Gspace! 2GB of cyberspace for free

Gspace is a neat extension for firefox users that enables them to use their Gmail account as external storage. Previously, people (students specifically) have used Gmail as a means of backing up data, transfering data and essentially using Gmail as external storage to be accessed at any time with a computer and an internet connection. Occasional random emails are despatched every month or so in order to keep the account active. But other than that, the account is literally "external storage".

One of the ways to use Gmail as external storage is to attach a the file to a new email and save the email as a draft. But the hassle of attaching each file to a draft seems to have caught up with Rahul Jonna who designed the concept of Gspace. I'd just like to digress a little to mention that Gspace is not affilited or endorsed by Google, and Rahul has absolved responsibility of it use. (So use it at your own risk)

Gspace has done away with the concept of attachments and utilizes the web browser as an ftp transfer tool; allowing files to be transfered with the minimum of hassle.



Some extra features include a picture viewer and MP3 player within the same window.


The speed of transfer is not that great. But one major advantage is that files greater than 10MB can be transfered due to some neat programming that breaks the file down before upload. Therefore, even huge files (within 2GB) can be transfered without being restricted by the 10MB email limit.

So far, even if it does not include the MP3 player or picture viewer, the pros of the extension become too overwhelming to ignore at least a peak at the extension website below.

Extension website at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1593/

The Adventures of the Black Stallion

An old TV programme with an excellant theme song.

Kumar Sangakkara Rhetoric - Brilliant!!

An inspirational video from Youtube

The trouble with blogs!

Rarely do people realize the work and effort put into blogs by bloggers. What may start as a completely serious blog with a definite focus on a subject, so easily degenerates to rants oozing out of the writer's head. The 2 major problems in blogs nowerdays, is the inability to remain focused on the subject of the blog; and the stamina to maintain the blog by posting regularly enough to incite loyal visitors to the site.

As is evident from my postings, it is lucid that I myself lack sufficient stamina to maintain my blog. Reduced to writing fillers (this is a filler!) just so that I can post a little something on my blog to feel good enough for the next month or so. On the other hand, if I fail any of my courses and end up doing an extra semester just because I spent some of that valuable time updating my blog instead of inhaling "Material Characterization via Finite Element Indentation Simulation" (a subject slightly more enjoyable than lying down in a tub full of scissors); I know that the blog I maintain would be ditched in a heartbeat. Which is one of the reasons for the lengthy interludes between posts.

I of course can excuse myself when I rant, since my posts from the very beginning were "ranty" in nature as I chose to not focus on any specific topic for the blog. Therefore I am excused and all readers can bask in the informative drivel pouring forthwith.

And with that, I leave you to enjoy another day of absolute filler and look forward to entertaining you in the future; if I find time to squeeze in a post between the scissors and MCVFEIS.

SAAB Drivers Perform

Chek out this amazing piece of driving by the SAAB test drivers.

Franklin W Dixon does not exist!

I've just found out that the author of my favourite childhood mysteries, the Hardy Boys is just a figment of someone's imagination. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I found this out. I was that shocked.

Apparently, Franklin W Dixon was the Pen name used by Edward Stratemeyer to write the Hardy Boys series. As he was writing the series, he realized that he could not keep up with all the plots that he wanted to write. So, he assembled a few authors and gave them the job of writing the Hardy Boys mysteries, while he provided the basic outline and plot to which the mystery should be formed. Under the name of Stratemeyer Syndicate, these writers wrote the entire Hardy Boys series making it one of the most successful mystery series ever written.

It may be of interest to note that the Nancy Drew series was also a spinoff of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Edna and Harriet Stratemeyer, the daughters of Edward Stratemeyer started off the Nancy Drew series, which has also been of immense success. The Hardy Boys casefiles has also been another successful spinoff with an emphasis on maturity in the myteries. The casefiles series often involved the Hardy's using guns and people actually dying, whereas, the regular series was not as violent as it was targeted at the younger generation.

As amazing as the fact that a great author such as Franklin W Dixon never existed was, the fact that the series was written by different writers explains a lot in terms of disparities in writing styles within the series. I remember thinking when I was in the peak of my Hardy Boys craze, "How could Franklin W Dixon write over a hundred books and not get tired at all?".

While it may be impossible (and highly improbable) that someone could write so many books without exhaustion, as proven by the Franklin W Dixon example, the impossible takes exception to one of the greatest and most widely written children authors of all time, Enid Blyton.

For more details on the history of the Hardy Boys, click here
And for a biography of Enid Blyton, click here

The Evolution of Dance

I came across this clip on the internet, which I feel would be a crime to all music lovers if I did not share this amazingly coordinated and absolutely remarkable piece of work.

Times we forgot

It's only human to forget things. All of us have at one time or another forgotten stuff that makes us angry with ourselves when we remember too late. As all married women will concede, the most irritating trait of their husbands is that however many times an item is emphasized to be bought at the supermarket, the husbands always forget. As in a recent advertisement on TV, with some modifications by myself,

Wife: We need milk for the kids, butter for next week, and Taco Sauce for today's steak dinner.
Husband (on phone closing a 1.5 million dollar deal, and wearing jacket at same time): Ok. Got it. Milk, Butter, Steak.
Wife: NO! IT'S TACO SAUCE!
Husband (phone call ended): Oh! ok...sorry dear, wasn't listening.
Wife: REMEMBER to bring the Taco Sauce.
Husband: Don't worry. I got it....Taco Sauce.

Husband (on the way to store): Taco Sauce, Taco Sauce, Taco Sauce...

The husband then buys everything, plus some extra stuff that the family will need the following week. The cashier asks him whether he needs anything else. He answers in the negative. He reaches home, and his wife pulls out the provisions, until she reaches the bottom of the bag.

Wife: Where is the Taco Sauce?
(Cold chill envelopes room)

The fact is, that however reluctant we are to admit it, all of us have been in the exact same scenario at least once in our lives. I would like to digress a little at this point to emphasize that women have also been culprits of the infamous memory lapse (Believe it or not!). But unfortunately, men are somehow brainwashed later by the Secret Agency for Women (SAW) who erase the incriminating memory from their minds.

It is also a fact that the vindicating memories are remembered lucidly by wives in times of arguments with their spouses, and used as effectively in driving home advantages resulting in 90% of such arguments swinging in favour of the sisterhood. It seems that these memories seem immune to all ideas "forgot".

Which is why, I, on behalf of the silently suffering (and cursing) masculine populace, now appeal to all of the female species that it is only human to forget; and if possible to please forget the times we (the men) forgot!

Some Good Books

Here is a compilation of some books that are, if anything, interesting reading. Some of them are ridiculously easy/entertaining reading while others are...well, also mostly entertaining reading.

Novels
The Five Find-Outers and Dog series- Enid Blyton*
The Hardy Boys series - Franklyn W Dixon*
Danny, the Champion of the World - Roald Dahl(and others by the same author including his autobiography)
Three Terms at Uplands - Angela Brazil (and others by the same author)
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R Tolkien
The Hobbit - J.R.R Tolkien (most of his other books are boring)
The Biggles series - Captain W.E Johns
Rumpole of the Bailey - John Mortimer (and others by the same author)
Leave it to Psmith - P. G Wodehouse (and ALL others by the same author; none of his books are boring)
The Guns of Navarone - Alistair Maclean (and others by the same author)
The Labours of Hercules - Agatha Christie (and others by the same author)
The man who knew too much - G.K Chesterton (and others in the series)
The Father Brown series - G.K Chesterton
The Harry Potter Series - J. K Rowling (Although I believe that some scenes in the latter books were pretty lame)
Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Others
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
Eats Shoots and Leaves - Lynne Truss
Emily Post's Etiquette - Peggy Post
Business @** the Speed of Thought - Bill Gates
Be My Guest - Conrad Hilton
Parkinson's Law - C. Northcote Parkinson
Vignettes of the Ceylon Civil Service - M Chandrasoma***
Assignment Colombo - J.N Dixit****


I'm apologize if "The Da Vinci Code" is not in any of the lists; but it wasn't a great book anyway. If anything, I would say that it was OK. I don't understand what all the fuss is about. It was, in my opinion, good fiction that entwined facts about Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings to a notion concocted out of thin air. Kudos to Dan Brown. Frankly, I think that the publicists are the real heros here.

* Just to clarify, I don't still read Enid Blyton. Thought I'd just include it in the list because it was entertaining reading... about 8 years ago.
** The @ symbol here is not an abbreviation for "at". That's the way it is in the book.
*** An entertaining book about the Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) Civil Service in the monarchal days before independance.
**** A very political 80's history of Sri Lanka.

An amazing toolbar

It is indeed the bane of the internet today that every website offers free toolbars so that "you" are informed immediately when the url of the forums link is changed from "/forum" to "/forums". Oh! Thats important alright. After wading through the millions of useless toolbars of the internet, I "stumbled" upon the "StumbleUpon" toolbar. And until now, I have never regretted installing this particular bar. Very few toolbars have impressed me the way this has. I now have a total of 2 toolbars on my firefox browser. Namely the "Google" toolbar and the "StumbleUpon" toolbar.

The toolbar really is pretty interesting. Its basic function is to return interesting websites catered to your requirements. The toolbar first asks you to indicate the topics that you are interested in, and saves the information. After that, all you have to do is click the stumble button to literally stumble upon websites related to the topics that you indicated. Each time the button is clicked, you are directed to different websites, that you would never have thought existed in the world wide web.

Here's the link to the website of the toolbar, and I can guarantee that StumbleUpon will be one toolbar that you won't uninstall in a hurry.

StumbleUpon

Daniel Radcliffe looks Retarded!

Oh gosh! I've been trying to put my finger on what really was wrong with "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". And I finally figured it out. The reason was because there were SO many mistakes in the movie, that you just can't single out one mistake and hate the movie thereafter. The fact that the movie had so many mistakes, was also probably the reason why most Harry Potter fans just ignored them and embraced the movie as marvellously different from the previous 3 sequels. Now, I'm not a movie critic, and I generally like movies that are well done and have interesting story lines. By well done, I mean that I don't need the movie to be an 8.0. I find that I even like movies rated 6.0 or even 5.0. Which means that I have a high tolerance for mistakes in movies. But, when I watched Harry Potter on big screen, it gave me the same feeling as though I was being repeatedly kicked in the.....

Anyway, I was really bemused as to how such a movie could get a 7.7/10 on IMBD. So, I decided to give it another chance, and watch it again (on my computer) just in case I missed some of the good parts during my wincing. And this time, I was able to actually pinpoint the mistakes in the movie. And the worst part was that I was noticing these mistakes involuntarily, which really goes to show how excruciating the movie really was.

I take the liberty to document my findings so that should any fan of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" stumble upon this blog, he/she would be enlightened and shower kudos at that movie no more.

1. Radcliffe looks RETARDED. He looks SO retarded, that he in no way fits the description of hero in the movie. Oh, he's Harry Potter alright. By that I mean that he's the perfect actor for the part and he played it beautifully in the first 3 movies. But, in this movie, he just looks retarded throughout the whole movie. Take a look at the screenshot below if you need proof.
2. Dumbledore, is a child molestor. At least thats the impression I got from the movie. I don't know if teachers are allowed to throttle students in some parts of the world. But Dumbledore, certainly was within an inch (literally) of doing the very same. Again screenshots below to prove it.























3. Discontinuities, Ridiculous entrances and exits of characters and Actors acting totally out of character - I can't re-iterate how many times these blunders have occured in the movie. The discontinuities and entrances and exits were so blatant, that even an amature director could have done better.

As an example, lets take the scene after the quiddich world cup.
The fire at the quiddich game had burnt out, and only the smouldering remains of the tents are remaining. And Harry Potter is still unconscious (Lets ignore for now the fact that he lies in the very centre of the ruins with not a single mark on him. While everything else around him is razed to the ground.) and wakes up only when the bad guy does his dark mark thing. The best part about the whole muck up is the fact that the whole gang are suddenly looking for Harry only at that specific moment, and all the "convenient" characters appear from nowhere to save Harry. Oh gosh, is the director so naive as to believe that the audience would buy that? It was like a Hindi movie, only worse, because in Hindi movies, the sudden appearances of characters usually occur in dance scenes, (where dancers suddenly jump out of nowhere and start dancing in the middle of the street) and are intentionally introduced into the movie.

There are scores of blunders in the movie that would take me all day to document. If anything, I can just bullet some of the scenes so that you can go back and watch them yourselves.
1. Hermione's character
Her's was a very angry and crying character in this movie...totally weird
Out of place in her very first scene. (waking Harry up and shouting at the top of her voice)
Out of place in the scene where she hugs Harry before he selects his dragon.
Out of place in mad-eye moody's class.
Out of place when Harry comes out of the lake.
2. Ron's character
Probably one of the best acted in the whole movie, but still with flaws.
Out of place when about to apologize to potter in the common room.
3. Dumbledore
He was just all wrong. What with the shouting, impatience, aggression and so many other qualities not associated with the dumbledore as portrayed by J.K Rowling.
4. Professor Snape
Played Snape extremely well, except for one scene where he slams the door on Harry after accusing him of stealing from his cupboard.
5. Professor McGonagal
The best played character of all. A perfect performance with no flaws whatsoever.
6. Voldemort
He started off well. But then became all messed up. He was supposed to be stately and aggressive. But it was expected for him to be aggressive in a slow evil way. Rather than impatient duelling and running about. But I would give his character a break because its his first appearance.
7. Harry Potter
His character was wrong so many times in so many scenes, that I just give up.
8. Miscellaneous
There was a ROCK BAND at the ball...Oh my god! What were the directors thinking???? ...Seriously, words fail me.
Scenes were switched suddenly. This occured so many times, that it was practically impossible to get any idea of the layout of any landscape/area by the end of the movie.

In fact, due to the characters of Harry, Dumbledore and Hermione being so messed up, the whole movie becomes a charade (leaving out the rock band, scene switching etc...). I would suggest watching this movie with the mindset you would have as you watch any other movie. The faults of the movie will become only too obvious. I got so irritated with this movie that I actually wasted time to write about it in my blog. It doesn't deserve this....I have to go.

8 Reasons why women live longer than men...

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All photos were from forwarded emails...this is just a compilation.

Useless Information!

And Google has done it again. Finally with the release of the new Google desktop, we see the introduction of the "Sidebar" As useful as the sidebar is to the public, I doubt that most of us really use the information on it. Maybe I should rephrase the the above statement. What I meant to say is that, do you really want to be checking your email every 3 seconds? Or do you really want to know the latest news every 5 seconds? Or do you really want to "view your photos" everytime you glance at the sidebar? What I mean to say is...are people really that jobless to jump at the sidebar and read the latest news just because its the very latest news? Its like a competition to be the first person to click on the latest news. After clicking it, people would go like...

"HAH...I clicked on it first. I bet I'm the first one to click it in the whole world"
Then he'd PM his idiot friend on Google talk (Who'd also be red-eyed awaiting the latest news)
News clicker: "Guess who clicked on the 'Retard drowns himself' link first?"
Red-eye: "Oh NO!...not AGAIN"
News clicker: "Who's the best? YEEAAH, thats right...I'm the BEST!"
Red-eye: "I'm gonna get the next one...no matter WHAT!!"

And so it continues...
And as for the email bar. All I can say is, where's the fun in reading an email as soon as it is sent? The moment its sent, you'd receive it, and reply back within the next 30 seconds. You might as well PM him on Google talk, he's just there. Just click him and reply back...but NOOOO, you have to reply by email. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. The point is, that people used to check their emails only when they were in the mood to; or when they had time to reply to mail. Thats why people go to all the trouble of checking their email. Its because they are excited to get new mail. They want to see who's been trying to contact them. It makes them feel important. And thats part of everyone's ego. We are all ego machines, and this ego needs to be fed by receiving email so that we feel important. So everytime an email is sent, and "Sidebar" notifies you, how can the stupid machine know when to feed your ego? It all depends on your mood and how you feel at that particular time. If the "All knowing Sidebar" is so smart, why would it pop-up with "You have received 1 New Message" when in fact you feel harrassed because your boyfriend just dumped you (by email) and you're just in the mood to kick the next bloody emailer right up to bloody Mars?

This crux of the matter is that you don't HAVE to know that you have received "One New Message" the moment you receive it. Oh Suuuure....the new technology is awesome, and everyone's downloaded the sidebar and clicking at every little thing that pops up...but all I say is, give it a little time, and then we'll see people going like, "Yeah, its ok; but I kept getting a lot of spam" or "It takes up 10% of my screen" or "I uploaded photos of me and ma gurl on the computer. But I din think it'd show when pa used the computer. And what I'm getting to say is....he saw one picture of me and ma gurl, which I get to thinking, he din approve of....Nope.... Nooooo Siiirreee... He din approve AT ALL"