{balki Blog}
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Last night some friends came over for dinner and stayed back to watch a movie. I heard a lot about “March of the Penguins” so I suggested we watch it. This is one of the most incredible movies we watched in the recent past. While the saga of making the documentary itself makes it worthwhile to watch it, the underlying message is a great eye-opener as well. While we humans tend to live our lives with no higher purpose, always scheming, fighting, complaining, the penguins go through such remarkable hardship with one single purpose. I will give anything to operate with just 10% of focus that these penguins have. Throughout the movie we exclaimed using phrases like “Amazing”, “Incredible”, “Wow” etc very generously and believe me that is very rare! There is a great underlying message (whether the makers intended for it or not) and it is certainly delivered in a grand fashion!

NOTE: Some of you might ask why I write movie reviews 6 months or more after they are originally released in theaters. There is a simple reason - We are crazy about movies (watch 4-6 movies week!) and obviously it is not very cost-effective to watch them in the theaters (I used this same logic and came up with complicated calculations to convince my wife six years ago why the Bose Surround System System and the Onkyo Receiver were such great investments. I used the same methodology again and scored a Panasonic 50″ plasma TV!) Anyways, we rent movies from Hollywood Video using their MVP pass and we cannot rent movies using this special program for about 6 weeks after a movie comes on DVD. I review the movies this late anyways because a lot of friends ask for English movie recommendations and I like to point them to a resource rather than trying to recollect movie names on the fly. For the same reason, I maintain a running list of all my favorite English movies on this blog site.

Technorati : March of the Penguins
Del.icio.us : March of the Penguins

Watched the movie The Final Cut over the weekend (actually on a weekend over 6 months ago; this blog has been posted with an incorrect date). This was one of the better English movies we watched in the last couple months or so. There are so many movies coming on DVD but not many are worth even reviewing here.

Watched the movie over the weekend. This was one of the better English movies we watched in the last couple months or so. There are so many movies coming on DVD but not many are worth even reviewing here.

Anyways, we liked the movie for the following reasons:

• Great futuristic concept
• Clever storyline
• Good direction
• Got us nervous about the future and provided enough fodder for a very lively debate!

Watched the movie over the weekend. This was one of the better English movies we watched in the last couple months or so. There are so many movies coming on DVD but not many are worth even reviewing here.
The negatives:

• Robin Williams
• Not enough of Mira
• Abrupt, not so much fun ending

Technorati : Final Cut

As many of you (yes, that means you Badari and Deepu!) know my birthday is around the corner (January 5th). So, I started compiling my wish-list. If you are dying to buy me a present for my birthday, your wishes and prayers have come true!! The list is ready for your perusal and immediate action here: Balki’s wishlist on Amazon.

I already forced Maanasa into making this link her browser home page at work and at home. So, I might get a few presents out of her. I also encourage you all to do the same (set my wish-list as your browser home page)

As an added convenience, “My Wish-list” is available on this blog-site on the right-navigation menu under “Other Links”.

Technorati : balki, wishlist

I have been reviewing offline blogging tools for a while and I am not ready to spend 29.95 yet! So, BlogJet was out of question.

After reading this review of Zoundry by Josh Forsythe, and quickly going through all the available features and the price (FREE!!) I instantly decided this was the tool I was looking for. Integration with WordPress was a snap and I was ready to publish in about 5 minutes. So, far I love everything about Zoundry. If you are serious about blogging and do several entries a week and want the freedom of a WYSIWYG interface, I highly recommend Zoundry.

UPDATE1: Another great review of Zoundry by Swizzle

Maanasa and I are planning to go to Hawaii in January.
We can afford to visit two islands (which seems to be the general rule of thumb for most visitors to Hawaii)  But, the biggest dilemma for us is to pick the two islands.  We talked to many of the friends and there is a vast range of opinions.  But the top 4 islands are: Big Island, Honolulu, Maui and Kauai.
Maaansa was trying to find the best 2 islands and she came up with this site.  The site takes ratings (along with opinion) from the visitors on the various islands.  The only problems seems to be that there are not many votes.  But the two most popular islands on this site are: Big Island and Honolulu.  I just wish there were more people voting on this site so we can book our trip with confidence.

I finally budged to my wife’s incessant grumbling and paid through my nose to watch the movie “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” in the theater.

It was not a fantastic movie but it was not crappy either. It seems like so many movies fall in this category these days. The movies are good enough but not awesome. In this movie, you will find all the predictable characteristics that you come to expect from epic movie: a good cast, the most advanced technology and a good enough screen adaptation. However, the movie failed to inspire me and kept me from recommending it to everybody I know. Somehow there is not enough “wow” factor to the movie. Maybe it’s because we watch 4 movies a week on average or maybe because the quality is coming down?? I cannot say for sure.

Anyways, I rate the movie a 5.5 on a scale of 10 (don’t tell my wife but I slept for 20-30 minutes during the first half of the movie, so my rating is based on the remaining 94 minutes)

Technorati : The Chronicles of Narnia

We had a few couples over for dinner on Thanksgiving night and we had a blast playing games and getting to know the newer friends.
One of the games we played involved writing answers to various personal questions like “What’s your favorite movie?”, “Who’s your favorite actor?” etc. My answer to the favorite color question was “purple”. So, some people asked why purple?
My instant answer “Because my wife said so“. We had so much fun teasing each about that topic that I literally had a stomach-ache.