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http://www.beirut.indymedia.org/ar/2005/07/2999.shtml

swiss cheese!

if u've seen google earth and google maps, its time to check out http://moon.google.com
its just a moon map based on Nasa imagery and shows all the sites of the Apollo landings.
its pretty useless really, just a gimmick, and another exercise in Google's "look here! we just released another completely useless but super cool app because we can!" formula.

for a a funny little easter egg though, try zooming in fully on the moons surface. its funny :)

harry pothead

so july 16th was here, and behold, just like last time amazon had kept its promise. the new harry potter book was right outside my door in the morning. i'm still amazed by their logistics, really, to ship millions of harry potter books saturday morning across the country...mind boggling. They even promised to give you the book for free if you didn't get it on time.

anyway, it took me a couple of days but as with all her books, this one was a quick read too. I liked it, i liked it a lot. Even though the book till the end was quite easy to read and not too much really happens till the final pages, there was tons of character development, in particular Dumbledore and Harry's relationship. Harry is properly in his midteens now and the books are also much more adult in tone and language.

My theory about JK Rowling is that she isn't such a great writer. Her books aren't even close to the best fantasy work i've read. That honor goes to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy tied with LOTR. She was just at the right place at the right time. The first book was fun, and it was a great concept. Magic, Wizards, Hogwarts, but as a writer she is sadly ordinary. She has gotten better of course. Books 3 and 4 were excellent and the difference in tone in those two books is apparent. She makes it work. Which is why i believe those two books will churn out the best movie adaptations. Book5 however, was ok. I got the sense that she desperately wanted to make it all more grown up, more serious, more dark and it showed. That was an angry book, a manipulative book (re: Dolores Umbridge) and it didn't work for me. It was also overly long, something both books 4 and 5 suffered from.

This one though, was more reassured, well structured, less hurried and everything in it made sense. There was no unnecessary exposition and it wasn't a 1000 page tome either (althought 650 pages isn't too small). I quite enjoyed it and even though I had predicted some of the ending, it was still a great direction for the story. The seven books as a whole will be one of the best read and most loved books of all time, and I'm willing to say that it will be for me too. Take any individual book though and it just stands as a mediocre writing effort. I hate the fact that she so often uses Deus Ex Machina to tie up plot points she doesn't know what to do with. (Deus Ex Machina is a term from Greek theatre i believe, where a sudden act of God would solve everything neatly in the end). There was a bit with Ron and Hermoine I wish she would have dealt with more maturely given the adult tone of the book.

Hats off to Rowlings good luck, good fortune and amazing imagination though. She has successfully crafted a world that has gotten even American children reading books, a giant feat indeed. She deserves her billions for that alone.

a neat little coincidence

so...don't ask me why...but in a typical bout of silliness i decided to type in http://www.bhenchod.com in my browser...and guess what popped up. I urge anyone reading this to try, its funny and completely safe. For those who don't know, bhenchod is a popular hindi cuss word meaning sisterf***ker.

i laughed. but hey, its me...i laugh at these things.