September 12, 2007
This was one movie that had actors I had never heard of till then but I still wanted to watch it as it was supposedly a thriller. It is about a depressed teen who recently having lost his father due to an accident is placed under house arrest for punching his spanish teacher. After getting bored at home playing video games, he starts surveilling his neighbours. What starts of as an innocuous activity takes a serious turn when he suspects his neighbour to be a serial killer. Is his suspicions right or is he imagining things?
I went to the movie without high expectations and it turned to be a pretty decent one. It is not a horror movie nor is it gory but it does has some scary scenes. Shia LaBeouf gives a good performance as the withdrawn teen.
Overall, this is not a must watch movie but you might want to watch it if you are into thrillers.
Popularity: 16%
Posted in Movies 
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September 2, 2007
I am normally averse to upgrading Wordpress as it is still a cumbersome process wherein one needs to back up the database, the current theme, play around with the .htaccess file etc. So imagine my surprise and delight when I found a plugin that makes the whole process automatic. Yeah, you heard me right. You can find the plugin home page here.
It is very well documented and is a breeze to install and use it. Select the automatic option once you are ready to use it and it’ll do all the work for you by upgrading Wordpress to 2.2 which is the current version as of now. Thanks a lot for the wonderful plugin Keith!
On a similar note, I have changed my Wordpress theme to Cleaker and customized it very much to suit my needs. This is the third theme I am using in this site in as many years. A huge thanks to Adam Walker for this wonderful theme.
So, how do you like the new look? If you like it, don’t like it or if you encounter any problems with the way pages or displayed, please do let me know about it. I am all ears 
Popularity: 27%
Posted in Site Updates No Comments »
August 27, 2007
I, for one, am a self-confessed music junkie. Something keeps playing almost every time I am home. There are times when i keep playing the same song again and again till I get tired of it especially when its a song that I’ve recently started taking a liking to. If you are able to relate to what I am trying to say, wouldn’t it good if you had a way of finding new songs based on the artists that you like?
Earlier, if I knew only one song of a group, I would have a look at their wikipedia entry and find out their hit singles and listen to them. This works very well as long as you know the artist name. How do you find out if you do not know which artist is similar to the ones you like? Fortunately, there is one service called Last.fm which allows you to do this and more.
You can search for any song you like and play an audio clip of it there. Similar artists are also listed in the same page. Click on any one of them to go the artist’s profile page and 4 of their tops songs will be listed, followed by their Top Tracks in the last one week and 6 months. Have a look at their 6 months entries and you’ll get an idea of their top songs. You can also play them right there.
If you are a registered user, you get to download a plugin which integrates with winamp or windows media player and you can then enable a process called scrobbling. This means that when you listen to a song, the name of the song is sent to Last.fm and added to your music profile. Yeah yeah , I know what you are thinking. Stop being paranoid.
You will know what artists you listen to most. Songs you listen to will also appear on your Last.fm profile page for others to see. My profile page is available here.
Shriram’s profile
I have just started scrobbling and what you see here would only be a subset of what songs I listen to.
Do give it a try and if you find it as useful as I found it or even if you didn’t like it for some reason, shout out in the comments.
Popularity: 18%
Posted in Music No Comments »
August 17, 2007
This year was supposedly the year of the sequels and I was very much excited about some of the movies 6 months back. Now looking back, I feel only a couple of movies out of that list were enjoyable. Spiderman 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End were duds. Shrek 3 was okey-dokey. By the time Ocean’s 13 was released, it was a refreshing change compared to the 3 movies that were released earlier, though it doesn’t come close to Ocean’s 11.
Now you have Rush Hour 3 which is again neither too good or too bad. The moment you know the movie is a sequel, you have a feeling it was only meant to be a cash cow and movies like these only affirm the same. The plot is predictable and Jackie Chan’s getting a bit old but you gotta say he’s very much agile. Chris tucker is his usual self.
I am yet to see Ratatouille, Zodiac and The Bourne Ultimatum as they still haven’t been released in India. All 3 have been critically acclaimed and I hope they make up for the lack of entertaining movies that were released in the last 6 months.
Popularity: 17%
Posted in Movies 2 Comments »
This is the personal blog of Shriram who digs travel, music, movies, trains and tea.
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