My New PC

Well it took a long long time but finally I was able to assemble a gaming PC.
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo 6420
MB - Asus P5B
RAM - 2GB Kingston DDR2-667
GPU - eVGA 8800GTS 640MB
HDD - Seagate 250GB SATA-II with 8MB Buffer
Keyboard - iBall Compact
Cabinet - Zebronics Peace
SMPS - NavTech 550W Power Supply

Pepsi

Shot of some diet pepsi cans.
I posted this from my K790 to try out its photo blogging feature.
P.S. - My online photo gallery is now at Flickr.

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.