Bluffmaster

I would recommend it. It might seem extremely slow and boring in parts especially in the first half. But it is worth it. Expect what you might from and English romantic comedy. If you go in expecting non-stop action like DHOOM or comedy like No Entry you will be frustrated.

Priyanka Chopra is frustrating. Abhishek is good as usual but surprisingly Ritesh Deshmukh has stolen the show.

I wouldn't want to even venture into the story here because who would I be bluffing ??

Villain Today, Victim Tomorrow

There is nothing better that the media likes. It likes to launch a vicious attack on a person who is vulnerable (irrespective of whether or not he is guilty), destroy his reputation, dignity, muck him with all the filth possible and once he gives in, it likes to recast him as an unfortunate victim. It tries to portray him as the sacrificial lamb and just a small spoke in the big wheel of this World. It tries to show how the whole system is conspiring against him.

It happened with Sourav Ganguly. When he was in the team not scoring runs, the media were after his head. Once he was dropped, the wheel turned a full cycle. He is now the man who is being made the victim of a witch-hunt, being deliberately plotted against and kept out of the side for purely political reasons. Suddenly Greg Chappell who was being portrayed as the saviour of Indian cricket is now being talked about as being a tyrannic dictator trying to take over the reigns of Indian cricket. It matters not a jot that ever since Ganguly has been out Greg Chappell has done a fantastic job of taking this team to great success.

And now, it has happened to Natwar Singh. After causing him to nearly tear his hair apart due to continuous hounding, now this article in DNA tries to project the not-so-negative side of the man. Agreed, this is just a start. Soon we will start seeing articles about how Natwar was just an unfortunate pawn in the hands of Sonia and Manmohan.

(Cross posted on Cricket's Outside Edge)

Flash, Actionscript, XML and DTD

There is no way to validate an XML document with a DTD using Flash and Actionscript !! How frustrating !!

And now, a certain property, getSetResults, of a certain object LocalConnection works fine in Flash MX 2004 Professional 7.2 but does not in Flash MX 2004 Professsional 7.0. To make matters worse, I need it and I have only the latter, not the former.

OK. Unbelievable Nugget of Wisdom. If you are trying to establish a local connection between flash movies, you'd better declare the local connection object as say "my_lc = new LocalConnection()". Do not go for the more correct style of declaring separately as "var my_lc; my_lc = new LocalConnection();"

Why etc. don't ask.

Why Are You Quiet Now ?

In this article in DNA Minhaz Merchant poses some pointed questions to the Indian Muslim intelligentsia and celebrity. The article talks about the politics of fatwas in India in relation to the pre-marital sex controversy. The point the article makes is predominantly not about just that, but in the bigger picture about the freedom of speech and expression.

From the article:

It also raises the larger question — rarely debated in polite society — of why prominent Muslims, ranging from Shabana Azmi to Shah Rukh Khan, such voluble critics of Hindutva-inspired communalism (and rightly so), do not equally vociferously and publicly condemn fundamentalist Islamic communalism of the rabid sort that was directed against Sania Mirza when she first defended Khushboo's views on pre-marital sex.

And if I remember correctly, none of these ventured in support when the poor girl was tortured about her clothes on the tennis court either.

What Do You Mean ?

It is an honorable and praiseworthy move by India to honour the cylones striking her coasts by assigning then names. It would have been even better however if the names chosen were much simpler. Pray what does "Baaz" mean ?

Anyway Baaz has decided to postpone its visit by a few hours as it has taken a halt somewhere i the Bay of Bengal. However, it has done the damage already to the test match in Chennai.