Ekalavya- a good student ??

I was thinking about the story of ekalavya who is believed to have ’sacrificed’ his archery skills upon his “teacher”  ( was it ? ) Drona’s wish . Now according to the popular story , Arjuna  was a favourite student of Drona and he was fearful that Ekalavya may overshadow him in history as the greatest archer.He requested drona to ask for ekalavya’s right hand thumb as gurudakshina (fee). I doubt if this story is true . There seems to some bias in this plot which brings forward Ekalvyas ideal qualities and overshadows the bad things about arjuna and drona . Now where can you find a person who is as ideal as Ekalavya as the mahabharata potrays him to be.

Lets view this story from another angle. Ekalavya goes to drona and requests him to be accepted as his(Drona’s) student. But Drona doesn’t want to teach archery to a tribal person.Now first thing to give a thought is why would a tribal whose main occupation is hunting and who would already have mastered the art of archery want to again learn archery from Drona?? . Ekalavya could have learnt archery himself or from elders of his tribe and may have mastered the art with practice. Now since his main occupation or hobby whatever you call it is to hunt , he shot arrows at the hunting dogs of the pandavas. Ekalavya being a tribal and thus of lower class killing the hunting dogs of th ekshatriyas naturally angered the pandavas and they after some heated words would have overpowered Ekalavya and cut off his thumb so that he wouldn’t be able to hold an arrow perfectly and thus never be a good archer.

If this kind of story is added to mythology , people reading it may not be impressed by it and thus to add some idealness in the story it was modified to what is told in mahabharatha.

All characters in the above speculative story are imaginary and so are the characters in the original epic .

Dude where’s my pen

Today i was feeling like writing something and suddenly remembered that i have a good old fountain pen with me which was given to me by my dad about two years ago. I started started searching for it and after an hours search it was not to be found. Its gone !! Lost !! [ ].

I feel fountain pens are a rarity and should be preserved.Guess I have to get another one. 

Lets see if i can get one.

Swat cat

Now this monday I came back to campus from home and i find this cat ( jee haan billi !!) roaming around my hostel room. I hold the cat and cuddle it and it doesn’t feel intimidated ( a sign that its a paltu kind ). Now i leave it on the floor it doesn’t leave me :O .It follows me every step i take. Finally its

interested in my cupboard and tries to open it with its paws. Wondering what is it that this thing is worried about , I open the cupboard and lo and behold it ha

s its kittens inside my cupboard. So what did I do ?. Nothing. There was nothing I could do. I let it stay there.

I think it will shift the kittens to some other place soon.

PS: After 3 days of this cat staying in my room. I have begun to understand its meows.

Akon feat. Michael Jackson-”Hold My Hand”

So after nearly 7 years the King is back with a new song in collaboration with Akon.The song titled “Hold My hand” has already leaked out on the internet.The song is cool and lets hope it brings Michael back on music charts.Michael’s vocal make it worthwhile hearing but the song somehow reminds of someother michael song.Anyways the song can be listened on youtube (damn! why do i always get youtube links)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F3etnH7iR8

Plagiarism in indian animation

Plagiarism has become an integral part of indian media.Right
from music in films and ads to the so called animation industry which
some industry experts say would be a booming industry.If you take people
who blatantly copy characters from other well known animation studios, how
can you claim that indian animation industry will be ‘the most sought after’ in future?.
What kind of ‘Character artists’ are these who themselves are characterless?.

People don’t realise much of the plagiarism and even if they do
they disguise it under the name of ‘inspiration’.If you look at the
cartoon characters of other international studios,they have something new everytime.
When MGM studios made “Tom and Jerry”,they drew a cat which was their trademark,
and the same cat( the features and color and structure) was never used by Hanna Barbera Studios
when they mad “TopCat” in the 60’s.Even warner brothers had their own different
version of cat ‘Sylvester’ which was totally different from the other two.
If you compare these three cartoon characters you can’t
find any similarity between them.There is something called creativity that is
required in an animator and I don’t find this in indian animations.

Now if can you remember a movie called “Raju Chacha” with Ajay Devgan and Kajol in
lead,there is song where Ajay tells some children a story about a lion.Now this story
part of the movie was animated and the animated lions were directly copied from
Disney’s Lion king. Even the recent mythological animations get ‘inspired’ heavily
by yugo sako’s The Prince of light a.k.a The legend of prince Ram, an international
animation film about lord Ram.

If remembering old things is a bit difficult,  take a look at the New Mentos add which shows a Donkey
using an ape as a slave and how after eating Mentos the ape evolves into a man
and uses the donkey as slave.In this particular advertisement, the donkey is copied from
“The shrek” and the character of the evolved man is again directly copied from “Shrek-2″.How shameless!
Just watch the video on youtube and decide for yourself
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=uc1iEFkahEA

Let us hope indian animation firms will atleast try to take people with intrest in arts and especially those with creative and humorous attitude.C’mon wake up.

Youngistan!!……Dumbest ad ever!!!

I couldn’t believe myself when I saw this advertisement. How could Pepsi make such a dumb add? No doubt pepsi can hire many stars but it has to use them properly.

Shahrukh reading about “Antariksh Yatri” and Ranbir kapoor (the Pakistani boy next door lookalike) acting like an alien and forget deepika she was not needed. How do they expect this to be a hit? This stands out first in “worst-ever” Indian Pepsi ads according to me(the second one being the Oye-bubbly one). It’s the same with coca-cola but somewhat better. On the other hand Thums-up add is the best with a simple story-line.

Fedora-8

Of all the Linux distros that i have tried(which are very few) I find Fedora Core very interesting.
The basic skeleton of the distribution has remained unchanged since the Red-Hat days. Today I installed Fedora-8 and I can surely say Linux has come a long way. The kind of Desktop themes and eye-candy makes window-vista seem so trivial. Just try out the Compiz-Fusion theme manager. Here is a video in youtube showing Compiz-fusion’s power.

Although I could not get all the effects but I am contended with the cube rotation effect on my Intel Graphic Card.

    The good thing about reading research papers on LOW-Power VLSI is that you don’t need to study the beginning part. Every paper starts with the same story about miniaturization and the problems about using battery powered devices and the need for low power and the same old list of low-power techniques that have been used in the past.

You’re beautiful

Who is this James Blunt and why did he
receive so much airplay in 2005 ?. This
led me to listen to the song “you’re beautiful”.
And the result is this song is so beautiful.
I never cared about this song until now. Every time
i switched to VH1 on TV, I would see a freaky looking
blond guy removing his shirt,shoes etc in cold rainy
whether.I did not like it and used to change the channel
but now I feel the video was funny.I like it. The lyrics
are awesome.

My life is brilliant, my love is pure
I saw an angel of that I’m sure
She smiled at me on the subway
She was with another man
But I won’t lose no sleep on that
‘Cause I’ve got a plan

You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful
You’re beautiful, it’s true
I saw your face in a crowded place
And I don’t know what to do
‘Cause I’ll never be with you

Yes, she caught my eye
As we walked on by

She could see from my face that
I was flying high
And I don’t think that I’ll see her again
But we shared a moment that will last ’till the end

You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful
You’re beautiful, it’s true
I saw your face in a crowded place
And I don’t know what to do
‘Cause I’ll never be with you

You’re beautiful you’re beautiful
You’re beautiful, it’s true
There must be an angel with a smile on her face
When she thought up that I should be with you
But it’s time to face the truth
I will never be with you

Wikipedia says this song has many parodies.Got to listen
to one of them.

Apocalypto

OK my first post since many days.
With my mid-sem exams around the corner,I was getting
bored this evening and decided to watch a movie.

I got to watch Mel-Gibson’s “Apocalypto”.I liked themovie, as it was a different kind of movie but a violent.The
violence includes hunting,head-smashing,decapitations,Jaguar attacks
and so on.(Not for the faint-hearted).Coming to the language,
not even a single English word is heard throughout the film.
They speak some Mayan language. The English subtitles even
translate their names, for instance “turtles run” and “Jaguar-Paw “.
These names sound funny but you ever thought how our Indian
names sound when translated to English?.Try it out.