Mein sigs.

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Saw The Fellowship of the Rings last night. Very good. Nowhere near the books in richness, of course, but you can’t condense a 12-hour book into a 3-hour film without sacrificing something. The cinematography and the special effects were there in just the right doses, without overpowering the acting. Gandalf was amazing, Legolas was just right, and although I would’ve liked it if he cried less, Frodo was pretty good too. Even Arwen did not ruin the show as some feared she would. Shore’s music was just right, not too polished or orchestral. But, gosh darn it, when the lights came on after three hours, I felt really sad that I’d have to wait a whole year before I got to see the next instalment.

For such a technically polished movie, though, the print was baad. Actually, the sound sucked. It went off for a few seconds on more than one instance, and the music overpowered the dialog at quite a few places. True, the theater was crappy (Satyam, Chennai, don’t go there unless you have to), but some reviews make me wonder if some of the prints had defective audio. Sure hope they can iron out these glitches before The Two Towers (which, if you’ve read the book, is where the story comes out in all its glory). And I do hope they show some Ents in it :-).

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Counting Crows:

It’s raining in Baltimore fifty miles east
Where you should be, no one’s around

It’s raining in Madras, and I’m blogging.

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Brent Simmons quotes John Donne: (with the antiquated spelling intact)

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the lesser… Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am invovled in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

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Bob Dylan - Mr. Tambourine Man:

My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming.

This is — and remains — one of my all-time favorite numbers. I’m writing about it because today I heard The Byrds’ version of this number. Radio friendly pop or not, it sucks. Especially when compared to the dreamy addictive power of the original.

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Almost quoth 3 Doors Down in Loser:

Some day I will find, a love that flows
Through me like this
But I know I it won’t go any further
than pushing me
Off of life’s little edge

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Sorry for the long delay in posting messages here, real life intervened. Hope to start posting again real soon now!

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James Gosling’s Top 10 Signs You Work in the 90s are funny, but contain a grain of truth in them somewhere. I could totally identify with point 6:

You normally eat out of vending machines and at the most expensive restaurant in town within the same week.

as well as point 1:

You think a ‘half-day’ means leaving at 5 o’clock.

And the others struck chords with me to one extent or the other.

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Time capsules tend to capture the imagination of the public for one reason or the other. A new time capsule project, The KEO, is underway in France about the time you read this. It’s capsule will be a CD-ROM, sent into space on board a satellite that will remain in orbit well into the 50th millennium (that’s right: 50,000 CE). And what’s more, even you can contribute you thoughts to be preserved for posterity: follow this link and type your message in! You can contribute upto 6000 characters — that’s nearly 4 pages of text.

Of course a hardened sf fan like myself couldn’t let this opportunity pass by — I have submitted a message myself! You can read my message for KEO here.

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