Casino Royale

I had my doubts about this movie since the critics rated it quite well and they were confirmed on seeing the movie. The movie is about Bond's assignment just after being promoted to a '00' agent by M.
First things first - Craig is nowhere near as suave looking as Brosnan, get over it. He might have been cast in the next Die hard movie (if Bruce Willis was not in it for some reason) but he does not look the part of 007 at all. Now to the movie.
The chase sequence just after the title sequence was quite good but things went downhill from there, the film had far too many mushy scenes instead of the usual Bond fare - girls, gadgets and gratuitous violence.
SPOILER ALERT!!! Ending and plot details below.
Near the end of the film it was almost intolerable, when everyone was waiting for the climax as Bond was being tortured someone else killed the villain and spared Bond's life. Then we were made to sit through more scenes (PG-13) of Bond cavorting with his girlfriend and resigning from his job to 'settle' down with her. At this point everyone was discussing if she would betray him or will terrorists kill her, as it happened both were sort of correct.
This movie gets a thumbs down from me, they've turned a James Bond movie into a chick flick.

My Yahoo Photos

I've recently started taking pictures from my K750i phone and uploading them to my Yahoo Photos account. I never used the phone camera much but now I've begun to see the advantage of having a camera within the phone - you almost never miss a shot because of not having a camera with you. The quality is of course not comparable to a separate camera but with new phones coming out with better camera functions its not too far away.
Check them out.

Emurse

My friend Saket pointed out this cool (and very useful) site some time back. I've been trying it out and I would really recommend it to everyone who wants a good looking resume. The interface is intuitive and allows you to get a great looking resume in a few minutes (which can be formatted in a number of ways and exported to Word, PDF, HTML, etc.).
They also have great support for any problems / suggestions you might have.

Battlestar Galactica

After hearing lots of raving reviews from mainstream TV critics (non Sci-Fi community) who usually consider Sci-Fi shows cheesy I was pretty optimistic about Galactica.
As it turns out its actually a soap opera with a Sci-Fi backdrop. They're probably setting some sort of record with repeated footage per episode. I mean there's a recap at the beginning of every show like its the season finale. The more I watch season 2 the more it feels like the show is more about the people and their relationships rather than about the fight against the Cylons.
Take for example the episode Resurrection Ship, I bet there's more footage of Apollo floating in space than the actual fight against the Cylons.
I'm the first person to agree that Stargate Atlantis makes Stargate SG-1 look like Wormhole X-treme but give good old cheesy Sci-Fi anytime over one of the best shows on TV.

Computer Upgrade

Posting this after quite a while. I've been watching the TV series Stargate all the time (literally) so no new movies and very few books.
My computer was getting a little too old so I did a mini upgrade from my Athlon 2400 XP / Asus A7V8X-MX and a Seagate 80 GB Hard disk to (WARNING: Detailed specs follow) -
CPU
CPU Type AMD Athlon 64, 2000 MHz (10 x 200) 3000+
CPU Alias ClawHammer-512 S754
Instruction Set x86, x86-64, MMX, 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2
Original Clock 2000 MHz
L1 Code Cache 64 KB (Parity)
L1 Data Cache 64 KB (ECC)
L2 Cache 512 KB (On-Die, ECC, Full-Speed)
Package Type 754 Pin uOPGA

Motherboard
Motherboard Name MSI K8MM-V (MS-7142)

Motherboard Physical Info
CPU Sockets/Slots 1 Socket 754
Expansion Slots 3 PCI, 1 AGP
RAM Slots 2 DDR DIMM
Integrated Devices Audio, Video, LAN
Form Factor Micro ATX
Motherboard Chipset K8M800

RAM
Module Size 1024 MB (2 ranks, 4 banks)
Memory Type DDR SDRAM
Memory Speed PC3200 (200 MHz)

Hard Disk
Driver Description ST380817 AS SCSI Disk Device
Manufacturer Seagate
Hard Disk Name Barracuda 7200.7 SATA NCQ 80817
Formatted Capacity 80 GB
Average Rotational Latency 4.16 ms
Rotational Speed 7200 RPM
Max. Internal Data Rate 683 Mbit/s
Average Seek 8.5 ms
Interface SATA
Buffer-to-Host Data Rate 150 MB/s
Buffer Size 8 MB
Spin-Up Time 10 sec

King Kong

You have to see it to believe it! I was one of the first people to scoff at Peter Jackson's idea of remaking King Kong. I basically didn't like the plot of the movie about a giant ape falling in love with a woman (just goes to show no one knows what women want).
I only went to see the movie with some of my colleagues because there wouldn't be much dialouge (it was dubbed in Hindi) and the special effects were mouth watering.
The movie turned out to be great, make sure you watch it on the biggest cinema hall screen in your city.

Legend of Zorro

Zorro returns; and this time he's married (the delectable Catherine Zeta-Jones or is it Douglas now?) and has a trouble making son too.
The story has surprising depth so instead of just a series of hack 'n slash fights we get a pretty nice plot based around the time of the American civil war. The stunts are done well and look believable and bits of well timed comic relief are good too.
Thoroughly satisfying fare, don't miss it.

Doom (Movie)

After reading mixed reviews on the internet I watched the movie not expecting much from it. The movie is quite watchable actually, lots of action and the special effects are great although the storyline is the old rehashed government / giant corporate indulging in cutting edge genetic engineering resulting in highly dangerous mutants.
Good to watch on a quiet weekend afternoon.

Gardens of the Moon

This is book one of Malazan book of the Fallen. To compare with Song of Ice and Fire, its got a lot more magic involved (with even the gods playing a hand).
Where the Song of Ice and Fire has 3 or 4 main threads in the story this book's plot can be compared to a roomful of kittens allowed to play with large balls of yarn, it can get a bit overwhelming at times but the story is fast paced and unpredictable.
Another book highly recommended for Fantasy fans.
Note: It seems that either my online book store has stopped shipping books to my city or their site has some bugs so unless Amazon opens up shop in India this will be my last book review for a while.

SE K750i

I finally got my new phone after a lot of attempts, its the Sony Ericsson K750i.
Features include a 2 megapixel camera, 250k colour display screen, MP3 ringtones and Bluetooth, a 64MB Memory Stick Pro memory card is also included.
The camera has a nice flashlight and allows unlimited video recording (well, limited by memory size). I just love the animated themes and menus (lots of themes available online). Thankfully the MP3 ringtones are really loud ;-)
Initially I was going to buy its expensive walkman cousin the W800i but then I dropped the idea and got an iPod Mini (4GB) and the reason you don't see a review of the iPod is that it would be redundant (everyone knows its the coolest MP3 player in the market).