In a different perception, those movies can make you tougher if you relate yourself in to the characters of the students rather than the teacher characters I related myself to in both the films.

Both the movies are real-life based stories.. and as far as I have read, they have not exaggerated the story to make it good for the movies.. but may have in-turn been unable to bring everything that happened in real lives of the people involved into the movie format.

I cried when Hilary swank cried..
I smiled when Denzel washington smiled.
..

When the movies got over.. I was amazed at the presentation of them, and what changes such great movies could bring if they were shown to children and teachers all around the globe...

and then..
google tells me that the movies have already inspired people all around, and you could spend a day or two reading so much of the good changes the movies had already created.. organizations, funds for education, better teachers.. etc., all in america of-course.. and since both films talk about racism, black-white problems, you would see how they have helped the american culture. Like the 'Freedom Writers Foundation', something that has become immensely popular after the movie on Freedom Writers.

If you like teaching/mentoring, and you haven't watched either of the movies, I bet you should.
Because these are not just movies, they are powerful movies.

Its been sometime since I wrote anything here on my blog. Here are quick updates.

> I got financially broke, this time around I found up some interesting job for myself in Bangalore and worked there in a company called craftsilicon.

>Yes, I am no more an independent consultant, though I have now quit this bangalore company to join another..

>Yes, you read it right, I quit that company already, I joined in august, and quit recently now in december, because I guess I can't work the way people want me to : "inside the box, strictly"... without doing anything out-of-the-box, innovative, and importantly without thinking big.

> What I observed working with craftsilicon, a product-based company with a few microfinance and banking products, is the product space in India is in a state which has all symptoms and can be easily called the nascent stage of a "boom". Indian companies have grown up to the idea of buying Indian software.. "Didn't they always do that?" you ask, and yes, there was always a market for indian software, but only for the cheapest and the basic most applications, not for something like an enterprise application. Yes there were these 'Financle' kind of products which are big for a long time, but not many products like that... and if I remember right, Finacle had its first indian customer also only after many foreign customers.

> So, that is something very interesting.. the product space growing simply means, Indians are now seen more mature in software development space...importantly by Indians itself. As a whole country, we always were considered one which lacks attitude and self-confidence. Now the tables are changing.

> Soon we can expect more software products, servers, who knows even operating systems churned out of India.

(Isn't this supposed to be a brief update... yes yes I remember)

> Then, I am now going to work in chennai .. back home. and I guess I found myself a very very interesting project in a new company. I can't share more details, but briefly, it is a home automation system, with your TV, and a few other equipments going IP way, and pushing service delivery say some 10% into the futuristic dreams we have seen in movies like wallE, where people sit in their couch and do a lot of things over the screen and touchpad, and probably get fat at the end of day.

> And then,
And then, I might be getting married soon. Ms. Right though can't still believe she has decided to marry me, and things are going that way for now, with 50% of my earnings going to telephone bills... and if I even ponder slightly towards that angle of discussion on the phone, the call gets cut with a bye only to provide for a longer call to make up for the fight with her.

> Who is she? .. the name is Triveni.

> Got very disturbed atleast a few times, a few minutes about what happened recently in Bombay, talking about the terror shootings which lasted "3 days" in a so-called "transforming" country, killing many, and with politicians still failing to understand/attach any serious thought to it, except for making new arrangements to win state elections shortly happening or already completed in a few states.

> The world media ripped Indian police system / intelligence system / security system inside out, going on to mention that Indian police still use the world war II extinct .33 pistol for their major operations.

> The ruling politicians just took to a 'sorry', 'we learnt our lesson', 'it will be better next time', etc., thoughts instead of keeping just quiet and show that they are badly embarrassed that they did just "Nothing" so far, that can't even give basic protection to people, and that too in places in bombay which are known as high-security zone.

> Everytime you switch on TV, still, you see some politician carelessly answering 'yes we couldn't do anything.. we have learnt our lesson'.

> Yet again, and still still still for so many years, so many times, Indian governance systems want an accident or problem to know when to change things.. The governance system, the police system, or any public system here in India, goes not by a process...but only by events that happen... that's the "if it happens, we will see what to do" attitude.

> While I felt bad even bombay wasn't secured to freak shooting, that too for 3 days, the 4th day, it was revealed it happened even after repeated security and intelligence warnings from many many numerous intelligence agencies around the world and from the country's own intelligence systems. It simply showed that people who received the warnings ignored it amidst the movies they wanted to see that day, or the election preparations they wanted to do, or just lazily thought they are just warnings 'if it happens we will see'.

Horrible..
I decided I am not going to vote here on.. I guess there is a new system in the electorate system in India, where one is going to be allowed to go mark their name on the electorate on the voting day, and just return without voting which will then become a 'no vote' and add to a 'no vote' count... instead of voting for any existing party which has ever been in power atleast once so far and couldn't use their opportunity when they were in power to fix anything...just anything.

That we are still having to be so dumb a country, not addressing anything that is required to help us grow. And probably here on I am going to see what best I can do directly to my environment and country rather than voting for some idiot or the other and expecting them all to deliver even one of their promises that means upgrading the lifestyle, rather than giving something free to make votes and degrading the lifestyle with freebies and freebies and freebies.

Images were all formed by some dots or english characters all through the video.. and it looked quite interesting to see something like this for the first time. Something like effects we have seen in the film series 'Mummy'. The extra effect on the RadioHead video seems like, they have allowed some part of the image formed by the data to pulsate or move high/low based on the music.

The technology uses a mix of contouring techniques + lasers + geographical information scanners.. to deliver the goods.

Interesting!! presentation.. Out of Box stuff. Shows why google was so excited about the idea that they put this on their website(they have a policy not to put images or adverts on their sites other than their logo).

You will find the video and more information on how it was created at:
http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/

The match started with big expectations, because whichever of the finalists won, this final would be creating history. Also, this was the third successive time Rafa and Federrer were clashing in the Wimbledon finals.. both previous times Federrer reigning supreme and Nadal improving his game every year.

If Nadal wins, he were to equal the tennis legend Bjorn Borg's record of last winning both the French Open and the Wimbledon in the same calendar year.

If Roger Federrer wins, this would be his sixth successive wimbledon win, and could be poised towards beating another legend Pete Samprass's 7 successive wins at wimbledon. At the same time, Roger's sixth victory would surpass Bjorn Borg's 5 successive grand slam wins.

And so on.. the records were all there to be made, broken or to be kept.

Eventually, the 22 year old spaniard Nadal won his first ever wimbledon title, also his first ever title on grass court. Everybody is talking that this is a final that nobody who saw it live in the stadium would ever forget, and with Nadal winning, another era of tennis moves back with Federrer's achievements.

You should see the match hightlights and commentary here.

Photo Copyrights: wimbledon.org and getty images.

Anyway, coming to the real part. .. Firstly, I suggest you ignore the drama the Indian politicians are doing with this nuclear deal thing. Yes, DRAMA.. you got it right.. they are not **really** really talking the deal, neither is the prime minister Dr.Manmohan sign a very positive person trying to do something good for India. It is all happening because, they want the country and importantly the country's media diverted from all gross problems in India today..

Gross problems from were we are being diverted:

1. Inflation is in two digits and strongly rising and seems to be steady for long at the higher mark.. never happened before.

2. The stock market made some uncalculated bullishness after the present government came to power and fiddled with something in the market. Everyone kept on diverting saying it is because India is really growing very fast economically.. and now the obvious BIG crash happened.. everybody outside India and many politicians and a few people who knew about all the eye-wash and brain-wash made loooot of money in this.... last time it happened they made a scape goat of a stock broker Harshad Mehta and bundled every other problem on him and put him in jail for many years. .. this time they are trying all means to divert attention so the truth about many billion India rupees never comes out.

3. Petrol prices are uphill.. and though the government can reduce some taxes on it and help the people, they want to continue making the money in taxes without any any consideration for helping all Indians at large.

4. Real estate prices are exhorbitant, because none of the government control authorities on the prices are working, because if prices increase fast and quick, the government gets lot of money in taxes quite quick.

These are some of the problems that you and I are made to divert from, so we don't discuss it, talk it, voice it, protest it.. and the government and most Indian politicians in power today seem to be more interested in the benefit of people outside the country by helping them make more and more money in India, rather than helping Indians live. Capitalism is fine, but not to do it outright when nothing in the country is ready for it immediately except the Software industry.

So, are you still diverted into the artificial Nuclear deal chaos, and still thinking Dr.Manmohan sign is trying to do something for the country.

I have a savings account with the bank, with some namesake money in it.. Obviously that is not the interesting part...and I am not going to ask you for donations to lift my account balance. Because the bank is doing just that. They are asking all their savings bank customers to put money into the bank to help their bankruptcy.

I got a call today from AXIS bank, a business development officer, who said, the bank's status with funds is not good.. I asked "do you mean.. the *bank's* status is not good? ".. and he said "yes, we don't have enough funds to run operations, and we thought it is a good time to call our known customers and ask them to transfer all their money in other banks into ours.. for the time being, to get us back in shape"

I couldn't feel anything for a while, let alone sympathizing, and after a while I got irritated and asked the officer is this how AXIS bank does business development.. and he got into the same thing.. couldn't feel anything for a while..

So much so, I kept the phone and was thinking what was happening..

Is this something that is there with all banks.. ?
Is this why recently when all banks increased their lending rates by 0.5%, ICICI bank increased its lending rates by 0.75% ?
The only thing that is coinciding financially is the stock market crash.. Did all banks put in a lot of money in to the stock market when the markets were hugely bullish a few months back ? and now that the market has crashed royally they are all crying over the pain of the money ?

Whatever, but we all think all the time, that banks know it best when it comes to managing money. No, they also are run by people like us is the fact.

Get back to some hard work with hard earned money.
If you want to invest in stock market, invest yourself and learn the nitty gritty.. not through mutual funds..

If you want to invest in anything.. invest yourself and learn the area, don't don't trust anybody with all that money.

At the end of day, I keep trying to think on any positive sides in this whole thing to keep my head away from worrying about that namesake money in AXIS bank.. oh yes.. there is a positive side.. I can tell everybody... "A bank...a bank.. asked me help by requesting me money.. imagine how big and rich I should be .. ha.. that's something".

You can cut those costs, if you have already trained under somebody for atleast 3 months, and you know what exercise is what, and how important is posture or form while exercising. And if you do, there is this website for help http://fitness.scoobysworkshop.com and a few more linked on youtube.com if you search for the type of exercise you want to do. These links are only for people who already have worked out in a gym and can understand the exercise to the dot just by seeing somebody exercising.

This is a nice blog by Gerald Nanninga on planning and strategy.. Could be an invaluable resource for beginners on strategy planning studies. Nanninga tells it with stories to make a boring subject like planning look interesting to listen to.

And the satellite images show almost no clouds.. "We are Running Dry"... make your prayers.

Picture src: Insat image
(This picture source updates regularly, and is listed permanently at the bottom of homepage on this blog www.harishpl.info)

What they are doing is decreasing import duties, or making nil import duties so imports cost less, and banning or reducing some exports so more of goods are left within the country for indians to use.

While this might sound good measures for those who think "increase supply to meet demand and prices will reduce", it beats the idea that india has to be more richer to be self-sustaining and to absorb the costs of inflation and a growing economy... .because when you stop exports, you stop fund flow into india from other countries through trade.. and when you encourage imports, you increase the fund flow OUT of india to other countries in trade.

So, the government is technically just stopping India's growth or controlling the growth thinking that is what will bring down inflation.

There are a million ways to handle inflation financially, and I am surprised the "intelligence" of the ministers in the government can think of only two, one as discussed above, and two: to go beg all companies and industries to reduce their profit margins and bring down inflation.. which is actually the government's job and not the industry's or the company's.

This simply shows how much control the government has on the market and the economy of the country, that they have to beg the industry's or just stop the country's growth.. It is like either this extreme low level decisions, or that extreme high-level decisions to stop growth which is only done in case of emergencies.

By far it simply looks like we got a huge bunch lazy cats who don't want to spend time finding ways to solve problems, which is what governing is all about.

Next time, you pray to god, pray that god give some "intelligence" to all those ministers in the government to think more than talking more.. and do more than reacting to media more..

And Hence, in India, all big companies like Tata, Airtel, etc., and big industries like cement, banking, etc., are allowed to cost their products any high, looting money from people, and finally government will take a measure where all these companies push the money to people outside the country by importing lots and lots of goods. Your money and my money doesn't get rotated in trade within India, but as soon as we know, it gets out of the country.

What is happening is so gruesome a murder to the economy of the country, that this is all going to blow up big issues for the future, or, as usually it happens, the issues get pushed under the carpet and huge huge amounts of farmer loans are erased from the books further, as if India earns all the money in that sector.. agriculture.

this is a website of an active sports accessories company. They have done it so nice and different, you will think real good animation films on websites are not real far from happening.

venom.spyder.com

Animating 2D or 3D characters is a painful process.. very much so that Sir Walt Disney is said to have taken many years to create the Mickey Mouse films, and also those were the days of traditional animation, where every frame of a scene is painted or drawn on paper.

If you even have worked on softwares like photoshop or corel draw like a hobby to drawing or designing something, you know how much time and pain it is to even design a proper webpage.

So, after all that when you go and see a movie like "Finding Nemo", "Monsters Inc", or "Cars", you open your mouth and gape.

Because every single frame of the movie which plays only for 1/24th of a second (in digital filming there are 24 frames per second) , has the characters, the environment or background graphics, with color, texture.. and to add to the complexity, they have lighting and related object surface color and shadow variations.

To put it lighter, one frame of a scene in animation movies is equivalent to drawing what you see below on a computer or a sheet of paper with whatever tools you want on earth (except a copier and printer).

So, that explains how much work should be done to make a movie like what Pixar does .. and how much effort to be Pixar, because they are the best today.

Obviously for any animator their work is inspirations, and people look forward to learn from their experience. Knowing this Pixar has interestingly put-up a brief of their process of making animation films on their website. The page mentions only the core steps or milestones of the animation film making process, but that itself would overwhelm you.

Pixar - How We Do It

What I learnt New from their processes..
> The animators make the frames of a scene and have the animation as digitized sequences, but this is not the movie that gets released... what we see as a film is a video recording of the sequences played up on their computers.

> If in a scene, a character raises its hand, the animators probably create one or two steps of the action or only one or two frames of the scene and the computer generates the in-between frames that show the motion of the hand as a smooth one.. the animators of course fine tune these in-between frames manually as necessary.

This is one other major advantage digital animations have over traditional animations. The first advantage obviously being able to correct or modify the art work easily, instead of redrawing the whole thing on another paper again.

> They use server farms just like all big software enterprises do.. they use a bulk of machines (farms) to render each frame. Probably this means redrawing the background, the characters, the lighting, etc., all into a frame, or integrating every other teams work into the final output.

Pixar says, on an average each frame with such bulk of servers, takes about 6 hours to render, and some complex frames take up to 90 hours too.

Interesting bit of information they had on their website.

Related link:
Blend it... its easy to make 3D graphics yourself

And not many Indians seem to know or bother that many services like mobile services, internet services, web hosting services are costlier in India than even some developed countries. Not because the technology is difficult here, but because the market demand is huge here and if not jack they can always sell to some harry.

And when you don't get proper services, or importantly correct and proper bills, all you try to do is call up a customer service number and ask. But most customer service numbers in India are run by executives who are themselves less informed and are not well trained to answer questions properly.. and to add to it, you will cry over most of their English and their understanding of your questions in English.

First steps when u have a problem with an Indian company:

1.
If you can, ask the customer executive whether he knows your local language like Tamil, kannada or Telugu, etc., and explain him the problem politely. No, Shouting you should do only when they don't understand what you are saying and wasting your time more than 30 mins on the phone and also not transferring your call to a senior officer after your repeated request.

2.
If the customer executive puts you on hold, or says senior officer is busy can you wait, or says senior officer will call you later, .. simply say you are willing to wait how much ever time it takes and wait for about 20 mins and then they will put you on to a proper guy.
Why that long?
Well like said before.. indian market has high demand on all daily life services like what I mentioned.. so the companies sign-up too many customers and since india is a rising country, the companies are learning having a huge customer base. this might take another 5-10 years for companies to ripen up and provide proper services and help to customers, though they showcase today itself as if they have everything in place.

Thought waiting on hold is a pain both by patience and money spent on phone call, if you are complaining for a mobile service problem to your mobile operator through the same mobile phone, you will most definitely not charged for the call, and most often your calls to such phone numbers will be toll-free.. verify this before your call, so you know you can wait on the line without worries.

3.
Call centers misunderstand their trade. Customer care numbers are all call-centers and the executives there, most of them atleast are not there for solving your problems, but for just a temporary job. so the executives at the first level of the call will try exciting things like cutting off the call if you shout, or putting you on hold and cutting off after 10 minutes.

If you survive through that, and call repeatedly, you will talk to some manager after sometime, and the manager will really most often resolve your complaint like a breeze... make sure you tell him that he take some effort to train his subordinates on the information on handling this complaint, so no other customer or not you again have to wait so long for a useful answer.

4.
Yes, If nothing helps.. or if you are frustrated beyond your limits, you raise a consumer complaint.

This below link will help you understand how to raise a consumer complaint in india, even provide you some links to find addresses of consumer redressal forums and courts near you.
ICRPC: Consumer Guidance for Filing Consumer Complaint with Consumer Court in India

I took you through these steps so long rather than telling you how you can raise a consumer complaint in court, because the process of making a case and submitting it to court and getting a resolution is for obvious reasons much much time-consuming than even the number of hours you are put on hold on a customer care call.

Also, you might be interested in website based consumer complaint forums.. like mouthshut.com, your own blog(if you are a popular blogger), or many other websites you can search from our favority on the dot search engine google.com

Finally, for more information on consumer redressal forums and processes, there are many useful links that will come up in a google search for "consumer india" or "consumer complaint india"

Important end note:
All the best.. but DONT give up.. or become tolerant to problems with services provided by indian companies or even indian government. There are always forums for redressal.. just because some people like us ignore the process because of laziness or willingness to spend the time seeing not much benefits off the result, we are encouraging the "bad service is not bad" attitude with indian companies, government and people.

Remember, more than you, your complaint and your struggle to resolve it is going to help future consumers from not having the same problem or at least not the same bad way like you had to go through.

Yes, there are lot of problems in the country with growth and attitude in some sectors, that is at the very early stages of change.. call center services for example, agriculture for example. But, comparing what we have today with how we were 10 years back in a few industry sectors, it is quite a *Show* off growth.

And the growth has been a strong curve in Chennai.

The banking sector revamping from zero ATMs to countless ATMs of every bank in every street corner, the technology space out-growing expectations & growth targets year-on-year, the talent market being flooded with more and more skilled and attitudinal people, the quality of movies, TV programmes, the salary packet sizes these days, the retail market boom, everything just multiplying every other day.

You just sit idle doing nothing for a day in Chennai, you feel little strange and slightly left out, the very next day. I do. Though I don't sit idle for a whole day, I do feel a growing urge day by day seeing things changing around me, right from roads to buildings to new successful companies cropping up everywhere.

If you want to feel the same way, there's an easier way, rather than sitting idle at home... If you are in chennai, all you have to do is visit sathyam theatre complex every weekend, and you will see something about the theatre's infrastructure changed. They keep modifying things regularly. Rather than the theatre management being responsible for the changes, it is demand that makes them alter to people's needs and business's values.

It is this quick change and related process that is so interesting to note, happening in places where a decade ago change was not a managed process.

We all know that all our Indian TV channels, for popularity's sake, copy blockbuster Television program formats from the west, like "Who wants to be a millionaire", "Dancing with the stars", etc.,
But the interesting part is.. the tamil versions of the programmes have brought about a change in the way Chennaiites see society, their inhibitions towards protecting culture, their spending patterns, interests in dance / music, opening up to the outside world and accepting the goods of an open society... everything is changing slowly. Though we Chennaiites are accepting all these changes, we don't seem to be in a hurry and we are carefully and selectively working up the change.

Also, Chennaiite parents are known to pester children on studies and giving zero or less importance to co-curricular activities, sports etc., With figures of successful Indian sportsmen increasing by the day, and the way these television programmes make the other activities and careers rewarding as well, a sudden spurt in interest towards co-curricular activities and sports is seen, and children are learning people skills and life skills because of the open society. The already rich talent market is going to be super-rich in another 5 years in Chennai...because Chennai has always been a conservative society.

All these changes around me are so attractive to notice, that I am losing a lot of free time trying to.. understand.. admire.. how and why the changes are happening and what triggers it to happen quick.

A few months back I read in a blog (I forgot which one) that the United States government has changed its definition of India from a "Developing country" to "Transforming country". That acknowledges India's growth internationally.

The scene of the goat moaning in pain and beating its legs and waving its head with eyes almost popping out in the fear of dying is something that I still can't seem to forget.

After I became an adult I had the maturity to push it to my family that I am no more eating meat or eggs. Slowly it happened that my people at home felt similarly uncomfortable about the meat they eat, also because they were having one person at home(me) who was running out of the house with excuses whenever meat was on the dinner table.

I also had another reason to quit non-veg.. the vegetarian and junk food industry grew with a lot of options, some of them even kind of replacing tastes that you get with meat. So sticking to my decision was easy for me. and its more easier nowadays with the options you have.

My parents and family slowly moved to be pure vegetarian even disliking the smell of eggs .. partly because we had pets.. from dogs to fishes and birds. We still do have a cute pet dog, and a nice big aquarium at home. These animals showered so much love on us, and we got so attached, that we kind of became so sensitive towards animals. We would have tears in eyes whenever some TV channel does a special story on animals being tortured and killed for meat.

I am not sure whether we can argue and stop the world from consuming non-vegetarian foods.. and I don't believe that it is possible or feasible for human kind to do away with meat because humans by evolution consumed meat always. You can't change something that was historically created...at-least not by showing videos or talking sympathetically, and definitely not in a few years.

But, if you are a non-vegetarian..and you love non-veg foods, and sometimes thought that you can take more of meat for it is tasty tasty and kindles excitement, you should see videos in the youtube.com link below...and make a decision about reducing your meat intake or at least not increasing it.

You tube - meet your meat videos

By this article, I am not trying to put pressure on non-vegetarians just because I have given up meat.. or try demonize the meat industry or people who earn their money with that industry,

but, inturn, I am ignoring everything happening around me, around everywhere, and think of those animals from their point of view of existence.

Like us, they too would have dreams of playing over the grass, munching some, and running around some, or at-least if not all that, to just die gracefully, without dying like in war with all that pain and butchering scenes in front of their eyes.

Think.