Stranger than fiction

I saw this movie today. I don't know if it's a good movie or a bad movie. It's not about that. It certainly made me write about it.

Warning: If you have not watched this movie, don't read further. Go watch the movie and read this post later. You have been warned.

The movie creates an unusual plot, quite unlike anything that has been tried before (at least in my limited knowledge). The pinnacle of the story is the point where the professor (Dustin Hoffman) reads the ending and tells Harold that the end is worth dieing for. The speech that the professor gives to Harold, opens numerous possibilities in which the story can end. Not to mention, this is also the most dramatic point in the whole film. It creates lots of expectations from the finale.

Now I thought that the director/creator of the film lost his grip of the story after this pinnacle. When actually the fatal climactic accident happens in the movie, it doesn't live up to the expectations the professor created about it. It may be poetic, sad and heartbreaking as described, but it certainly is not worth dieing for. This is where the film looses the chance of being extra-ordinary.
..... But wait I haven't finished yet.

Now let's assume that the ending of the story was something really fascinating and worth dieing. (That's a detail after all - or is it). So in the movie, the author of the story decides to sacrifice this fascinating ending of the story for a mundane one, for saving the life of a good soul - a moral decision with fitting justification.

What baffles me is the recursive nature of this movie. Let's say what I said initially is true - that the movie goes downslope after creating lot of anticipation. So the author inside the movie settled for a mundane ending for moral reasons. Is that the same reason, the director of the movie also decided to make a simple easy ending? Was this recursion intended by the creator of the movie? Because if it is, then that's really amazing - the effect is created by coming out of the movie (I hope you understand what I mean by this sentence, I can't explain it clearer).

... Anyway if I could work on this art form, I would try to think of more intriguing ending for this movie than the traditional ending it has. As I said, the plot reaches a hilltop from where it can take numerous paths to conclusion. Sadly it takes the regular bitten road down the hill.

Gas prices... seems like big scam

I told my friends last weekend that I am gonna fill my tank on the day before election, to avoid the gas price hike that will follow once elections get over. I was little serious though at the back of my mind. But I did fill my tanks on Monday.

I was astonished to watch the gas price change on election day however. In the morning I saw the rate of $2.07 per gallon. It did not wait even for the last voter to cast his vote before rising to $2.29 in the evening. I was dumbfounded. Moreover I don't see this as a news this morning. I searched google news for gas prices, but no one seems to register this fact. There are news that industry rate will go by 4 cents or something in some parts. What I observed was a quarter per gallon. By filling in 10 gallons of Monday I saved $2.5. Are the local gas station owners hiking the prices on their own? Who knows!?

Anyway I am glad I verified my theory (and saved couple bucks too).

Another nice quote

I don't know much poetry... but I can see the beauty of this quote:

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

Paul Dirac
English physicist in US (1902 - 1984)

Hilarious nerd comment

Read this in a Register article today. Most hilarious nerd comment I heard lately:[context - the reporter was at LinuxWorld conference where he saw a FreeBSD booth]

"When I approached the FreeBSD booth, my first question was, "So, what's FreeBSD doing here at LinuxWorld?" Without losing a beat, the FreeBSD guy responded, "Actually, in an alternate universe, I'm attending BSDWorld and there's one Linux booth. However, my transporter malfunctioned 'cause it was running Linux, and so here I am." Best nerd one-liner I've heard at the show. "

Read the full story at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/19/linuxworld_virtualisation_techs/

Programming & Painting

Surely Computer programming is an art like painting or sculpturing [1]; Painting is two dimensional, Sculpturing is three dimensional, we have yet to find out how many dimensions are involved in creating a beatiful piece of software.