Jayadev’s Blog

I’ve been watching, I’ve been waiting
In the shadows for my time
I’ve been searching, I’ve been living
For tomorrows all my life!!!

In some sense very true for many of us, we all are in shadows and are waiting for a moment to show the world what we are capable of..just waiting for our time…

Many times you like a music band, when you can relate to what they are singing or when their concept appeals you!! I had already told once my facination with the concept of death and the world beyond and anybody who sings about it in an out-of-this-world style are my favourites. For ex. Evanescence, Linkin-park and The Rasmus. They and their songs just dont belong to this world…its truly out of this world.

I first happened to hear Rasmus, when i accidently heard one of their super hits “In the Shadows”….the moment i heard it ..i was in look for other songs of the band…i knew i would love it…and i bumped into their Album “DeadLetters” ..my favourite. For few weeks i used to heard them everyday…..and some songs takes me to another world….the world of my pasts and probably my futures…

When i heard they are coming to bangalore, i knew i had to be there, since they were not that popular here there was no problem for tickets and i went with my friends RP,Sameer and Anoop. The chill, the light drizzle just adding to the already chill atmosphere made more chiller by the band….and yeah they sang all my personal favourites.

Let me end with lines of one of my favourite song..whenever i hear it, I always remember my brother and always a strange feeling of sadness and ephemeral nature of world…for a moment i wonder what the hell am i doing here…

I wish you were here tonight with me to see the northern lights.
I wish you were here tonight with me.
I wish I could have you by my side tonight when the sky is burning.
I wish I could have you by my side.

(You dont know how i wish he was by my side)

Burns like a thousand stars.
Though you are light years away.
Burns like a thousand stars or more.
You’re up there, you’re always with me,
smiling down on me.
(Those memories are all i have now)

After posting my last blog on the italian movie (The Postman), my friend pv pointed me to another Italian movie which is one of my all time favourites “Life is beautiful” starring Roberto Benigni. Since many of my friends like that movie too, i thought i should draw the attention to his new movie La Tigre e La Neve (The Tiger and the Snow), starring the same hero-heroine as their earlier hit Life is beautiful.

From the review it looks like a similar type of movie, this time the backdrop being Iraqi war. Another comic love story, with a very tragic backdrop of war…the way he blends the comedy and sweetness of romance with the holocaust of war all around…making people cry and laugh at the same time(laughing with crying to be precise)…the irony of life…that is Benigni’s style.

Anyway currently the movie is released only in Italy, and hope it will soon get released elsewhere(provided the Americans think, they are not portrayed in a bad image ).

I think films have to have a heartbeat. If you’re going to fight in a movie, you have to have something to fight for. If you’re going to kill somebody, there has to be a reason why. If someone’s going to die, it must hurt.

                                    Kevin Costner, actor/director 

I love watching movies, and over the years you realise that u have seen most of the stereotyped plots, and then things slowly get a bit boring..then u look forward to plots which are different. Then again there are movies which makes u laugh, think, cry….but rarely there comes a movie , after seeing which u feel ur touched to such an extend, u cant forget the experiance. It’s not like u were watching something on a screen but u were in another world…and u feel ur life is no longer the same. You are enriched,touched, changed……

Yes i recently got a chance to watch such a movie..no.. an artwork captured in silverscreen…the italian movie “Il Postino”.

“For two hours, it’s possible to fall under The Postman’s spell and be completely enchanted. There is more vitality and genuine passion here than in any ten big-budget extravaganzas. This movie about words
and images will delight not just because it entertains, but because it takes the motion picture experience one step further, and fulfills.” movie review

” It’s often expected that European films will have strong performances (which isn’t always true) but Il Postino is exceptional. Troisi is unforgettable and perfect in his characterisation - every slight movement, flickering look or understated gesture is believable. Somehow he manages to put more into a fleeting glance (with his large, expressive eyes) than most actors put into an entire film. In harmony with this perfection, every other actor is excellent (Noiret especially), fitting into this small fishing community smoothly. The story is warm, shot through with humour and deeply moving - although the acting is so good that it hardly feels scripted. Poignancy is added by the fact that Massimo Troisi died the day after filming ended (due to his postponing heart surgery) but Il Postino should not be held up as a great film because of this. Instead, this affecting film stands tall in its own right as a ‘must see’ movie. There can be no finer epitaph.” — source

But what i like most is the beautiful way in which a great poet can touch the life of a very simple person and enrich and inspire his life to such an extend that he becomes an icon. Yeah, an acquaintance with a great man can change ur whole personality, ur life, ur dreams…Ur just lucky if u got such an oppurtunity in ur lifetime !!!

Being a mobile application developer, i thought i should be posting some mobile specific posts too…Lemme start with this supposedly “New Concept Mobile Design” by Nokia which recently won an award for the most innovative product concept.

“The bracelet-like 888 is envisioned to use a liquid battery, feature speech recognition, a flexible touch screen, and a touch sensitive body cover. A video showing off the device’s potential features shows off close to a dozen functions, including an alarm clock, PDA, GPS, phone, push email receiver, digital wallet and, of course, jewelry. And, other than the “liquid battery,” we can actually see this in the not-too-distant future. ” from engadget.com (more)

Lets wait and see…..

I had been a big fan of “Michael Learns To Rock” band, specially b’coz in the early days of my music listening, those where the few songs which we were legally allowed in my institute.(which was strict, and dont encourage all the rock stuff). If you look for slow songs, melody and sing along kind of albums, then you should definitely check them. Moreover if you looking for romance, or the image of the that ‘dream one’ in your heart, MLTR is perfect !!!

Though i had offlate not listening to many of theirs, but their songs still holds a special appeal to me…and when my friend RP asked whether i am interested i had no hesitation. Mainly bcoz , atleast i can listen to those guys live, whom i have always listened and watch in TV’s and Diskmans.

One important and very stricking point of the band is their simplicity (probably that reflects in their simple songs too). I quote from a fan ” As opposed to so many other international names, the road to MLTR’s success has never been paved with scandals, divorces, drugs, or even extreme images of life on the edge – It’s strictly about music.” We can literally see it in their songs, and i could see it in the stage too…they really dont know how to “show off” much , like many other bands i have seen.

Some of the songs reminded me of very font memories , like “Sleeping Child” which was played during one of our undergraduation events when i very emotional, “Nothing Can Stop emotions”….during postgraduation farewell….and hearing them live was relieving those moments….And when we all thought they are gone, they came back on request from the crowd to play some of my favourites like “Paint my love”, “Wild women” and finally the best of all “Someday” ….

….Not to forget the “beautiful” crowd which really convinced us it our money’s worth…

who does not like to humm:

“I’m not an actor I’m not a star
and I don’t even have my own car
But I’m hoping so much you’ll stay
that you will love me anyway”

MLTR may not rock, they definitely soothes….

May be a bit biased for i work for yahoo!…but i am very excited and cant resist to point these facts about the New yahoo mail UI….Just clipping some reviews for emphasising my point of view….

Walt Mossberg saying:
I’ve been comparing the new version of Yahoo Mail, which claims to be the leader in Web mail, with Gmail, the challenger Yahoo most fears. My verdict: The new Yahoo Mail is far superior to Gmail. Yahoo more closely matches the desktop experience most serious email users have come to expect.

…and PC Magazine saying:
…there’s no question that Yahoo! is set to make a big leap forward with its new Web-based mail product. We’ll hold off on a rating until the official release or at least the full public beta, but from what we’ve seen and tested so far, Yahoo!’s competition may soon have some serious catching up to do.

“Gmail is suddenly looking a little clunky. The new Yahoo! Mail is a sleek, finely wrought piece of interface design. The overall look is an Outlook-styled, three-pane window with folders in the left vertical pane, headers top right, and a message preview pane below the headers. Thus, Yahoo! becomes the first major e-mail provider to keep the Inbox in view while reading a message. That alone is news, but it’s not, in my opinion, the biggest news.
The new Yahoo! Mail features a tabbed interface whereby you can line up several messages for later perusal, very much like Firefox’s tabbed browsing.” — by Brad Hill

I felt a sudden difference when i used the new yahoo mail interface, i just felt i was using my outlook or thunderbird….some of the noted enhancements i summarize — Client-like performance and Ui, Tabbed interface, keyboard shortcuts , Mail Preview panel, powerful search within mails, Drag and drop functionality….
…..overall to me it was the pinnacle of the web technology in action…..

(This was one of my previous posts in 360)

When i look at the internet world i wonder what would be the next big thing??? But definitely it is becoming a huge virtual world out there !!!

When yahoo (one of the major players in internet) stared as a search website , it was a huge hit, for there were no organised place where internet links were stored…a simple directory structure !! But soon they wanted to get a way from the search status and become a portal !!! Portal where info about everything is stored, a gateway for the net . The aim to get all the users to come to Yahoo and then lead them to anywhere they want…to make Yahoo the home page of all !!!

Now comes the next hero, Google who slowly started as a search company…and yahoo who wanted to get away from search readily allowed google to take the search incharge in its portal too…afterall search is just a product in internet, and yahoo has many such products in its page!!But things changed, search slowly became the key, people noticed that google was providing search even for yahoo …and slowly they started going to google.com …and then only there!!! An average surfer first goes to the search page and then starts his surfing….”search became the window to the internet world” –things did go the unexpected way

Slowly things started getting ominuous, Google had no competitor, and soon a page exists in net only if google has indexed it..and the probability of hitting a page becomes dependant on how google ranks it…and the world was moving to a direction where google will have the index of all pages of the world and if we put a new page better inform google…..a mini google-internet world…

Luckily the gaints realised the folly , Yahoo and Microsoft pumped effort and money for search before things go out of the hand!! And now we have a worthy competitor in yahoo and msn , and better still many people now rate yahoo search better than google or at par !!(here i may be biased)

There was another similar development which nobody thought will pick up — Blogs. Initially it was the craze for home pages, and yahoo started their geocities….but never realised people are more interested in dynamic home pages where they can present their views everyday. But it went still further, people started posting specific techical stuff in their blogs and people of similar background visiting the page , posing their comments …and blogs grew and grew….Now sometimes people get news faster thru blogs than even news channel…there was rumour in blogs about yahoo buying flickr before the real buy, there were reviews about products in market that people checked before buying products…..Some blogs became famous as mobile blogs, travel blogs, networking blogs ….they became a website in itself. I even heard that some companies hired some famous bloggers to spread their brand name, and some famous bloggers are valuable commodity in marketing and technological fields !!!

Yes the fight is still on…google bought blogger.com, yahoo started 360, lifejournal if flooding with new registrations !!! Blog analysis sites are there, blog content search is there, rss feeds of blogs are spreading, mobile blogs are on new rise, technical blogs are becoming hot debate spots….its everywhere …let us watch and see where it goes !!

It was quite sometime, i was looking for a *free* blog publishing site. I was very much excited to start blogging, so that i can atleast look back at some of my own thoughts, forgotten, can organise my ideas and also draw my identity.

I have been using Yahoo’s 360 blog , which is cool, fast with a host of useful features, but it may not be suited for *just bloggin*….where u might look for just a blank page to write and let your friends comment!!!

Anyway there are lot of issues in which manytimes you just feel it this way, or you predict things to happen this way……and when it really manifest or happen…oh ” i knew it all the way”…..now i can probably show my blog and say “see i had told that loong back”…….many times we just want to say something but couldnt simply coz we didnot get the right audience.

Anyway this “wordpress” is exciting, always wanted a blog with tags, atlast when i found it couldnt resist my temptation to start one.

If you happen to read it, plz put in your suggestions about the site right here…….. See Ya