28 August 2008

Chennai Marathon

On current form, and the stupid starting time of 8AM, completing the Givelife Chennai Half marathon in under 2 hours looks difficult.

However, it is not for nothing that we are long distance runners clocking 50-60km every week. We strive to give our best whenever we put on our running shoes !

Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 8:46 AM 0 comments

25 August 2008

Know someone in Standard Chartered ?

I was planning to run the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon, but the registrations seem to be closed. I was wondering if anyone from Standard Chartered has an extra form or an entry which they do not plan to use. Do pass the word around
Thanks in advance
Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 9:55 AM 0 comments

12 August 2008

Mplayer - Play avi/divx files on windows

So, as I was helping out someone play avi files on windows, they wanted an easy to use player with a neat installer. As always, since Mplayer remains my first choice for a media player, I suggested that to them. They wanted something more automated, which would not have them do things like copying codecs and all that jazz.

After poking around in google, I stumbled upon a neat version of Mplayer for Windows here. Download the full version and you have a player that can play anything that is thrown at it.

Anything else, including Windows Media Player, is a waste of time.

Shyam

Tags: , , ,

Posted by Unknown at 7:06 PM 2 comments

Irony

Perhaps the biggest irony in life, my friends tell me, is that the American flags in Walmart have a "Made in China" written on them.

Shyam

Tags: ,

Posted by Unknown at 6:46 PM 0 comments

Another one

And so I was browsing across my music collection when I came across this song. A careful listening unearthed a few things about this song:

Illayaraja does not use the violin that he always uses. He creates magic with amazing humming patterns, which are nicely overlaid on top of each other and yes, guitar, both rhythm and bass.

His usual muse, S.Janaki, does not let him down by blending her voice nicely into the tune. Check out when she says "Naan undu" towards the end of the second paragraph. Needless to say, any other male voice would have elevated this song to iconic status, but Illayaraja's voice is just enough for the mix.

Try as much as I could, I was unable to lay my hands on the video of this song and hence, created one myself.

Needless to say, this was probably one of those gems which went unnoticed. This was from the movie Kazhugu and the song is "Pon Oviyam".



Shyam

Tags: ,

Posted by Unknown at 12:59 AM 0 comments

11 August 2008

Olympics

It is indeed heart warming to see Abhinav Bindra win an individual gold in Olympics. I am quite sure that this is not the first gold that India will be winning. If not this Olympics, it is quite possible that future Olympics is bound to bring us more medals.

While the cynics among us may counter that it took us more than fifty years since independence to win an individual gold medal, I would like to point out to those cynics that for those years, India was living under a self-imposed, nay, Nehruvian imposed utopian socialist dream. In a country of a billion people, it is impossible for everyone to get everything.

It's just a matter of time.

Shyam

Tags:

Posted by Unknown at 7:12 PM 2 comments

06 August 2008

Observation

Why is it that songs you see on shows like Sun Music or whatever, seem slower in tempo than when you see it in the movie ?

Shyam

PS: Observation comes after seeing songs in Sun Music and the movies, Autograph and Subramaniapuram.

Posted by Unknown at 6:25 AM 0 comments

05 August 2008

Dark Knight

Watch it just to see how Heath Ledger steals it away from Jack Nicholson.

Shyam

Tags:

Posted by Unknown at 9:18 PM 0 comments