Rohit Mordani’s Blog

This post has been in my head for a while now, and it has just been made fresh by the fact that “Water” did not win in the Oscars for “The Best Foreign Film”. What a shame - “Water” by Deepa Mehta may have been on a sensitive (but real) social topic that was prevalent in India about 60 years back, but the movie was very well made movie and the story line did not lack anything. It does portray a not-so-nice image of the practices in the early times of India but nevertheless, the audience should understand that things are not that bad these days in India. Did it lose because it may have been too crude - well we would never know.
On the other end of the spectum there are movies like Salaam-E-Ishq (and anything with Salman Khan) and Golmaal that should just NOT be made, and if made then it shouldn’t be watched ! Indian cinema also doesn’t know how to make sequels - Phir Hera Pheri was a disgrace to the first movie (phir hera pheri) ; Dhoom 2 was all about the glamour and glitter - had no story at all. I think Dhoom was much better. Kkrish was also no better (not that the ET ripoff “Koi Mil Gaya” was any better !) - just the special effects were good in these movies - which of course was done by companies from out of India ! Movies have become just a 2-3 hour commercial piece of crap - filled with endorsements !

And then there were some really good movies (though some may not have done all that well in the Box Office) - Movies such as Taxi No. 9211, Dor, Lage Raho Munna Bhai, Khosla ka Ghosla, Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (a total timepass movie) were really nice and well made with some very basic story lines - Elegance sprouts from something that is very basic - I truly believe in that ! Guru was another well made movie and Sam says it well in his blog - “They don’t call him Mani Sir for no reason”. A little over the top for me Sam, but nevertheless the story telling is done well - the good and the bad parts !

What I guess I am implying here is that I expect more out of Hindi movies and the people who make it. People in India are really creative and I hope that is exposed via the movies that they make ! One statement pretty much sums up what is happening in the Indian Cinema world -

“In the Hindi film industry, mediocrity is king!!”
- Anurag Kashyap

I came across this comment in Sams blog - he is probably more passionate about Indian Cinema than I am ! Check out his blog too…

She is a sweetheart ! Sleeps a lot but brings so much of love and joy around her ! I can just imagine the coming years and am glad that Leena and I (and everyone else) will be a part of her life and hopefully make a difference ! Till then, here are some more photos of the little angel.

Woo hoo !! I just came back from the hospital where my bhabhi (Preety) delivered a lovely baby girl - who is 7.04lb and 21″ long ! I heard the first cry from outside the labor room and my heart never felt so nice before !! She is a little sweetheart who is now known as Rhea Mordani !! Welcome Rhea sweetie-pie - you will bring joy and love to a lot of lives around you !! Congrats to Rajiv and Preety on this beautiful day. 7:55 p.m. , March 10, 2007 will be etched in our memories forever ! Below is Rhea’s first ever photo !

Moving to using a new computer is like moving your house ! You need to take backups of everything in your old computer (like packing all the stuff in your house) and then reinstalling and restoring it on your new computer (like unpackaging everything in your new house) !! Except that there are no moving costs involved here - well for the most part
As part of my last move, I had to move all my work email (stored in Outlook) to my new machines. I also had rules that ran on my inbox. I thought it would be a daunting process of exporting all the personal local email folders and importing them in the new computer. I was surprised to find out that all that you needed was to copy over 1 file to the new machine and import it in Outlook !

Here is how I did it…
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Recently I had a task at hand while switching from one computer to another. I had to move all of my ~10GB of music from one computer to another ! That was not the “tough” part though ! The tough part was - How to maintain the ~310 playlists that I had set up ! I have no idea why I have those many playlists ! I guess I am a little over-organised at times !

Anyways, here is the way I did it ! It was pretty simple eventually…
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Check out my journal at DeviantART. The journal entries so far are mostly panorama related - a collection of some really good panoramas from various people at deviantART. Panoramas from others always inspire me to take more panoramas and do a better job of taking them !!

Here is the journal : deviantART journal

Panography - and yes that is NOT a spelling mistake… Panography is a technique that uses a lot of photographs “put” together manually (in photoshop or whatever) to form a composite photo. Its a little different that Panoramas, since images are not “stitched” but just placed together, but it is really exciting if done well.

The technique is to reduce the opacity of the images to about 50% or so and use an image editing tool such as Photoshop to rotate and align the images appropriately.

It is an innovative concept and I really like it…Maybe I shall make a few of my own

Till then here are few examples…

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If a picture can paint a picture. If a picture is worth 1000’s of words then imagine what a Wider picture would be worth !! That is the thought that came to my mind when I saw Yosemite National Park, California. I was at Glacier point, Yosemite and the view was more than just breathtaking ! At that time I had my brothers ‘new’ Canon 3MP digital camera and guess what it had - a panorama mode ! And thus began the saga of me taking Panoramas from around the world ! This one below is the first ever panorama that I am talking about :

For some of my best panoramas check out:
Rohits Panoramas at Picasaweb

The whole set of Panoramas that I took (good or bad) is at :
Rohits Panoramas at mordani.com/gallery

Some of the others that I love personally are:

As a follow up to “a Brief History of Gaming”, here is a lit of all (well - mostly all) the games that I love

My favourite games throughout the ages
(Though there naybe some more that I maybe missing out….will post them as and when I remember….)
Can you think of any one that you played and is not here and should be? Let me know

PC
+ Prince of Persia
+ Prince of Persia 2
+ Doom
+ Doom 2
+ Descent
+ Descent - Freespace
+ Mortal Kombat
+ NBA Action ‘98
+ Need For Speed 2
+ Max Payne
+ Quake 3
+ Unreal Tournament
+ The Incredible Machine
+ MDK
+ MDK 2
+ Mortal Kombat 4
+ EA Cricket

PS2
+ Prince of Persia - Sands of Time
+ Prince of Persia - Warrior Within
+ Prince of Persia - TwoThrones
+ Madden NFL 2003, 2004, 2005
+ NBA Live 2004
+ Ratchet and Clank
+ Need for Speed - Hot Pursuit 2
+ God of War

PSP
+ Killzone:Liberation
+ Ridge Racer
+ Need For Speed : Most Wanted 5-1-0
+ Wipeout Pure
+ Tomb Raider : Legend

XBox
+ Halo
+ Halo 2

XBox 360
+ Gears of War
+ Lost Planet

NES
+ Excite Bike
+ Road Fighter
+ Tiger Heli
+ Pro-Am
+ Super Mario Brothers
+ Metroid Fusion
+ Contra
+ Road Fighter
+ Street Figher

Sega GameGear
+ Sonic the Hedgehog

Really Old Ones (Handheld Nintendo)
+ Donkey Kong Jr.
+ Fire
+ Popeye

It was a really long time ago when my cousin, Manish, actually came back from a vacation (from Lucknow - in Northern India ) and he told us about this cool gaming system that he had played while he was on vacation. He played Super Mario Brothers when he was in Lucknow. I had no idea what he was talking about. A few days later, we all came to know that a store in Shillong (yeah - thats the little town that I am from in North-East India) called “Lila Brothers / Super Bazaar” was actually renting out the “Nintendo Entertainment System” for Rs. 100 per day ! We were shocked - Even though we didn’t know what it was we still knew it was something really nice !

That was a lot of money for those days ! Anyway, somehow we got our parents to give us that money and we rented the NES for a night - of course it wasn’t a school night ! That night has changed my life forever - I know that sounds cliche but that has been the turning point in the gaming work of mine as far as I can remember !

When I played the game I was in shock ! We had NEVER played a game like that. We loved it. Prior to that, the only games we played were the single screen or dual screen black and white Nintendo games such as “Fire”, “Donkey Kong”, “Popeye”, “Snoopy Tennis” and at the arcade (which had 2 games) “Galaxian” and “Pac-Man” . Those were nice but nevertheless it was just some static sprites and nothing like this ! After that - any holidays we got were spent either trying to convince our parents to let us rent the NES or playing it !!
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