svn status | grep ^? | awk '{print $2;}' | xargs rm

I had big expectations from Super 8, but I found it to be super boring. I guess the intermingling of kids and an alien was supposed to make the movie unique, but I felt it did not save it from the dull boring plot. The initial train accident was awesome, simply realistic and excellent. Apart from that, I did not find anything special in the movie, except for the part along with the credits, where the short film made by the kids is showcased. That was the only saving grace.

The Last Air Bender, I watched it on tv, it was plying in HBO late Sunday night. I like the concept behind the movie, but the movie was super crappy. Maybe I will try to catch the animated series, as I am sort of taken by the bending concept. The kid’s acting in the movie borders on terrible, the action is bad, 90′s Indo Overseas movies had better Kung Fu sequences. I do not know what Shymalan was thinking while making the movie. The movie ends with a huge opening for a sequel, but I highly doubt it ever coming out due to the drubbing received by this one at the audience’s hands.

Take the example below:

class Foo {
  private static int bar = Moo.intValue(); 
}

class Moo {
  public static int intValue() {
    //parses data from an xml and returns it
  }
}

In the above, due to some reason let us assume that the xml is not present and this gets thrown as a run time exception from intValue. If this happens, it prevents the Foo class from being loaded by the JVM. If this code is running within a server and the server init code accesses this class, then the whole app is prevented from being loaded due to this. So, before using static initialization that depends on some other class, make sure you have assessed the possibility of your class not being loaded and how it affects your app.

The story basically follows the pursuits of men and their twisted world of sex especially of the Lolita kind, power, lust, greed etc etc. It has graphic descriptions of sex in all forms, threesomes, blow jobs, analingus, cunnilingus, etc etc. Maybe I am too much of a commoner to “APPRECIATE” the book, but I was not able to figure out the connections between the random facts thrown in like the origin of the word Cunt and it’s relation to the flow of the story. It was like the author had a couple of random sex related trivia and he just picked up some page number from a lot to put it in. Also, the story shifts randomly between different protagonists of which I was not able to keep track of. I was not able to decipher the relation to the story of the Greek literature thrown in in almost every two pages other than that, in most of the cases, both of them talked about men and their pursuit of primal pleasures. I felt the book is an excuse for people to relish pornography and not feel guilty about it, as it gives them the illusion of reading some fine classic literature.

The story happens in the not so distant future where the world of boxing has seen a belly up by the introduction of fighting bots which have made the humans obsolete in this sport. Hugh Jackman plays the role of the disgruntled boxing giant who has lost it all in his life, his career, his girl friend, kid etc and is neck deep in debt. Fate puts his son with him for a few weeks on his bot boxing road trips and the rest of the story is about how the father son duo stage a come back in the bot boxing arena.

Apart from the geeky bot boxing scenes, other enjoyable aspects of the movie are the father son bonding shots, their friendly banter, the camaraderie between the kid and his bot Atom. All in all a good enjoyable watch especially if you are smitten by robots like me .

The whole movie has a 90′s feel to it, starting from the credit’s font and color to the back ground discoish music. What I found fascinating about the movie is the wrapping up of extremely violent men in a soft veneer of decency and benevolence. The close up shots of the driver’s smiling angelic face followed by him kicking the face of a man to shards is shocking. Also, the antagonist’s empathetic soft talk with the driver’s employer before he slashes his wrists leading to a gory blood bath is primal. The way the movie revolves between soft spoken people and in your face gore is what I feel sets the movie apart from the ordinary but the pace of the narrative is slow and some of the shots too extended to hold your attention. I still cannot decide whether it was good or just ordinary .

The book is written by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. The book is a mixture of Tony’s personal life, his first start up experience, LinkExchange, with a major portion devoted to Zappos and finally ending with a small treatise on happiness and finding one’s calling in life. He has divided the book into three sections, the first section devoted to Tony’s personal life, his adventures with entrepreneurship as a kid and in college days, which finally culminates in him and his friend founding up LinkExchange and then selling it successfully to Microsoft. The next section is devoted to his journey from funding Zappos to his full time involvement with Zappos, with detailed anecdotes of personal stories and strategies of how they built the company from the ground up to the multi million dollar behemoth it is today. The final section is dedicated to the hay days of Zappos with the finale of Amazon acquiring Zappos in an all stock deal valued at 1.2 billion dollars. This section mostly elucidates the core values of Zappos and stresses on how important it is for a company to live up to it’s values.

Impressive quotes are sprinkled throughout the book with ample amounts of humor thrown in. It is an extremely fascinating read, offering a rich glimpse of the travails and triumphs of a young entrepreneur.