MRM: The Prestige

This was one of my best movies of 2006. I was privileged to find time to watch it again this weekend. You know that is something I hardly do, watch a movie twice. There are really few movies in recent times (I'm talking about the past 4 years) that I have watched twice. I am a movie buff and I watch movies to gain perspective/relax so if I feel I have derived the maximum profit from a movie I'm not going to watch it again until I can barely remember what its about. Nowadays the originality in the plot of a movie woo's me more than the cinema effects, or the complexity of the story. I have seen so much that for me to call it a good movie I feel it has to be original in a way or make me think.

The Prestige gave me that effect. The bottom line is that there was nothing really original, because it was basically a story about revenge, but the way it was executed is what made me like the movie. It made me wonder how far I would go to pay someone back for the way they hurt me and what I feel would be a justified pay back. What also caught my attention was the magic in the movie, a little mystery is always a selling point for anything. In order not to give the details away and keep it short and simple. If you havn't seen this movie you have to see it.

My ratings: 85%
Yahoo: B
Rotten Tomatoes: 74%

What is Genius?

There has been a quote I have been thinking about for some time now. The one from Thomas Edisson where he said "Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration". Its not one of those quotes that just hits you as immediate truth or as i like to say "Shows you the light". Its one that makes you think, it gives a different perspective on a topic in our society that many of us think is inborn, rare and special, but this quote nudges you to think otherwise. It says we can all attain this rare staus by just working hard.

Yes I know you have met people with extra ordinary skills, people that could multiply 325 by 672 in their head in a minute or even seconds and then you ask, how are these people not born like this, how can you say they are not talented or given a gift from God. But from observation I have seen those such people are those who have worked the hardest. They are the people while you party they are writing computer code, while you sleep they are reading. Definitely at the end of the day it is going to show. No I am not saying that people are not gifted differently in intelligence, what I am saying is that the skill or the ability we call Genius (Which is defined as: someone who has exceptional intellectual ability and originality ) is attained through hard work and is not just randomly assigned. In order to confirm my thoughts on this i did a little digging and I came up with this article (From New Scientist).

Basically What it says is that if we look at all the people we call geniuses in different fields, from Mozart to Einstein, what brought them fame was not the inborn intelligence but the work they put in. That hard work broke ground and led them to come up with things that no one thought about. According to the article IQ does not assure greatness. There was an elementary school in New York where the requirement to get in was an IQ score above 130 (Which only 1 percent of the world is on that level of intelligence) but when these students were watched although they had satisfactory/successful lives, none of them came out with a Pulitzer prize or a Nobel prize, very few of them are even recognizable by name today.

If you look today at who is making the news and actively changing our world, Bill Gates, Micheal Dell, Steve Jobs and co, these are all college dropouts. That leaves me asking, what about those kids that get 4.0 in MIT and Harvard? where are they? what companies do they lead? I personally believe the brain is a muscle, the more you task it and test it, the more powerful t would be, and the closer to genius you will be (If that is your desire).

New Design

I decided today to work a little on my design. From time to time I plan to customize this template so that it would really reflect who I am and what I plan to discuss. So far only the header and the overall template has changed. I also changed the name of the blog from "The codex" to Panorama (to reflect the broadness of my topics). I think these are the first steps towards a cleaner and better blog. I have also added a feed widget on the right so that all of you who are interested can sign up for my feed. My aim is to update this blog daily. I hope it works out as planned.

Eating The Forbidden Fruit...

Finishing was interesting, I thought it was funny that the full title of this post was so long that I got errors while trying to post it. The Full title I intended was - Eating The forbidden Fruit: Five reasons Apple can take over the world. I guess that didn't work out. I also realized after I named the post "Eating the forbidden fruit" That the apple logo has a bite taken out of it.

Anyway unless you have been living under a rock, you must have heard the media waves made by Apple. This is a company that was saved by the revolution of the Ipod, taking the world away from portable cassette/cd players to pure digital (mp3) sound. Now Apple has revamped their computers (Their core product) changed their design pimped them out with the new core 2 Duo processors from Intel and now like the Ipod, the once obscure computer platform is becoming a craze for the young and old alike. Apple is not shying away from all the attention, in fact they are embracing it, and coming out with more cocky "Get a mac ads".

So I have sat down and analyzed this company, where do they plan to go? where is this hype going to take them? are they going to switch places with Microsoft? after a lot of thinking and research I came up with 5 reasons why apple has a chance of taking over the market.

1. The Cool Effect
The Ipod revolution created an effect where your not cool if you don't have an Ipod. That effect is beginning to migrate into apple computers. In high school and Universities all over America having a mac is personality statement, now macs are going mainstream having a mac means your either cool or your different in a good way. Everybody wants to be different in a good way well in other words special. So what do they do? go get a mac.

2. The Cult Effect
There has been a lot of talk about the Apple marketing strategy, Ilker Yoldas in her blog described the mac fan club as having cult like characteristics. I agree, there are the Mac Evangelist who spend time trying to convince people into using or buying a mac. This is very popular with mac fanatics and this has been used to convert many present mac users such as myself from windows. This tactic is very deep and creates brand loyalty which means most mac users will be mac users for life, which maintains the company at a certain level at all times.

3. They have the chicks
As a result of the cool effect apple has manage to get girls on board their fan club. This is a feat that the game industry has been trying to do for years. Companies like Nintendo has worked hard to break this barrier for a long time, because they know once you have girls interested in your electronic device you have won over the world (like in the case of the Ipod). There are even blogs like the macenstein that have girls (some of celebrity status) that pose every month (mac chick of the month) and say how much the mac has changed their life and the wonders it is doing for them. The apple store (practically anywhere) is the only electronic store I have ever been to where you see girls ranging from the age of 14 - 22 playing with the electronics and at the store and at the same time matching the number of males at the store at any given time.

4. Microsoft Messed up
Microsoft just recently released the a new operating system after 5 years, Windows Vista. There has been a lot of criticism on the software giant about how they have copied apple in the ways the operating system works. So the question if Microsoft are still the leaders in producing the best operating system arises. To me that is not where they messed up. Where they messed up was by them making the operating system so hardware intensive that anyone one who want to upgrade from Windows xp has to practically buy a new computer. What this does is that it lets consumers think. It lets them contemplate if they want to stay with Microsoft or use this opportunity to move to the coolest thing now (an apple machine). This lack of seamless transit to the new Microsoft operating system has been of benefit to apple.

5. They are good
This is last but not the least, in fact it might be the most important. Apple has actually done a good job in marketing, designing and Engineering their products. Without this all the above points will be futile because as soon as consumers use these products they will be able to see right through the deceit. If you have used their products for a while you will know that real thought has been put into every step of the design and it feels so intuitive, in my opinion they have giving us tomorrows operating system today as Steve Jobs will put it. Now with Leopard coming out in a few weeks, the iPhone coming out in June and rumors about all their hardware being redesigned they are increasing the barrier farther again from their competitors, lets just keep our eyes out and see what they have in store for us.

Watch out for part two or this post: 5 reasons why Apple should not take over the world

Movie Review Monday (MRM): 300

I am always asked to recommend movies when ever my friends are debating seeing a movie and for some reason I always go blank. I find that really unusually cause I'm the kind of guy that should get paid to watch movies. I think I have a broad range of movies I watch, actually I am really unbiased when it comes to movies and music, for me it is all about the mood I am at, at that particular time. So in a way I could be a good movie partner but many people dont like me cause I always give side commentary while the movie is going on. Yes I am that guy, that annoying guy that feels he can predict the next five scenes and feels that he can actually tell you the end of the movie from like 40 minutes into the movie. O.k I know that is bad but I think for a significant percentage im right though but anyway I am steering away from the point.

I recently decided to review one movie I have seen recently every monday (hence forming MRM: Movie Review Mondays) so all of you out there can know what I have seen and from my review decide if it is worth your while or not. Although I do not believe in movie ratings by movie critics I will put them side by side with my own rating for you to see what other people are saying about that movie.

So I recently saw the movie "300". To give you are very brief description of the movie without saying too much, it was about 300 legendary soldiers from sparta (a city in ancient Greece) and how they fought against the Persians (Who wanted to enslave them). It is a typical ancient Greek war movie, if you liked the movie Troy, you would probably love this. The cinematic effects was highly impressive. This movie was highly digitized so you can probably find it in a 3-D movie theater near you (recommended). This is one of those movies better seen in the theater than at home on you couch, its an action packed adrenaline pumping movie that I would recommend.

Movie Trailer here.

My rating: 80% (A must see)
Rotten Tomatoes: 61%(Fresh)
Yahoo movies: B+


Note: Rotten Tomatoes rates harshly and rates better towards Oscar worthy movies rather than what might just be a plain chill/fun movie