Few things to know about Google Plus

Guys and Girls out there in FB...We are all excited about Google +. It is simpler, neater and far more secure and socialized. Well atleast for now anyways.


I am just trying out how it works. Will keep this note updated as what all changes u would look for, privacy and account settings, profile settings etc., Most of you might have seen the demo. Anyways here is the link


http://www.google.com/intl/en/+/demo/


However after 23 hours of being on G+ (typing Google + is too big and I am writing this post since then :P) I noticed few things which you should also know as soon as you open up a G+ account.


First is that G+ is so simpler and neater with bigger fonts. Might be annoying after watching FB with too many small fonts. You will get used to it. Second thing is "View profile as". This feature reminds me of Orkut where you can see your own profile as how it will look to your friends. Guess what. It just got better.

As seen in the screenshot, you can see a small space to type in your friend's name in "View Profile as" option. You can type any of your friends' name just like searching them. And later you see your profile via their eyes.

So this is useful if you are not sure what your friend or even your manager (friend ?!?!) might see on your profile, posts inspite of being on different "Circles". Once you are done with viewing just go ahead and hit the "done" tab. FYI, I have hidden my friend's name in the screenshot :)


So we saw 2 good things. But there also few things to watch out far. Go to your settings page. It is in the top-right corner in the form of a wheel.

Click on "Google + settings" and you get directed to the Settings page. I was actually shocked to see all options have been checked. Remember those days we used to get emails for each scrap in Orkut and each post or comment in FB. This is exactly the same thing. You don't your gmail or other email inbox to be flooded with emails for each and every update in your network, rite? So go ahead and uncheck the options you don't want. I have removed all the options. Anyways I login to G+ atleast twice a day and would see anything in notification area. So choose what you wanna do. Good thing is that the settings gets automatically saved.

Next thing that grabbed my attention was "Connected accounts". It is so good that all Blogger accounts, Faceboo, Twitter, Linked In profiles can be connected. But again it is left to users wish. Do not link the account if you want it to be discretionary.

I tried checking the "Data Liberation". It does help to download your data as zip file.

So I tried downloading my posts from G+. You get an option to choose what you want to download. After the the size calculation is done, you go can right ahead with the download.

I wish Google gave me an option to download where it wants to store that zip file. I am still wondering where that zip file has gone. 

Better checkout the "Profile and Privacy" tab as well. There could be something else Google has in it for you.


https://plus.google.com/settings/privacy


Will add few more once I get to know G+ well.

Step Up 3D - My view

My 75 days movie fasting ended with a nice dance feast today with Step up 3D. I do like to dance and always feel it. That's what the movie is all about too. We are all Born from a Boombox. Yes, you heard me right. Boombox it is...your heart...

If you have watched Step Up 1 &2, the characters might be easy to cope up. This movie starts with Luke (Rick Malambri) taking a movie with his handy cam. There are bunch of guys who have nothing but dance as the backbone of their lives. They explain the life and the passion for dance. Then the next scene is Moose (Adam G.Sevani) joining the NYU (NewYork University) in some engineering course along with his best friend Camille (Alyson Stoner). If you can remember Moose is from Step Up 2 - The streets and Camille comes from Step Up. They have brought both of them here to show it's sequel. Moose's parents are proud that he gave up dance and joined NYU. We all know that's not gonna last. He proves it in next 3 minutes.

Moose accidentally enters a dance battle in the college and wins it with syle. But he won the dancers from 'The Samurai',a famous dance group who are gearing up for the World Jam (One of the world's big competition in dance with a $100,000 as prize money). But Moose disturbs a ballon sellers stall in the process. Police arrives and dancers run for their lives in Fast&Furious style. Luke help Moose to escape and gets him to his safhouse "The Vault" where all the dancers shown at the beginning of the film stay together, live together and breathe dance together. They are called "The Pirates", arch enemy of The Samurais.

Luke had spent his time in collecting these homeless, jobless dancers into his vault and also filmed their stories cum dance moves. It is his passion to make movies apart from dancing. Then he meets Natalie another homeless dancer and invites her to be a pirate. There is a slight romance going between them. On other hand Moose and Camille have their kiddish love going. Moose finds tough to balance his dance life with Luke and his classes/ friend Camille. Meanwhile the Qualifying rounds for World Jam starts.

Moose is unable to participate in First Qualifiers. However he makes it to the second with style. Yes, remember the final dance in rain in Step Up 2. Moose's famous step with his right foot splashing the water. The same step is here as well. So now it is the World Jam finals with The Samurais. Don't ask the logic of what happened to other teams or how Samurais got to finals. It is all not needed here as we need to see only Pirates dancing. As an expected twist, the DVD of Pirates gets published in internet with all their moves prepared for finals. Natalie turns out to be sister of Julien (Joe Slaughter), the captain of Samurais. Moose fails in his personal life with Camille.

What happened to Luke's love and Moose's friendship? Who is the traitor? How did they perform in the Finals? What happened Luke's passion for film making? The answers wraps up the climax of the movie.

As expected Final battle is amazing. Watch out for the LED show. It's so cool and 3D makes it so amazing. You will feel it. The Robot, Santiago Twins, Chinese dancers and the small kids everyone are amazing in the movie with their special moves. There was not even one moment I felt boring. I was not ready to leave even during the credit titles being played after the movie was over. Because there is a guy performing hand dance sitting on a chair. Unlike the acrobatics and fierce dance moves from the whole movie this seems to be so cool and can be tried by anyone.

There are enough 3D scenes to enjoy. It's not a kid's movie to expect too many 3D scenes. But whenever needed it is there. Be it the dancers throwing their hands and legs at you or splashing water at you or glowing the LED around you, you will feel as a part of the dance battle. That's the amazing part of this movie. If you like Step Up, Step Up 2: the streets or if you even just like dancing, then you will definitely like this movie a lot. The basic message from the movie is if you are a B-Fab (Born from a Boombox), go ahead and do it.

The Chennai Super Kings - IPL 3 Winners

Chennai Super Kings - Wow....I feel real proud to have supported CSK and will shout "CSKna massu da" all around the streets of Delhi here. What a match it has been today. Bollinger, Albie, Ashwin, Muralidharan, Raina and Dhoni, Mr.Cool...such a perfect team it was. I would just like to go around the tournament once again and see our path to victory.

The way we started the tournament was good. But something happened in the 16th match of IPL 3, CSK vs KXIP which left us heartbroken. We knew later that there were 3 more to follow. Damn, everyone thought that CSK would be out of the tournament and I had no face to see my colleagues in office. It would be a shame if we exit the tournament without a good fight. Then after lot of mixups in  the batting and bowling, a new team emerged. It was uncomparably strong in fielding unlike any other teams. I would say that made other teams terrified of us and lead us to victory.

 However the way we got into semis makes me nervous even now. The points table, Net run rate..oh mate, all these statistics would have made every CSK fan go crazy until we were sure that our place in semis was secured. I doubted if we would have to face Mumbai Indians in semis. Though it was a strong team, I still beleived we could win them. Anyways luckily we had to lock our horns with the neighbor again.

 The raging Deccan Chargers were all set to defeat us. I was always afraid DC could do 'it'. Not sure how this thought came into my mind. I was always scared about the matches against them. To add to my belief, we lost 2 matches against them. So I was really worried about semi-finals against DC. But one of my friend told me CSK would win. His theory was good. Any team has 30% chance to win against its opponent and so CSK having lost 2 matches against DC, can surely will semis. Damn, he was right. CSK won the semis and bang it went to the finals. But Mumbai Indians were waiting there for us already. If the theory could prove itself again, I was not sure if MI gets 30% and would it be CSK?

Entering the finals for second time. But definitely not a runner-up this time. Come on Dhoni, make us win. This was the prayer all over Tamilnadu and in hearts of all CSK supporters around the world. Sachin vs Dhoni - Who in the hell would comment like that. It is a team game and never compare against personnels. But all the media were publishing articles as The Legend vs The Golden boy. The stage was all set for IPL finals and I went on a rafting trip to Rishikesh. Coincidentally my previous trip to Rishikesh was also during IPL. Deccan were winners. I was worried if I would be so tired to watch the match today. Luckily nothing comes between an Indian and Cricket.

IPL 3 finals would stay in our hearts forever. Lot of blunders in the match. Missing catch of Suresh Raina (twice) is the costliest mistake any cricketer would do in a T-20 cricket. He proved it tonight. MI started the bowling attack with Spinners just like we did it in semis. Hayden wasted the balls and scored very less runs. It was like he is shouting to the world "Hey guys, I am out of form. Don't expect much from me. You pay, but I may not play". CSK supporters were grinning against his out-of-form batting all through the tournament. How come an Orange cap winner can suddenly go out of form? Leaving the question behind the strong batting line had always let us put good score on the board.

Vijay, Badri, Albie were scoring runs every now and then. Raina was a consistent player of all 3 IPL tournaments. He is the only player to have aggregate of more than 400 runs in all IPL tournaments. So no words to describe his batting power. But his fielding is marvellous. It's long since I have seen such performance. Kaif used to field good like this. Next batsmen Dhoni is kind of responsible player. Had almost 100.00 strike rate in all matches. Whether he plays orthodox or shabby unorthodox shots, it doesn't matter. All that matters were the runs on the board.

A very funny yet an awkward situation to all CSK fans is to pray for the Legend to fail. We all know whole India supports Sachin. But when it came to today's match, CSK fans were shouting for Sachin's wicket. Pretty awkward huh? So our prayers came true and he was gone. Meanwhile Abishek Nayar fell down after surviving many dramatic run out attempts. When all appeared to fall in line, Pollard came into picture and gave us a big shock. I din't like the attitude when he got his team mate AT Rayudu run out. Pollard could have come back and saved the wicket. Instead he did wanted the strike and gave up his team mate's wicket for it. It was damn cruel. It was not like only Pollard can hit big runs. Rayudu coukd have also hit a few sixes. However Pollard din't last long after his mistake. His deeds were served.

I just feel we could have taken the last wicket as well. MI were never all out in this IPL season. It could have been a record for us. It's ok. I can live with that. 2 people to be remembered at this time are the bowling coach Venkatesh Prasad and the fielding coach Stephen Fleming. Great job guys. It was a terrific moment of success when our team lifted the trophy. But the most precious moments were when the Legendary Sachin said "My congratulations to Chennai. They played better than us and they deserved this win". That's what I call a true sportmanship. Hats off to Sachin and hats off to our cool captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni. I guess he would be called as Mahendra 'Singam' Dhoni by Chennai fans from now on.

55 fiction - He and The kiddo

It has spread its arms from Pluto to Saturn. Jupiter was slowly being engulfed. It was not too far to reach Earth.

That’s when my kiddo turned to the table and shouted, “Dad, he spilled his milk on my drawing today also”.

He stood there wagging his tail innocently awaiting a pat from his masters.

55 fiction - The Pride

He was the best Outgoing student of the year in his college. Everyone cheered for him and he felt proud. But not anymore. He came to know that his opponent had actually gave up the trophy for him. To add fuel to the fire, his opponent is alive no more and so does his pride.


I dedicate this short story to my friend Jyoti Prasad who gave up the trophy for me 5 years back and left to heaven 2 years later.

Alice in Wonderland - My view

A good 3D movie after Avatar. It is really wonderful that more movies are now being made in 3D. But the tickets price also needs to come down. Anyways I was lucky for 2nd time to watch a movie on Monday morning and come to office in 3:30pm shift (hey...I work for a UK client). I know lot of guys would be jealous on reading this..LOL

The story starts like this: Alice, a girl having wild dreams since childhood is ready for her marriage on one fine day. Her fiancée (son of the business man who took over her dad’s company) asks her to marry. But she runs away into the garden where she fells inside a tree hole which goes on and on and on into a Wonderland. This is where her adventurous journey begins.

Everyone talks to her as if she is very well known figure “The Alice”. But she is convinced that they have misunderstood her for some other Alice. She is being chased from a meeting spot (Red Queen’s workers but White Queen’s loyalists) to Johnny Depp’s Tavern which is nothing but a writing table. Johnny Depp called as Hatter explains how Red Queen destroyed the happy White Queen’s kingdom and took the throne. But soon she is being chased by Blood Hound, One eyed lover of Red queen and the soldiers. They miss Alice but catch the Hatter.

Hatter is brought to Red Queen’s court where the queen orders that his head be cutoff. Alice is already there sitting next to Red Queen. She has come there to save Hatter. Befriends a monster dog, gets the royal sword and flies back to White Queen’s castle. This royal sword will be used to kill the dragon and make White Queen win. But she has no enough courage. (Come on, she came this far. Can’t she do this?)

Champions fight for their queens like the Achilles vs Boagrius fought for their kings in ‘Troy’. (Sorry for the guys who haven't watched the great film Troy). But the difference here is Alice cannot win as easily as Achilles.Hey, after all she is still a kid fighting against a fire spitting dragon. Whether Alice killed the dragon and brought her victory to her queen? What happened to the hatter in Red Queen’s Court forms the climax of the movie.

Reasons why I didn’t like the movie

• After watching a movie like Avatar in 3D, this is no where near to it.
• I didn't understand the names of any characters other than Alice, Red Queen and the White Queen.
• My favourite actors Johnny Depp’s character could have been shaped better.
• Anne Hathway as White queen sucks. Lot of better choices are there in Hollywood.

Reasons why I liked the movie

• Johnny Depp
• Some scenes are too childish
• Witty humour (which could have been better)
• Funny cat and the Red Queen

55 fiction - The Intelligence Quotient

“These Plutonians are so stupid. How can they send a guy with this much I.Q to Earth? Won’t the people find out?”

“Don’t worry mate! They are not as wise as we Martians are. We will operate and let this baby live here”

“What will the people call him?”

His name would be Albert Einstein.

55 fiction - You and Me

I watched your emotions keenly. You were on the edge of your couch, biting your nails, eyes glued to the tv. There was the last ball, India lost the match by 1 run.

“Damn” you shouted and flung the aquarium frustratingly. I flew in air and died on the carpet. Tears rolled down your eyes.