Mayank's Blog

Some experiences mark the end of one phase of your life and beginning of another. The signals for this change might be approaching for quite sometime but either you didn’t understand them or chose to ignore them. Like I did when MTV Roadies slipped through my important to-do things on a weekend. Or when Channel V Dare to Date stopped being hilarious and started being cruel and mean. Or when Love Kiya Toh Darna Kya seemed like a stupid show where ignorant kids ruin not only their reputation but also that of their families. I guess I was going through “Being a cynical asshole” phase. You're Getting Old Tags: SOUTH PARK Stan Marsh , Randy Marsh , more... These signals turned into a full-blown experience when I saw Delhi Belly yesterday. I know that we are supposed to rave about how hilarious and awesome the movie is but I didn't find it so. There are only a finite number of times when visuals of ass-cracks or loud noises of farting tickle your funny bone. T...

Boy, what an year 2010 was! It was an year riddled with scams; so many of them that we have to invent a new search engine to just wade through them. Then there was Obama’s visit, Sarkozy’s visit, Hu Jintao’s visit. But that’s not all to the past year. It was also the year when I decided that I have had enough of the comfortable environs of Pune and that it was now time to brave the icy winds of Delhi. Delhi hasn’t let me down. Every morning it sends a chill down my bones when I get out of my warm and cosy bed. It is said that some people in Delhi don’t feel any cold. I had heard and read about them in magazines and movies but never quite believed it. But its true! Delhi girls don’t feel any cold. They have waxed off their goose bumps and apparently live and die by the tagline “ Jitna kam pehnoge, utna hot dikhoge ”. They are a burning topic (no pun intended) for scientific study to find out what kind of heat insulating/generating system they have which helps them wade through chilly w...

Legends and WikiLeaks have it that the supposedly future Prime Minister of India will discuss about the greatest dangers facing the country with the US ambassador. He did and made the observation that “Hindu terror“ is the biggest threat to this country. Not Lashkar-e-Toiba, not Jamat-ul-Dawa, not even Naxalites, but Hindu terror. The perpetrators of 26/11 attacks are bewildered and are crying foul. They had spent so much time, energy and money in devising and implementing this whole plan and now entire credit is being taken away from them. Not fair. Rahul Gandhi, the Baba of Indian politics (about whom some crazy people say that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth), had earlier equated SIMI with RSS . Its only fair to equate SIMI, which has engaged in mindless violence and is now banned by the government, with RSS, which fought for India’s independence and has produced leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L. K. Advani. That this equation might be an attack at the base of only...

I never thought that I would be writing on this topic. Its a no-brainer why governments across the world are pissed at WikiLeaks. And I naively assumed that every ordinary citizen would automatically see the potential benefits of WikiLeaks. My belief was cemented by the presence of 600,000+ fans of WikiLeaks on Facebook.  But I have come across people and watched shows on TV which basically debate whether WikiLeaks has done a good thing  by leaking the embassy cables or whether they are essentially an anarchist. Some people have argued that it leads to an erosion of privacy as the cables are private conversations between two individuals. The leaks are nothing but voyeurism on WikiLeaks part which may even lead to deaths of human rights activists across the world. Another argument that is put forth is that WikiLeaks is specifically targeting United States as all the cables are US embassy cables and not of any other country. While all these are good arguments, I will try to show...

A new feature has been added to OrkPic which lets you download your Orkut friend's photo albums too! (Click for a larger view) Download the new version here ! P.S. - Don't forget to uninstall the previous version first before installing this.

Orkut usage is on the decline. Frankly, hardly anyone uses Orkut nowadays. They have all migrated to Facebook. Naturally, new applications developed for Orkut are very far and few. This may also be the result of Google's apathy towards Orkut and its OpenSocial API. But there was a time when Orkut was hugely popular in India when people uploaded hundreds of photos on Orkut but now have no way of getting them back (except manually going through each of them). That's where OrkPic comes into picture. This tool lets you download your Orkut albums onto your system in a flash (depending on the speed of your internet connection, of course). (Click for a larger view) OrkPic lets you choose the albums you want to download and stores them in your "My Pictures" folder. OrkPic is built on .NET 4/WPF and uses DotNetOpenAuth library. Download the tool and liberate your Orkut photos. UPDATE - You have to install .NET 4.0 Full Setup before installing OrkPic. Pleas...

Clearly the best movie of the Harry Potter series; it is also the most honest one. For once, the movie does not take “cinematic liberties” and make the original story a complete mess. It sets the tone of gloom and darkness from the first scene itself in which Hermione “obliviates” her parents. There is death and despair in the air as we miss the familiar surroundings of Hogwarts and the warmth of Dumbledore. Instead there is Nagini , writhing and hissing, as per Lord Voldemort’s will. Harry as the chosen one, Hermione and Ron take upon themselves the mission to find all the Horcruxes and destroy them and we follow their story as they continue on this dangerous mission. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry) has clearly matured as an actor, as was also displayed in his play Equus. Rupert Grint (Ron) is at his funny best. The icing on the cake is the restrained yet powerful performance by Emma Watson (Hermione). Probably with Hogwarts out of the picture, it was easier for her to stop acting bookish. ...