Some classic movies

I watched some classic movies recently ('cos I have so much time on my hands), like Rashomon, 8½ and Sunset Blvd.

Rashomon, one of Akira Kurosawa's most famous films, was as expected a great movie. I found the concept of the movie very interesting, and later found out (through Wikipedia, the source of all trivia and knowledge) that there is actually a psychological term called the Rashomon Effect.

8½, by Federico Fellini, on the other hand was the most boring and confusing movie I've seen. I should have listened to the comment on IMDB - "Somebody who is looking for a movie as a two hour piece of entertainment will not enjoy this." I feel that it is like the Ulysses (guess I really have it against that book), which is regarded as a classic more for technical reasons rather than entertainment value.

But for me of the three, the most interesting and the most entertaining movie was the Sunset Blvd. I was really surprised to see that a film made in 1950 could be so stylish and still be interesting for someone like me.

A note on software for mobile phones

Nowadays with j2me and highly powerful mobile handsets there are a lot of free software available. Here is just a couple of applications I found useful:

E-Book reader: This free program is very easy to use and supports a wide variety of handsets. it is available here.

Webster's Dictionary: This is the complete version of the Websters Dictionary. It requires about 11Mb of space and is available here.

(I just realised that anything simple and/or useful has already been made, and moreover it is available for free!)

Free offline dictionary for mobile phones

I have a Sony Ericsson k750i phone, but the sad thing is that unlike Nokia phones I can't install freely available software on it (*.sis). I have been searching for a dictionary I can use on my phone for some time now, but since I can only use java programs I couldn't find one anywhere.

So I finally got a small dictionary, the Barron's GRE wordlist (available here), and wrote my own dictionary program. It is not very elegantly written since I don't know how to use j2me very well, but it works and serves my purpose.

If anyone is interested in trying out my free offline dictionary, it is available here: Wordy.jar(279kb). Just copy the .jar file to your mobile phone (should be java enabled).

I guess I have wasted enough time already. Got to get back to my actual work.

A Pathetic Life... and Death

I was reading The Understudy by David Nicholls at I was surprised by how pathetic the main character was. I mean, whoever writes about an actor whose recent acting includes stuff like 'dead body 1' in a TV show! Also it is as if Fate is out to get our hero (?) all the time. Overall it is a mildly funny but frustrating book (frustrating because you can't reach in and hit the hero when he makes dumb decisions).

I am currently reading How the Dead Live by Will Self, and it is one of the most difficult books I've tried to read (other than Ulysses, which I gave up half way - the patience required for reading that is beyond me). I have just read the prologue and it is really confusing, also the imagery is not very pretty.