Views of a Patzer!

This is one of those movies which cannot be simply assigned a category. This is neither a comedy nor drama nor any other genre you can think of. Does that mean this movie is a junk? Nope! This is what we call as "Masala" film, here in India. It has the right proportion of all the ingredients that make a great film - 4 tea spoons of humor, 2 tea spoons of love, sentiment & action each, gives this film a perfect 10/10 score. I am a sucker for comedy films, especially British comedy. I loved the entire "Carry on" series and "Lock, Stock and 2 smoking barrels".

Shaun of the dead is a love story with zombies in it. I liked the way Zombies were used as a perfect backdrop for highlighting the main story line. Some scenes had too much gore, which changes the shade of this film. Especially, that girl in the garden, getting impaled on the metal pipe & Shaun shooting his mother in the head - Yuck! These scenes certainly could have been done with out! But I have to agree that these scenes help the movie achieve "Masala" nirvana.

Bottom line: This is a good movie. Go see it now!

My team is moving to sixth floor tomorrow. I have got a big box sitting in my cube, which I have to use for packing all my junk. Who knows? I might find my parker which I lost 2 months back. Kidding apart, I am worried about my Z-Pro. Can I depend on the office boyz to take it safely upstairs to my new cube? Hopefully, yes! So, goodbye E5076 & Here I come K6152!

Interesting tidbit from The Inquirer

Microsoft Readies DirectX Replacement

Microsoft is very close to releasing its newest iteration of DirectX. Dubbed the "Windows Graphics Foundation" (WGF), Microsoft will reunite DirectDraw and Direct3D into one package allowing the graphics subsystem of a PC to be completely integrated into the operating system.

Reports cite the latest versions of the WGF to be at version 0.99, just shy of an initial release. The initial release of WGF will allow hardware vendors like ATI and nVidia to begin work on hardware offerings compliant to the new graphics spec. The WGF will also allow graphics card creators the first opportunity to develop Shader Model 4 compliant hardware.

Read the full story...

This page has a collection of more than 3000 tutorial links on the web and it looks really a very good compilation.

check it out: http://stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/programming.html

Remember the movie Face/Off? That is no more "can-be-found-only-in-fiction" kind of stuff. Doctors from Louisville and the Netherlands are ready to do a face transplant. Read about it here.

So, how much of an impact will this have?

• Sports/Movie/... fans can have their faces resemble their idol's
• Michael Jackson will be kicking himself for spending a fortune on plastic surgeries
• There may not be any more uniforms (for employees). Different companies will have different "faces" for their staff
• Software similar to "Hair style designing" will be developed for custom face designing.
• Microsoft will come out with a new way of specifying face markup parameters, called Face Definition Language (FDL)
• Photos in your driving licenses will be replaced by teeth marks

and some more things that I cannot just put down here :p

Microsoft Windows Mobile Application Development Contest
Contest Launch: Aug 03, 2004
Contest Dates: Sep 01, 2004 – Nov 30, 2004

If you are a mobile developer, this is a great opportunity to showcase your product

http://www.microsoft.com/india/windows/mobile/contest/windows4mobile/

Canon 1Ds Mark II has been announced. The feature list looks pretty impressive - 16.7MP, 0.3 second startup, ISO 100-1600, FireWire.

Click here for the preview

Lately, Google is poaching (abducting?) a lot of Sun & Microsoft employees. It is rumored that Google is forming a group for building a new browser. Assuming the news is true, what features will the new browser have?? An integrated search of your computer as well as the net, a no-nonsense fast loading application??

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/21/google_browser_hirings/

The option to automatically increment the build numbers (for successful builds) is one thing VC++ misses. AFAIK, VB & Borland C++/Delphi users have long had this ability.

http://www.codeguru.com/Cpp/V-S/devstudio_macros/versioncontrol/article.php/c3129

This solution makes use of Application_BeforeBuildStart() handler to increment the RC VERSIONINFO. The Build # is incremented even for failed builds.

http://www.codeproject.com/cpp/rcversion.asp

Not exactly an auto-increment solution. This allows you to enter the version info during the build process.

http://www.codeguru.com/Cpp/V-S/devstudio_macros/article.php/c3183

Another solution posted in CodeGuru. It is assignable to any key and when invoked it updates the RC "FileVersion" field and does "BuildToggleBuild". :)

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q237870

Solution posted by MS. The autoincrementing code is attached to Application_BuildFinish(). It updates a #define in versionno.h which is included by the user resource file (RC2) .

http://www.flipcode.com/cgi-bin/msg.cgi?showThread=Tip-AutomaticBuildVersion&forum=totd&id=-1

I haven't tried this. But, the author claims to combine the best of MS & Codeguru (second one) solutions.

I used a modified version of the solution from MS (mine didn't update the RC; instead it updated a H file that was included across the project). If there is a neat/effective solution for this, let me know.

Do-It-Yourself : 360 degrees panorama
A lens attachment for taking 360deg pictures
Another lens attachment - Egg 360
And here is a review of iPIX 360 degree rotator

This is the first ever category-16 tournament in India. It finished yesterday; Nisipeanu taking the title after beating Kasimdzhanov in the tiebreaks. Chessbase has a report on it here. When I first read about this tournament, I was literally drooling. So many well known GMs playing against our Indian talents....I was hoping Sasikiran would take, at least, a shared first with Sutovsky (my favorite). Alas! Sasi seems to have run out of steam, after his brilliant performance in Biel 2004 & in Vlissingen Open. He finished with a below-average score of 4.0 out of 9 games. Is it because of fatigue? Or is it because of the pressure of playing in the home grounds as one of the favorites? (BTW, he is the second highest rated player in the Indian list; Anand is in the first position, of course.) I read he lost 10 points in this tournament. He needs to get back in to form, if he ever wants to cross that 2700 mark!

I use 2 MultiSync 1980SX LCD monitors from NEC for development purpose. Along with my docked IBM T41p, these screens occupy a lot of valuable space in my desktop (not the Windows one, mind you!)

One of my favorite players is Vassily Ivanchuk. He is a true chess artist. Click here to see one of his brilliancies. This one is against Kasparov! Kasparov used to avoid playing Ivanchuk during the early 90s. To say that he was afraid of Ivanchuk will not be exaggerating :p

There is a humorous anecdote involving Kasparov/Ivanchuk & Kamsky.Rustam Kamsky (father of Gata Kamsky) accused Kasparov of poisoning his son's orange juice during Linares '92, to which Garry angrily retorted, "If I was going to do that, I'd have poisoned Ivanchuk's" Recently, he gave an interview after the Libya World Cup Championship matches. Find it here. Just to balance things out, here is one of the best (!?) "Really 2700??" game from Ivanchuk.

[Site "Groningen WC KO"]
[Date "1997.12.11"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Seirawan,Yasser"]
[Black "Ivanchuk,Vassily"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "E70"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. Bd3 e5 6. d5 a5 7. Nge2 Na6 8. f3 Nd7 9. Be3 Bh6 10. Qd2 Bxe3 11. Qxe3 c6 12. Qh6 Ndc5 13. Rd1 Qb6 14. Bb1 Ke7 15. f4 exf4 16. Rf1 Rf8 17. Qxf4 f6 18. dxc6 Qxc6 19. Nd4 Qe8 20. Nd5+ Kd8 21. Qxd6+ Bd7 22. Nb5 1-0

I installed TonesNotes to use with my corporate dotText blogger, but unable to post using that. Have to see why it is failing !! No error msgs even :-/ Though w.blogger looks good, I'd feel more comfortable with the Word interface that I am quite used to ! Have to make TonesNotes work, somehow!