Things to do and places to be

Today is my off day but unfortunately, it doesn’t look as if I will have much time to rest or relax :p There’s quite a few things that I need to get done and we also have to go out today. First, there is the server that I’m setting up for a friend. That’s kind of set up with Apache, PHP and mySQL but I want to do some changes to the SMTP and POP daemons and I still haven’t got around to doing that.

Then there are some site changes that I’m contemplating 🙂 Yesterday I realized that my writing page needed more stuff in there. I only had a few lines on the books I’m working on at the moment but nothing about all the stuff that I’ve published so far. So I started work on modifying the page and adding a lot more information but that’s going rather slowly 🙂 I’ve managed to set up separate pages for my fiction and non-fiction, to put up a few samples of fiction I’ve published so far and that was about it. I still need to complete the non-fiction page but that’s a pretty large task by itself since I have had around five or six regular columns at one time or another – not to mention all the other miscellaneous articles that I’d done. So the non-fiction page is going to need some work 🙂

Then there is the fact that my niece and nephew are leaving today. We’ll have to take them over the airport, see them off and so on. Since it’s an hours trip to the airport and an hour back, that’s probably going to take care of the whole afternoon. And that’s my whole day gone for today and I start work tomorrow again. Ah, to have a five day week instead of a six day one! I long for the days when I used to work only five days a week :p

Integrity of imagination

As I mentioned yesterday, we have been watching a lot of television lately. I found myself wondering if this was perhaps because the quality of entertainment available when it comes to movies. Is it just me or does there seem to be a dearth of imagination (or rather a lack of originality) with most Hollywood (and Bollywood) offerings these days?

If you take Hollywood, you mostly seem to get either remakes, adaptations or re-imaginings. There used to be a time when a move based on a comic book character was rare – except of course for "Superman" and "Batman" and the occasional (really bad) "Captain America" :p But then came the Marvel invasion when Hollywood suddenly discovered that there was a whole bunch of already tried ideas and a rabid fanbase behind them. You got "Spider-Man", "X-Men", "Blade", "Hulk", "The Punisher", "The Fantastic Four" and a whole heap of sequels and other movies based on marvel characters. Then there are all the book based adaptations like "Harry Potter", "Lord of the Rings", "Five Children and It" and "Narnia". Not to mention re-makes of old television series such as "The Avengers" or "Bewitched".

On the Bollywood side, things have become even more drastic. Sure, Bollywood has never been known for having very complicate plots :p It used to be boy meets girl, boy and girl falls in love, parents oppose the union, they go through tough times and finally it all works out. Of course, after about 40 years of different variations on the above theme, people began to get a teensy, weensy bit tired of it. They then began "borrowing" from Hollywood movies but were a bit circumspect about it. They wouldn’t "borrow" from well-known Hollywood movies or the latest ones. Instead they’d borrow from older movies or ones which were not so well-known. I’ve seen Bollywood remakes of "Coming to America", "Roman Holiday" and "Big", to name a few. The stories weren’t always quite the same as the Hollywood version and they always managed to add a love story, songs and a few fights in there.

However, there’s a new breed of Bollywood movie today – probably because the Indian audiences got tired of the rehashed Hollywood stuff. The new movies aren’t really "borrowing", they steal lock, stock and barrel and from the latest and most well-known stuff too :p They are dropping the songs and dances and going for a much more Hollywood like feel. At first, I kind of liked the new and slick production values but when you start getting the same old Hollywood movies in a Bollywood format, you begin to get tired of it.

In the past few months, I’ve come across not one but two variations on "The Usual Suspects" – "Dus" and "Chocolate". Then there is "Kaante" which rips off a little bit from "The Usual Suspects" as well as a lot more from "Reservoir Dogs" and "Heat". At the moment we are watching "Ek Ajnabee" which is almost a scene for scene copy of "Man on Fire" though they do say that the ending is different – we haven’t finished it and so we have no idea 🙂 We’ve also got "Main Aisa Hi Hoon" which looks very much like a remake of "I Am Sam" …

So my question is – are the major movie industries of the world just becoming lazy? Or are they just learning from each other that they can make more money by "borrowing"/adapting existing properties that they know have been successful elsewhere or in another medium? Or are we actually witnessing a decline in originality and imagination? Either way, this seems to be a rather sad state of affairs …

Hooked on the tube

Laurie and I have been watching a lot of TV recently – on DVD :p In addition to "Lost" which I mentioned before, we’re also watching "Mind Your Language" (the first two seasons I believe – I thought there were only two seasons but have just learnt that there was a third), "The X-Files" (we’ve got seasons 1-5 at the moment) and "The 4400". In fact, we just finished watching the second season of "The 4400" just yesterday and I still have the show running through my mind 🙂 In a sense, the show has elements of other shows which preceded it. You get glimpses of "Taken" (of course that might just be because Joel Gretsch was in both shows :p) and "The X-Files" and sometimes the storylines seem way too familiar.

And yet, "The 4400" has an air of optimism, of hope running through it that "The X-Files" lacked. If you watch "The X-Files" again from the beginning (which we are in the process of doing at the moment :p) you will note that the second and third seasons were different from the first season. The show became much more darker and almost moved into the horror territory from second season onwards. There’s a lot of blood and gore around and a lot of people end up killing themselves. "The 4400" on the other hand, is much more cheerful and hopeful. When "The X-Files" influence makes you think that a tragic event is about to take place, the show somehow finds a happier and lighter resolution. In most respects, I like "The 4400" much better. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I’ll stop watching the rest of "The X-Files" (and even buy the rest of the seasons on DVD) … but I’m also waiting for the unfolding of "The 4400" in the coming seasons 🙂

So much software …

Who would have thunk there was so much software out there? I’ve been setting up a server for my friend and it’s been one stream of software joy :p First, I had to decide on Apache and figured I might as well go with Apache 2.2 since that was the latest. Then of course, there was the decision as to PHP – I decided to go with 5.1.2 since I wanted to be able to use some of the latest PHP features. Then, there are all the libraries that you need to get PHP installed. So it was a fun bout of software installing.

Once all that was done, I learn that one of the sites to be put on that server needs Apache 1.3 and that 2.2 would not do :p So, it was back to downloading and installing Apache 1.3.34. Now, it feels to me as if PHP 5.x is a bit more slower than the 4.x variety when I actually try using it and so, I find myself wondering if I should perhaps switch to PHP 4.x instead … Not sure if I really want to do that yet though. Sometimes there can just be too much software to deal with :p

In other news, over the last couple of days we’ve been catching a few movies when we had the time. We watched "Aeon Flux" and I’m still not sure what to say about the movie :p They had some really stupid (from a logical perspective) stuff in the movie – like an assassin who goes out on a mission at night wearing all white :p I guess from a stylistic perspective it made sense since she wore white and all the guys she went against wore black but do you honestly think any assassin or thief worth their salt would wear white at night? 🙂 The story itself was OK but I was mostly left questioning the weird stuff in the movie – such as a pool which is supposed to be their monitoring system and another assassin who has hands on her feet (yes, I kid you not) … But given that there appear to be slim pickings for science fiction movies these days, I guess I can’t really complain :p

Things to do and places to be …

With people in the house (rather than just the two of us) the days are blending into one rapid blur which is becoming rather alarming in a way. We left on Friday morning (since Friday is my day off) for a bout of shopping and did not return till late in the day on Friday. I think we bought over 60 DVD’s in one day alone :p The rest of the day was spent in simply cataloguing all the DVD’s we’d bought.

Yesterday went by so fast that I didn’t even have time to turn around. I didn’t make my usual blog entry because I just didn’t have the time and then on top of it all, I’ve been falling behind on my writing as well. It’s really hard to concentrate with the TV blaring on one side, a child asking questions and so many things going on around you. I really envy Louis L’Amour who said that he could sit in the busiest plaza in the world, have hist typewriter on his knee and be able to hammer out a story :p Actually, I’ve done something similar and so, I guess the problem isn’t crowds but having people around that know you and can interrupt you 🙂

Today’s been another whirlwind day and I have only been up for a couple of hours! A friend of mine is getting a new dedicated server for his site and he’s been kind enough to invite me (at least the virtual me :p) to take residence on his server. I’m still not certain when/if I will move but I’ve been working on setting up his server, ensuring things are shipshape and generally making sure that it will be secure and functional. That’s been taking up a bit of time since yesterday. I still am in the process of doing some of the stuff there and have some questions about a few things since this is a slightly different environment than I’m used to. So lots of stuff to do but not much in the way of writing :p

Spank the panther

We watched "The Pink Panther" yesterday (yes, the new one) and if you are thinking of watching the movie, let me save you the trouble – don’t :p It is one of the most idiotic, mind-numbing, utterly stupid and totally mindless comedies that I’ve seen in a while. I don’t think even my five year old nephew laughed at more than a few scenes. Can you say that I didn’t like the movie? Yeah, I guess you can say that …

I haven’t seen the original Peter Sellers movie and now I really feel the need to watch the original to see if it was just as bad as the Steve Martin version was or if they managed to somehow take the original, drain all the humour out of it and then serve it up as a new movie. In fact, "The Emperor’s New Groove", which I’m watching now for the fifth or sixth time because my nephew Ike loves it, seems to have more humour in it even on the sixth viewing than "The Pink Panther" did on the first.

The problem seems to be that they were just trying too hard. Steve Martin’s stupid French accent, instead of being amusing, was just annoying. Most of the jokes depended just too much on slapstick and the plot was just a bit too stupid for it to be funny. Come on, Chief Inspector Dreyfus is just as stupid as Inspector Jacques Clouseau (if not stupider) and he is supposed to have become chief of police while Clouseau stayed in obscurity? (OK, fine, maybe that one is just true to life and not stupid :p) As far as I’m concerned, most of the movie did nothing for me. The end where Clouseau has to rise against the odds and prove himself was kind of nice but then again that bit was just a predictable attempt at drumming up sympathy.

Even the cameo by Clive Owen as Agent 006 was only slightly amusing – it felt just tired and lame rather than fresh or amusing. Ah well, maybe I was just in a bad mood or maybe this was just one of those really bad movies :p

And off we go …

I have actually started work on another short story 🙂 I am not getting all that much done what with work, too many people in the house, a really bad heat wave going around and so on but I did manage to write almost one page yesterday :p

Yeah, I know. That’s not much. But the good thing is that the story does seem as if it will start to move once I get out of this lethargy :p The thing is, in the old days, when I actually wanted to write short stories, I would come up with a surprise ending or some grand idea and then then try to write a story around it. What used to happen was that I’d fizzle out since I wouldn’t have anything to support the grand idea – no action, no character interaction, no nothing.

What I’ve discovered this time around is that I write better when I come up with a believable world or a society first. Then you plop a few characters in this world and give them a history and after that, all you need to do is sit back and let the characters do what they do and the story will take care of itself 🙂 Not sure if this method will work for everybody but for me, it works fine. I don’t really write the story – the characters do. All I do is sit back and enjoy the story as it develops and put it down on paper. Weird? Yeah, I guess it is :p

The last short story I wrote came out rather well because I came up with a science fiction world which had fantasy elements in it. The fantasy elements were not real (or rather unreal :p) but were explained in scientific terms. Coupled with the humorous bits that I like to throw in, the story kind of came together and I thought it was pretty good, even if it is only me thinking that :p I want to try something similar with this new story. I again have a (different) world where science fiction and fantasy elements come together and I have some (sort of) logical reasons for the world being the way it is. Of course, since I have only begun the story, I have no idea what will happen next or how it will go but guess the only way to find out is to keep writing :p

Time to write again …

I’ve gone through all three of my currently active software projects and done releases for all of them, I’ve also got a software project on back burner which I won’t be able to totally test till Office 2007 comes out :p (No, it’s not Office 2007 specific but it’s a Word add-in and I might as well make sure that it works with the latest release of Office since it’s just around the corner – at least the public beta … or so they say :p)

Be that as may be, I think I’ve done enough coding for a while. Now it’s time to get back to the writing. The problem, as always, is lethargy. I seem to need to build momentum to get going on any project. I procrastinated on the next release of Blog for the longest time because I just couldn’t build up the enthusiasm to get started on coding again. Once I got going, I couldn’t stop :p Now that I’m in full-blown coding mode, I find myself unable to put aside coding and go back to writing. But I must. Otherwise, the writing will just atrophy till I get back into it months from now and I don’t want that to happen.

The issue is always getting started. Once things get going – it’s all downhill from that point on. I know what I want to write next. I have a story (or at least a world) in my head. This one is rather a vibrant world as well – I keep getting images about the world, the society that I want to write about. But I keep putting it off, thinking that I should wait for word on the last short story that I submitted or that I should try to get some more submissions going or something. If I would actually do something writing related – even as simple as submitting stuff to agents or publishers – I think it would be fine. It’s this sitting around and waiting that I just can’t abide …