From a big Chee!!….. for Boys to a whooping 48/100 for Anniyan from Vikatan thatha, this could be one of the reasons why Shankar was burning his midnight oil for over a year. He should be a happy man now not mention the large integers being added to his fortune.

I haven’t seen Anniyan yet. May not see it until the DVD is out because all the tickets are sold out in Seattle. If only they add one more extra show for movie buffs like me, I can witness Shankar’s grandeur presentation on-screen.

… men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving. But when you are as old as I am; when you have a thousand times wearied of heaven, like myself and the Commander, and a thousand times wearied of hell, as you are wearied now, you will no longer imagine that every swing from heaven to hell is an emancipation, every swing from hell to heaven an evolution. Where you now see reform, progress, fulfilment of upward tendency, continual ascent by Man on the stepping stones of his dead selves to higher things, you will see nothing but an infinite comedy of illusion. You will discover the profound truth of the saying of my friend Koheleth, that there is nothing new under the sun.

- by Geroge Bernard Shaw in one of the best books ever written, Man and Superman. I only wish we had a dozen of GB Shaw’s alive to set the world on a wisdom quest. Though quoted by The Devil in the play, this single quote can balance you from overdosing your ego, whenever you feel accomplished. Adangumaa Kannu !!

When Tamil Nadu government, served an order to cancel the entrance examinations for Medical/Engineering collge seats, I thought of it as a welcoming move. It was certainly one. The idea of taking the entrance exams out, was to help the rural students to be on par with the urban lot who have abundant oppurtunities of getting trained for entrance examinations. This certainly gives an upper hand for the city folks over the rural dudes. The number of Agarwal’s and Subramaniam’s are more in urban areas to teach entrance exams syllabus for a hefty sum of money. So you see this line of TVS scooties and BSA SLRs being parked in KK Nagar even from 4 am in the morning while the rural folks are still busy milking their cows.

But we have to admit, when there are different standards of education system like the CBSE, Matric and State Board in India, it’s tough to decide the right candidates for Medical/Engg colleges without having a common examination. The entrance examination which was in effect was doing this balancing very effectively. However it had these pitfalls of not enough entrance exam training centers for the rural students. What’s welcoming out of this whole hungama, is that the high court, apart from dismissing the govt’s order, has sent out a positive note to come up with a ‘third formula’ of cleansing these differences in education system/entrance examinations which would be help the ovehaul the system in the long run. Atleast, it made me believe that we have a few ‘Rules Ramanujams’, alive and kicking.

TN govt walks away with the cake for bringing this debate to life, High Court gets a applause for streamlining the debate and at the end, I only wish the winners are the students. Not trying to be cliched here but I still strongly believe in the system of government and law in country while I hate censors for films. Kind of double standards but then isn’t this a paradoxical world ?

Ev Head‘s new venture on podcasting, Odeo has been on the talk over the blogosohere for sometime now. Curious to see what EV is onto this time and also try my hand on podcasting, I had signed up for their beta version earlier when it was first announced.

Today I recieved the Google type invite for Odeo. When you sign in, you need to download a synchronizer with which you can subscribe to podcasts or create your own. While I subscriebd to some podcasts, I’m contemplating to create a podcast. Probably I will and will also be the only one listening to it. If you are the unlucky joe, you might get to listen my podcast where I drool over the Sonia Agarwal or go gaga over Spielberg‘s latest addiction to pre-visualization.

From Odeo’s create podcast page –

Odeo Studio – A browser-based tool that makes it easy to record and publish audio. With the Studio, and a cheap microphone (or even the one built into your laptop), you have everything you need.

Phone Posting – If you can leave a voicemail, you’ll be able to podcast, with Odeo’s phone-posting service-a quick and easy way to put your voice on the web (and in people’s ears).

Feed Creation and Hosting – If you already have audio, and you just want to get it into podcasting form, Odeo provides the turnkey way to do that. Just upload your MP3s, and you’re done.

There is nothing called as free lunch. Odeo too has it’s pricing plans to be able to do podcasts which I thought would be a free service. The price plans aren’t announced yet but sooner the craze catches up, the faster they would release their prices.

Neverthless, the first impression on Odeo is ‘Exciting’. Way to go EV and team !!

For starters – Podcasting is for radio what Blogging was for print media. It’s the name of technology by which you, as an individual, can create radio shows and air them through internet. Now, it won’t be exactly sent through air, but will be dumped into your domain server as an mp3/wma file. Your audience, if you get some, will download these mp3 files or podcasts into their IPOD/mp3 player and listen to it on the go. Podcasts can be like radio shows or comentaries with/without music as the background. Imagine instead of reading through a review of Star Wars, you will actually hear your favorite podcaster talking through it. This adds just another human dimension to it and you don’t need to actually read through the review, like audiobooks. It has it’s own pros/cons and the good news is that, many are still figuring out this animal.

That’s my definition, more on Podcasting in Wikipedia.

Is this another case of scoop-or-spoof like the Mani Ratnam one, which came about few months back ? The fans are equipped with Photoshops and other titles to make dream posters of their superheroes. And we have the vast internet and silly blogs like this to make them popular !!

Thanks to Karthi for forwadding this. Am not sure of the source though.

P.S – Shouldn’t it be ‘Naan, Kadavul’ like Raa Ki Rangarajan’s novel Naan, Krishnadevarayan and Robert Graves book I,Claudius [someone mentioned these during the book tag meme].