Thor 2 - The Dark World - Some Thoughts

I watched Thor 2 - The Dark World and thought the movie was a good sequel and was even better than the first movie.

But there were some things that bothered me in the movie.

SPOILER ALERT!!! Do not read beyond this point if you haven't watched the movie and don't want to know the plot in the movie.

In Avengers, all the superheroes (Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Black Widow and Hawk Eye) and S.H.I.E.L.D came together because our Earth was in danger of destruction by Loki and his outsourced army. But in Thor 2, the entire universe is in danger and all the superheroes decided to take a leave. Even though Dr.Erik Selvig (the guy who was hypnotized by Loki and created the portal for him atop the Stark towers in Avengers) predicts that something bad is going to happen, S.H.I.E.L.D is nowhere to be seen. Not even to take Dr.Eric Selvig out on bail and doesn't even take a call from Jane Foster's friend (seriously there is a scene in the movie). Wonder why they were so busy...

Because of Jane Foster, there is a lot of damage happening for Thor personally and in his world. But Jane Foster doesn't seem to feel bad enough about it.

Even with these things bothering me and the movie being predictable for me, the movie itself is very good.

The Dark Elves were magical and proved to be good match for Thor and his hammer. But the main villain didn't seem to be powerful enough.

Tom Hiddleston as Loki is brilliant as always. The Hammer Mjolnir going from realm to realm to reach Thor's hands is a brilliant scene and I totally enjoyed it.

P.S. Do not miss the after credits scene.

Captain Phillips - A Movie Experience

I am going to accept it right away... Captain Phillips is an awesome movie. It is one of the finest movie experiences I have had.

I haven't blogged for a long time. And watching Captain Phillips is changing that status for me.

My cousins work in the shipping industry and travel a lot in ships. I have seen many of their photos and videos and the movie was an extension of it. My entire family is very worried when they travel in the Somali pirates areas.

The movie was everything I imagined of feelings the ship's crew would have when attacked by pirates. I even felt it watching Captain Phillips. I experienced the movie as if I am "Captain Phillips".

The movie gave me that feeling. Hollywood movies rarely give me this nowadays. I needed Captain Phillips to see what I was missing.

The movie was so good that I kept my legs tapping in anticipation of what is going to happen.

There was this scene where Tom Hanks cries and I was full of goosebumps and I closed my eyes to take in that feeling. This is one of the rare times that happened to me in a movie theater.

My mind was filled with the question - If a captain who could take the responsibility of handling a ship for months together feels what Captain Phillips feels at the end of a movie, what would we common people feel?

"Cast Away" was filled with Tom Hanks' brilliant acting. "Captain Phillips" is on par with Cast Away and maybe even an improvement.

All I can say is, watch the movie and experience it.

25 Android Phones Compared

My friends are finally adapting to Android mobile phones and are constantly asking me for suggestions.

As a result of the constant phone calls and emails, and numerous hours I spent on the internet searching for Android options by various phone manufacturers, here is a comparison of 25 Android mobile phones that cost below Rs.25000.

I am happy that I have already helped 5 people using this comparison spreadsheet.

I would be overjoyed if you also find it useful. Please drop a line if it is helpful or if there are any suggestions for improving the comparison.

25 Android Phones Compared

All the best for choosing your best android phone... :)

Credits: http://gsmareana.com for all the details.

Deiva Thirumagal: Remake - A false accusation

After watching the Tamil movie - "Deiva Thirumagal" I wrote in my social network pages as below...

"Deiva Thirumagal (Tamil: தெய்வத்திருமகள், English: Holy Daughter of God) can be described in one word - "BEAUTIFUL"..."

But then my friends were displeased with my comment and said that I have to see the English movie "I am Sam", as Deiva Thirumagal is a remake of I am Sam and that I am Sam is a better movie.

So as my friends suggested I saw "I am Sam" yesterday and here is my opinion...

Deiva Thirumagal is still "Beautiful" for me...

What I can say is that Deiva Thirumagan is not a complete copy of "I am Sam", because although the idea is the same, situations are different and the characters and their backgrounds are different. I think the Tamil movie does justice to the original...

A little comparison I made... [I am Sam vs Deiva Thirumagal]

The mother of the little girl runs away vs The mother of the girl dies giving birth to the baby.

The protagonist has 7 years old maturity vs 5 years old maturity

The little girl is embarrassed about her daddy vs She is not embarrassed (atleast there were no scenes depicting such a thing).

The lawyer is one of the best vs The lawyer is still trying to make it in her career and is running after clients.

The child care takes the child away vs The mother's family take the child away.

The girl is more mature at 7 years and she even makes a plan to get away with her father vs The girl is innocent and naive and she doesn't even know the reason why she is separated from her father.

In "I am Sam" I didnt like the camera that was moving all the time. Close ups, movements and all... vs The scenic locations of the first half were cool and calm.

However, I liked the second half in "I am Sam". I liked the climax more than the one in Tamil. It was positive in "I am Sam".

Even if the above points are not considered, the music in the Tamil movie is brilliant and is worth a watch in theaters. I am sure that some of the tunes are copied, but still the movie and music go well together.

To conclude, I would say that both are masterpieces... But Deiva Thirumagal had much more kindness, innocence, love and was "Beautiful".

Airtel 3G Tariff Plans

In a recent conversation with an Airtel customer care executive (a knowledgeable one in a long time), I found these tariff charges for Airtel 3G. Please note that this is for Bangalore, India - though there is no big change in tariff between cities.

To check for balance data usage and validity:  *123*11#

Recharge for: Rs.103

Free Data usage: 100MB

Validity: 30 days

Recharge for: Rs.200
Free Data usage: 250MB
Validity: 30 days

Recharge for: Rs.450
Free Data usage: 600MB
Validity: 30 days

Recharge for: Rs.750
Free Data usage: 2GB
Validity: 30 days

After free data usage: 30p/20KB

Note: There are no unlimited usage plans as of now.

Compare this with the current 2G (Edge/ GPRS) tariff of Rs.98 for 2GB, valid for 30 days. 3G is Expensive!!!

Check the link below for more information and more data plans.
http://www.airtel.in/Airtel-3G/tariffs.html

Please leave your comments below.

How to give back to the online community?

We always like to be in the receiving end of things. It is easier to take than to give.

But they both go hand in hand. Without someone giving, there will be no taking.

Whatever small thing that you know (no matter how insignificant to you) would be so precious and hard to find for someone else. For example something that you figure out on yourself. So just give out the information to this world and any doubts/ clarifications can be given afterwards when people who need it contact you for further information.

In this post, I tell about the ways that a person can give back to the online community from which he takes so much.

Before we go further, I would like to say that the effort counts more than what is done. What matters is giving, not what is given.

That said there are diverse interests among human beings. There is an expert inside us on atleast one thing - through interest, experience, knowledge, friends etc.

There are a lot of platforms now on the internet that make the process of giving back to the community the help received.

Wikipedia - Classic! This is the ideal example of Crowd Sourcing and giving back to the online community. You can create an account in Wikipedia and edit or create articles.

Yahoo! Answers - It has points system and has a large user community. Often you can see this in Search results. It has been there for a long time and you can contribute in a world of topics.

Aardvark - Only recently I discovered this website. It was started independently and then bought out by Google.

Quora - This is growing to be a great community of people answering questions.

Note: Difference between Aardvark and Quora is that Aardvark is more about short questions like "What movie should I see today?" and you get immediate answers (usually in a matter of minutes). Quora is more like Yahoo Answers and takes a standard approach to answering questions.

Answers.com - I am not familiar with this, but have got some good answers from here.

Twitter - In a short character count of 140, you can give so much of knowledge to the world. There is a google chrome extension - InboxQ that simplifies answering through twitter.

You can use these services to answer questions that are raised by people. Lets face it, there are somethings to which we cannot say "Google It!". I have been using most of these services to share with people what I know.

Last but the best... Blog. Blog about anything and everything that interests you, annoys you, makes you happy and anything (Of course you can do the same with Twitter also). For example, if an mp3 player makes you happy blog about it and the people who come across that post would know that this mp3 player is good.

So start contributing to the online community. And you know what, you can learn a lot through these questions.

What do you think? I have given what I know here. You can add to this list through the comments. Maybe this could be a good start or tell about how you contribute to the online community already.

Why I wanted to move my Blog from Blogger to Wordpress and Why I didn't

There is a lot of debate over which online blogging platform is best. This question can be much easily answered if it is slightly altered - "Which blogging platform is best for me?" - Wordpress vs Blogger, Blogger vs Posterous, etc.

Yes. I asked this question to myself and here I am writing a post about it.

To start with, I have not written anything on my blog for so long. So I needed to start afresh. Wordpress was a good refresher.

But then I thought that I could change to a good blogger theme and maintain my blog in blogger itself.

When I started blogging, I was all excited about a place for myself in the World Wide Web, and I put a lot of widgets in my blog which made it look cluttered.

But then changing the blogger theme automatically removed the widgets in the old theme.

Wordpress has the biggest collection of themes. Blogger themes are old for me.

But then new blogger themes like "picture window" are very good and I am impressed.

Wordpress has a mobile version for my blog, which is sleek. Blogger doesn't have that yet.

But then I learned that Blogger announced the mobile version on December 17th 2010 and it is now automatically changing to the mobile version when it is accessed from a mobile device. But it works only for webkit browsers like the default browser in Android.

Wordpress has a good open source android application for creating and editing posts. Blogger does not.

But then I found that Blogger also has an official android app, but it is not as good as wordpress, but there is another app called blogger-droid.

Finally Blogger is so yesteryear. Wordpress is the big name in Blogging world now.

But then I like classic things. The name blogger and blogspot retain the spirit of blogging when it was first introduced. I like my web address - http://alexnazy.blogspot.com

Blogger was the first platform that I started blogging and I want to retain it. When my friend first introduced me to blogger he said - "This is a place that you can tell whatever you want to the whole world - with your own web address". I couldn't believe him, because as far as I knew, you had to pay for a website to do that. I had to create an account and post something to believe it.

Blogger is owned by Google and so you can use your google login to create or edit posts in Blogger. Also you have the option of allowing people to create or edit posts - People with Google Logins - I mean everybody has one nowadays (Thanks to Gmail).

Also added to this you can link your own domain to blogger for free.

Considering all this, I think I will stick with blogger for now.

Update: As far as I know until now, I think that Google search (SEO) is good with Wordpress than its own blogger. Still I am holding on to blogger.

Update 2: I added this blog to "Add your URL to Google" page and after a day or two I am able to see my blog listed in the search results by Google.

What do you have to say? Please tell it in the comments.