Osthe, not so much.

Having not seen "Dabangg", I went to see "Osthe" last night. I liked a few songs and given that Santhanam and a few more comedians were present as the hero's sidekicks,it promised to be an entertainer. But the movie failed to live up to my expectations and the hype generated by the makers. The whole movie seemed like a one-on-one competition between the hero and the villain. Villain being named "Boxer Daniel" does not help either.

As in any movie the hero is "pure-at-heart", even if he robs from the villain (bad money, right) and does kill baddies at his will (and not having to explain to any).

Sonu Sood is like "water on a lotus leaf", when it comes to his character and the southern slang. The brother, the heroine, her father are all distractions that could have been done away with. The movie could have been a bigger entertainer had the lead been done by a bigger hero. STR, though tries his best to carry it off, the character seems to be too big for him. Reminds of the days when he used to sing "I am a little star". It is still too early for him to don this very powerful, superhero level stuff, his small frame doing further damage. The shirt ripping (tears all by itself) is almost laughing stuff.

Any successfull movie has a pattern, a formula, where the good fights evil, and despite the shortcomings, manages to win "fair square" or by "hook or crook". But the enmity and tension is built slowly to reach the cresendo only at the end. Here atleast the villain gets to show that he is a bad man and kills a couple of policemen before having to confront the hero. But the hero's prowess are being bragged about by the henchmen even before he makes an entry.

The punch dialogues need a special mention. It is equally irritating to see and hear the same set of dialogues over and over again, as it is to see numerous punch lines being belted out. make you want to punch yourself. It is best to leave Osthe alone. Don't bother the trip to movie hall for this.

Wallpaper Clock in Ubuntu

I was looking for "ubuntu widgets" to have a clock hanging around in the desktop and stumbled on this. Wallpaper Clock.

It is better to have the whole desktop for a clock rather than a widget. See the screenshot. Note the time. Try it.

Never knew Billroth meant this...

I have always thought that Billroth was a name, although not very Indian. But as I was reading Edward de Bono's How to have a beautiful mind I came to know that it was a kind of an operation done in stomach. Wonder why an hospital is named after Billroth in Chennai. The following excerpt is from wikipedia.

Billroth II, more formally Billroth's operation II, is an operation in which the lower part of the stomach (antrum) is removed and a loop of small bowel (jejunum) is brought up and joined to it in a (side-to-side manner) for drainage. The surgical procedure is calledgastrojejunostomy.^[1][2]

Fill Cell with Colour in Libre Office - Keyboard Shortcut

I do a lot of things in LibreOffice Calc and it involves changing background colour of cells. I needed some keyboard short cuts and found it here. Thought might be useful. Press Ctrl+1 to invoke format cells dialogue box. Use Tab or Shift+Tab to navigate. If you use it often it opens in the last tab you left, making it easier to use. Try keyboard short cuts. They make life simple.

Videos for Ipod Touch, IPad in Linux

Apple may have blocked back porting of its pods and pads but that cannot change me from having Linux as my primary OS. So I use Handbrake to convert them to Apple compatible files (presets available) and use ITunes only to upload these files to my devices. Works great. No hassles. Give it a try.

Restart Numbering in Libre Office

I was looking every where to restart numbering in Libre Office but could not find it. But it is available in their help page itself. On right click the option shows. But only if it is on the number itself. the link is here.

There is not enough room on the disk to save /tmp/anyname.anyextension.part.-SOLVED

I received the above error message when trying to open a pdf document in Xubuntu. Ubuntu Forum here solved it for me.

sudo apt-get clean

tada, it's gone and pdf opened.

Compress here option in Dolphin File Manager

Install "ARK" archive manager in Ubuntu to compress files through right click in Dolphin file manager. Earlier I used to open in Thunar just to compress files in an otherwise Dolphon as default environment.

Ubuntu tweak

Been getting a long list of headers in boot menu. Did not know how to remove. Then I found this forum which gave a command line option to remove them. However it also had a link to ubuntu-tweak.com which gave an app that solved the problem. It has a lot of other options too which I am still to explore. Try it ppl.

Photography tip - indoor

Try to deflect the light from flash upwards using a visiting card when shooting pictures indoors. Say a 45 degree angle, and see the results.

One and a half years....

The last post is on 24th Oct 2009. The next one on 6th April 2011. One and a half years is indeed a long time.

Back after a long hiatus. Look to post more. This time around there will be more about linux.

Automatically insert signature in Evolution in Ubuntu 10.10

I was having a signature file separately (sign.txt) which I was inserting every time I had to send a mail. I send out emails many times a day and this was proving to be quite a waste of time. Here is how you can automise (?) it. Well I have switched over to Ubuntu and am happy about that. More on that later...