All posts by vyom

Prometheus (2012)

Pop Culture,
Plot (from IMDb): “A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.”Let me begin by saying that I haven’t watched the original movies of the Alien franchise, to which Prometheus is being regarded as the prequel too. So I didn’t have any expectations or pre notions about the movie. But I was aware of the basic plot of the previous movies, which involved gruesome ways of their attacks.The genre of the movie says, it’s an Action, Sci-fi and Horror. Sadly to me, it seemed to fit in neither of the three perfectly.The movie begins slowly. Too slowly. And it’s not a complaint. I have seen good movies with slow start. But this one just keeps on dragging.

There was no character development so to speak. Except that of Noomi Rapace (Elizabeth Shaw, in movie) and maybe of Michael Fassbender (David, in movie).
I didn’t felt the story either. And I won’t say screenplay was any good either.
Speaking of horror, there was maybe just a couple of time where I was spooked but overall, saying Prometheus a horror movie will be injustice. And that is coming from someone who is not a fan of horror movies just because they scare the sh!t out of me.
The built up which is developed in the first half of the movie just doesn’t justify the climax. Almost everyone who will watch the movie will agree that the climax could have been a lot better. The way it ended it looked like I was watching the first episode of a series.
Something which is good and which was apparent from the trailer was the cinematography. It was good. But again not something we haven’t seen before.
Maybe these kinds of movies are just not my type. Maybe the ones who like “Alien” and its sequels may relate something to it… but for me, Prometheus was one movie I could have easily skipped if I haven’t got the chance to get the premiere passes.
Rating: 2.5/5
Continue reading Prometheus (2012) →

Mobile Internet : First Hand Experience of Me and My Dad

Technology, ,

I am sitting on my berth in a compartment of a train which is scheduled to take me to my village. In my hands is my smartphone which have become the best companion of my life. And with me is my dad who is traveling along with me and who is familiar with the power of the little gadget I was holding in my hand.Suddenly my gaze took me outside the window to the crowd on the station. Almost everyone could be seen with a phone in their hands. Some talking, some looking at the little screens while other busy passing time tapping their phones in the waiting area.
It was then when it struck me something. There used to be a time when people used to buy phones to talk and talk, and just talk. Phones were practically no other purpose. And they used to pay large amount of money just for that. Well, life have changed today. Changed to an extent that it’s nothing short of a miracle. Today talking is just one of the thing we can do with our smartphones. Today we have the kind of power that one could never imagine just a decade ago. Thanks to smartphones, we now have the power of Internet in our pockets, palms or wherever it could be carried.
Continue reading Mobile Internet : First Hand Experience of Me and My Dad →

The Avengers

Pop Culture,

Plot: (from IMDb)

Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. brings together a team of super humans to form The Avengers to help save the Earth from Loki and his army.

My experience:

“The Avenger” as I expected was an amazing ride into the awesomeness that the best of Hollywood can offer.
The moment I saw the trailer of Avenger I knew it was going to be a unique experience. Fortunately I got a chance to catch its premiere in PVR Plaza today. Not many movies are built up on the foundations of movies from about 9 years into the past. And not many movies do it as successfully as The Avenger did.

Movie starts quite slow and begins from where it left in Captain America. But it soon gain pace once our heroes are introduced. And from then on, it only gets better.
My biggest concern from the movie was how will the screen time be divided in all those super heroes. But the movie uses it for the advantage and tells us an incredible story.

There are many references in the Avengers that alludes to movies which were a stepping stone to it. So the knowledge of all the characters will of course help to understand some of the subtle humor in the movie. Most of the humor was, as you could have expected, from Tony Stark aka the Iron Man. And many other are from the Hulk. And the rest was because of the cultural differences between the characters and was a bit foreseeable.

Visual effects was as expected mind numbing. Hulk showed a greater range of emotions due to the motion capture tech been implemented I presume first time in Hulk series. And we see Iron Man new ways to “Suit Up”! Speaking of Suit up.. we also have a character which was nice to have: Cobie Smulders (or Robin Scherbatsky) from “How I met your mother”! One sequence which send the shivers down the spine was when all the superheroes were shown one after another in once coherence fighting against the army of Loki. It was Epic! (and this is not a spoiler).

And one thing more. My 3D experience was not good. The active shutter glasses kinda felt like it absorbed all the colors from the movie. So I watched most of the movies without 3D and it was quite good. AFAIK, this movie was not meant to be 3D, and was converted later into one. So I felt it kinda ruined the movie for me.

I think it goes without saying that The Avengers is a must watch for all Marvel fans and anyone who have an appetite for a little super heroes! As for me, I am going to watch it again and this time in 2D since I feel it deserves a re-watch!

Windows Phone 7 Review (on HTC 7 Mozart)

Technology,

This is my first full length review here, of something I am really passionate about, OSes. But before I start lets see what you should expect and not expect from this review:
Don’t Expect:
1. 100% accuracy (I can be factually wrong somewhere, and you can help me finding those out)
2. Detailed hardware review (Since HTC Mozart is already an obsolete product, I wont go in detail in it)
3. Grammatical correctness (I am weak in that so, pardon me please)
Do Expect:
1. A detailed opinion on software issues, the pros and cons of WP7 at this version (Mango).
2. Screenshots (Many are in spoilers)
3. Future additions of features in this review on request.
PS: I don’t own the device currently, so might not be able to entertain requests immediately. Let’s begun:

HTC 7 Mozart

The Hardware

The very first thing which you will notice with HTC Mozart is its 3.7” glossy screen on a body made from brushed aluminium with curved edges. It sports a big speaker on the top and 3 touch buttons on the bottom. The buttons namely Back, Start and Search, follows the standard specified by Microsoft across all Windows Phone devices and so would be your navigation partners in exploring the world of mobile windows.
Continue reading Windows Phone 7 Review (on HTC 7 Mozart) →

The Must Have Android Apps

Technology,
It’s been exact two months since I made a decision to buy LG Optimus One as my first smartphone. And I fulfilled the promise. I bought O1 from Letsbuy.com, and which was also one of the first online shopping experience for me.
 
My heart beats were racing on high rates while I was unboxing the package. Along came out the shiniest piece of gadget my eyes has ever experienced live.
And the rest is history…
 
While I would save the story for my feelings for the gadget for some other time this article is an attempt to list all the android apps that I have discovered over the 54 days of my use of the phone.

The list is not in any particular order, and the apps listed with the word [root] requires root privilege to work.
(Star means newly added, after writing the original article.)

 

Productivity

AndChat (Free) [The best IRC client]
ASTRO File Manager [The best file manager]
Camera360 Ultimate
Endomondo Sports Tracker [To track the distance or route you travel]
Dropbox [The best cross platform file sharing app]
FxCamera
Google Goggles [Best app to read those QR codes and search with images]
Hindu Calendar [Useful sometimes, when mom needs to know dates of some festival :P ]
iMobile [App from ICICI customers, very useful to me, I do prepaid recharge from this]
Indian Railway App – Disha [PNR check, availability checker, train schedule and more]
Opera Mobile web browser
SMS Backup + [Best app to take Backup of your SMS’s on your Google Account]
WhatsApp Messenger [Universal Bluetooth, as I like to call it Send sms, share pics etc…]
Remember The Milk [Cloud Mobile Task Management]
Pulse News* [Best news aggregator app]
Quick Boot* [Lets you reboot or shutdown, without using actual power button. For those, who fears they would break hardware button. Like me.]
Photo Resizer* [Does what it says]Astrid [Homage to this little To Do and Reminder app that was at pinnacle of its service, until it decided to shut down on 5th of August 2013. I will miss you.] Continue reading The Must Have Android Apps →

My First Android

Technology, , ,
A few days back I came across a commercial from Red Hat Linux and it put forth some true facts. “Facts”, unless proven otherwise!

“The telephone has too many shortcomings, to be seriously considered as a means of communication“, “A rocket will never leave the Earth’s atmosphere“, and the most absurd one, “640k ought to be enough for anybody” as populated to be said by Bill Gates, were some of the predictions done in the last century. The beliefs that shattered to the ground in later years, spectacularly.
The appetite for power never stops. People want to be more efficient everyday. The processing power is increasing, whereas the size of silicon chips is reducing. Thanks to Moore’s law, gadgets are all set to become smaller but smarter.
A smartphone is a perfect example of something which could never have been conceived of, say, 20 years ago. Yet the future looks promising for this category of phones. It would not be long before we see phones surpassing speeds more than 2.4 GHz, due to the developments in processors like the next gen Qualcomm. But as they say, technology won’t stop growing and so people have to start somewhere.
It was many years ago, that I had tried a phone that was smart. I had a Sony Walkman, aka, w550i which was basically a feature phone, with multimedia features, to be precise. It used to take good pics with its 1.3 megapixel camera, and could also sync contacts with a PC. But, today, I need something better than a feature phone. Precisely, an Entry Level Android.
Continue reading My First Android →

30+ Hollywood Movies to look forward to in 2011

Pop Culture,
(Read the original article at Techrepublic.) Last year has been an awesome thrill ride into the world of unknown and visits to the places, not even conceivable by human mind before. The Lovely Bones, took us in the life after death; Alice in wonderful took us to the aftermath of the original; Prince of Persia, took the game to reality; Inception took us on a ride inside dreams and the sequel of Tron, abducted us inside the digital world. While the past year did all that without even a slightest of hesitation, this year, 2011, the excitement is only going to rise.

Following is a list of 30 movies which any self-respected geek must make sure to watch at any cost in the year 2011, along with its storyline and the time of release.
Note: Some descriptions are from IMDB, and release dates can be tentative.So buckle up and enjoy the ride…..

1. Sanctum (4 Feb) [ Action | Adventure | Drama ]
From James Cameroncomes another movie, that it bound to get all the attention it needs. This time, Cameron is going under water, and exploring maybe the only place left to explore on earth. While Sanctum was inspired from a real story, of survival of a crew of divers, from the underwater caves, James had informed, that it is purely a fiction. Sanctum is going to be 3D, a trend which has become popular with the success of Avatar in 3D.
[Trailer]
Continue reading 30+ Hollywood Movies to look forward to in 2011 →

2012 – The End – Or Just the Beginning

Pop Culture
2012 (film)Image via Wikipedia

12th December 2012:
“Water came rushing in from all sides of the island and submerged the complete city in one sweep. Huge rocks were falling from the skies and blasting like Atom bombs all over the mountains. Rocks started to melt like wax does in the coal and houses began to vaporize in seconds.
The minute longs earthquakes were shattering the landscapes, and buildings were collapsing like when a tower of cards crash when even one card is pushed from its base. Bridges were collapsing, trucks blasting and there was havoc everywhere!”


Just the words above can generate chills in the spine. Now imagine watching the destruction on 30 by 70 feet screen size and dolby digital surround sound. Oh, it has GOT TO BE one of the most Amazing Experience ever. And it was. So much so, that I had to watch it two times to get it through. Continue reading 2012 – The End – Or Just the Beginning →

Buying Dilemma of a New Phone (to Talk)

Personal, Technology,
So, its one of those time of the year, when you feel your (old) phone is getting too old to handle, and there could be many reasons for feeling so, depending on the type of consumer you are.

For me, I am now looking for a new phone, since its giving me a few troubles (which translates to MANY, in my case!).
Personally I don’t want to leave my Sony Ericsson W550i (Walkman), which was a present to me 2 yrs ago from my dad on my birthday and since then, I have built a relationship with this phone. This phone is amazing. Without getting too emotional, I just want to tell that its dedicated keys for Multimedia, Camera, Lock and Video Player is awesome, but also it has so much of features, that just makes it too cool to handle. Continue reading Buying Dilemma of a New Phone (to Talk) →

Inception – Dare to Dream

Pop Culture
Leonardo DiCaprio at the Body of Lies film pre...Image via Wikipedia
The first thing which comes to mind after you have watched the trailorof Inception, is that you will see Leonardo DiCaprio on the Big screen! It’s a known fact, about him being a good actor, and its hard to imagine him without getting the record-setting “Titanic” in mind. But I am glad to say that Inception may have broken this cliché, and instead many people would now remember him for Inception instead!
Although its very difficult to write a review of Inception, after just a single watch (ya, its that obscure), but this is just an account of my experience and knowledge while doing so.

Plot:

Inception is all about dreams, and its invasion. Few people, has the technology to go inside someone’s dream, and steal what is called the most important thing in the modern world – Information or secrets. “Cobb”, the main protagonist of the story (of course Leo), has a job to use their dreams to extract the information, and hence he is called, “extractor”. As the story progresses we watch Cobb and his team  playing with the minds of people that they target, while Cobb trying to deal with his own secrets of his memories. That’s all is needed to Incept the idea of Inception in your minds.

Continue reading Inception – Dare to Dream →