give you stats on those who subscribe to the newly created feed.
Till recently, I had no way of knowing whether this blog was being regularly read by people or not (though I have had quite a number of people tell me that they read my blog and I have been plesantly surprised to know that :). As the beginning of the previous line suggests, I have been able to find a way get stats on the number of subscribers. I was messing around with my feed settings in blogger (my feed subscribers may have noticed those changes) and I found that blogger has introduced a new feature called feed redirect. I put in my feedburner feed in that box and overnight, I knew the number of subscribers to this blog...
If you want to exploit this feature, you can follow the steps in this tutorial.

The suspense is over..

Materazzi finally reveals what he said.

Quite frankly, I prefer the suspense that was your silence..

Well, he wasn't really silent. He did release a book after the world cup with all possible things he said to Zidane. :)

Sigh.. Wish I was a kid again...

Is there a way I can strangle an irritating software?

Ahem..

Can you tell me what this is? It is fairly obvious but it still took me a few seconds for it to sink in... What is the world coming to...

Link

Death claims another great artist...

Bergman is dead.

I cannot emphasise how influential his movies have been to me.

LOL

A rant against the Americans

I know I have a few rants against the americans but one thing ZI hate is their toilets. The toilet stalls are created with the least concern for privacy but more than that, somebody taking a dump in one of them stinks up the entire toilet! I mean what is wrong with creating a more enclosed place which has its own exhaust system like we do in India? With all their extravgance, with pretty much everything, I refuse to believe that they are saving up on something...

Futuristic comics

Head over to Boingboing

California summer

Now I know why people rave about California and its summers. The days are like the sunny winter days in North India, days that I always thought were best spent outdoors. Love the weather and have a car this time to roam around the nearby beaches.

Ubuntu Mania

Photograph By: Urban_Data

"pursuit of hapiness [sic] is the distinct privilege of a few."

A new website called "New Avatars of Slavery"

Amardeep at Sepia Mutiny has more...

As I've said before, the cost of an extremely slow and unpredictable immigration system comes in people's lives: waiting 5-10 years for a Green Card without being certain of success is dispiriting at best, and soul-crushing at worst.

Quick Blogger Tip..

Do you like the "Recent comments" feature that worpress provides but blogger does not?
Do you like sharing things from google reader but absolutely hate that their widget does not match your page style and sticks out like a sour thumb? Have you used Yahoo! Pipes and created some feeds that you wish you could display on your blog?

If so, fear not. This is a little tip that you will find useful if you like adding snippets of your feeds to your blog.

First, you need to be on Blogger 2.0. If you are still on the antiquated blogger platform, this will not work.

If you are already there, you will also need to upgrade to the new layouts manager.

Ok, let us suppose you are already there and I am just wasting your time.

Now, click on the "Add new page element" that you can see there in the layout manager. This will open a popup. fear not, this is not an ad that will tell you that your system is infected with viruses and you need to download a software to clean the system! This is just blogger's way of presenting an UI to you to add a little box in your sidebar. Do not get overwhelmed by all those options in this little window. Stay calm and you might notice that there is one heading called "Feed" and it has a blue "Add to blog" button underneath it. Click that one! This will take you another page which would have a textbox in it. Now all you need to do is add the feed url that you want to share with your readers.
If you want the cool "Recent comments" box, just like the one you see on this blog, just put in "http://{your-blog}.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default" in the box.
If you want to add your google reader share, find the link for rss feed for your shared items and key in that url in the text box. If you want both, repeat the process twice, once with your comments feed and once with your google reader share feed.

Have fun.

What is he doing?

Daily dose of laughter