The winner stands alone

So after travelling for a couple of weeks I was back home and I was getting bored. So I did something which, under ideal circumstances, I would never do. I borrowed a Paulo Cohelo novel from my dad to pass the time by.

The winner stands alone by Paulo Cohelo - to be honest this one wasn't half as bad as his other novels which I have read. Now don't take this wrongly ( and fan boys please don't come breathing down on my neck ). But I never seem to get around to understanding his stories. A friend once told me that this is because his stories have spiritual and moral values which I would never understand. That may be true and I do prefer stories which have storytelling values rather than any other kind of values!!

This story is about a love-burnt man (aren't we all ;) ) and his quest to get his ex-wife back from the grasp of her current husband by showing her just how much he loves her and the lengths he's ready to go for her. ( he fails ) Wrapped around a world of fame, glitz,glamour, fashion and of course the movie stars and the superclass and set amidst the Cannes film festival.

The time duration of the story is small, less than 24 hours. As a result the story doesn't really progress much, but the author has done a great job at narrating what goes on in the character's minds rather than in the real world. With lots of back history about each character ( even those which are going to be killed off minutes later ) and very insightful views about the back-stage happenings about their line of work ( which is where the author's research really shows ), the reader connects with each and every character. But the flow of the story leaves something to be desired. The ending ,especially, seems to be haphazardly put together. Some people may blame the duration of the story for that, but I believe it to be the culprit as there have been novels which have been quite as insightful, with equally livid characters and quite as short durations but much better storylines than this. Take for example "Airport" or "Evening News", both by Arthur Hailey.

But it would be wrong on my part not to acknowledge the positive parts of the book. The book is very insightful. It tells us a lot about the world of glamour as to what exactly goes on in the lives of those who are a cog in that industry as opposed to what the world sees. The characters are very lividly portrayed, as a result a reader can connect with even the most minor of the characters. And the emotional/spiritual thoughts going on in every character's minds have been very nicely conveyed by the author.
But sadly, I'm not the kind of reader who is easily bought over by such things. I strongly believe that the engine of every novel should be the story itself, which is exactly where this novel fails.

So for those who are into such kind of stories would be overwhelmed by the piece of literature which is "the winner stands alone". But my personal advice would be to stay away from it.

Things the future generaion will never understand

So I was viewing this blog post  ( must visit ) , and I realised that, albeit funny, this is matter also has a very serious note to it.

And that is because it is true. It happens to be especially true in case of technologies. I'm willing to bet that a very few of us may remember things like betamax , 8 tack tapes , Commodore 64 , Laser Disc , flash bulbs with flash powder or even the Morse Code and Telegraph services and many more important technological landmarks which were around just about a couple of decades back. With such technological breakthroughs being left completely obsolete and completely forgotten, how long will it be when modern technology may be no longer remembered.

Imagine what a time it would be! One might get to see optical mice not at the latest computer stores but in museums. Media's like the CD which are already dying fast will be long forgotten in just a few years. Newer technologies like DVD's and Blu-Ray discs are bound to have even shorter life spans. But from an engineering point of view, is it really a good thing forgetting these basics of technology. A classic example of this is the Laser Disc. Ever since the Laser Disc was invented, there hasn't been mush development in fundamentally different modes of storing data. The CDs, DVDs and the now recent Blu-Ray discs are basically just improvement on the LaserDisc. The laser disc has basically just been scaled down and more information has been crammed into it by packing it closer together.

As i say this I am remembered of a scene in the Jurassic Park movie. You might remember Jeff Goldblum's character - Iam Malcolm - saying ,in effect, that when we don't understand technology, when we don't respect the basic technology, technology won't respect us. So I wonder, will someday, this all come back  to bite us right in the *ss ...

Reg,
PeeKay

Ian Malcolm : The problem with scientific power you've used is it

didn't require any discipline to attain it.  You read
 what others had done and you took the next step.  You
 didn't earn the knowledge yourselves, so you don't take
 the responsibility for it.  You stood on the shoulders
 of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you
 could, and before you knew what you had, you patented
 it, packaged it, slapped in on a plastic lunch box, and
 now you want to sell it.

Jurassic Park ( 1993 ), Original story by Michael Crichton ( 1990 ) 

The images have been taken form Los Cuatro Ojos ( http://loscuatroojos.com / )

Good reads

Over the course of time I have read plenty of novels, books, publication and short stories by various authors. My favourite author so far is Michael Crichton , god bless his soul, I was really looking forward to his next book. But later on that, for that's not what this post is about. I would like to share a few of my favourite short stories with the readers. Both of these are very amazing stories which always give me goosebumps near their ends. I have to warn you though, me being a Sci-Fi fan, they are all total science fiction stories, and may sound nerdy at times so if that's not really your cup of tea, you might just want to skip these stories.

The first one is without any doubt - The Last Question (1956) By Isaac Asimov.
This story is about a super-computer of sorts which has been asked a very import question which it is unable to answer. It ponders over this question for the rest of eternity, surpassing trillions of zillions of years overseeing the progress the human beings make during this time. But finally at the end of eternity and at the end of time it finally figures out the answer and in one burst of brilliance its executes the answer in an act that would make any reader completely change their perspective about time, life and eternity.
 You can read the entire story here.

The next in line is - Rescue Party by Arthur C. Clarke
This story is timed around the time when our sun , the sol, is about to go supernova. Someone arrives at Earth to know more about the inhabitants of this doomed third planet and possibly rescue some of them. There is nobody on the planet, but they discover the trace of a not-so-ancient civilization. Their mission a failure, they  leave the solar system and following a heavenly direction pointed by a transmitting antenna array they finally make a discovery which surpasses their wildest imaginations.
 You can read the entire story here.

So, do read those stories and let me know what you think of them. I'm post about more interesting works of literatures in a later post.

Reg,
PeeKay

Digital Will

So you have developed a nice little presence on the internet, have a nice bolg, a well balance paypal account, your podcasting solution, your social networking profile, your online shared photos , files and documents, may be you have pending cretits at online stores like the itunes store. Ever wondered what would happen to them in the sad event of your death or incapacitation ?
 You would think that the accounts will pass over to your family, but sadly that's not the case. If you read the entire Terms and conditions shown while registering for the website, you will realise that most of time the information there in is not actually your property - it belongs to the service and you are just being leased access to it. This is especially true in case of free services. And in most cases the access is not transferrable. So, your relatives are going to have a hard time getting access to that information, or even trying to close down public access to it - like for example : your facebook profile.
 That's where LegacyLocker comes in. You enter your account information , referred to as Digital Assets and select benificiaries for each Asset separately - for example your PayPal information may go to your spouse or your online documents to your business partners, and so on and the details are stored with them using very high level of security . On the event of passing away your death is confirmed by contacting two 'verifiers' - who are people whom you can trust to convey the true information, and by your physical death certificate and then your assets are securely transferred to your benificiaries.
There's a one time fee or an annual fee. The service is also available for free but you are restricted to 3 assets and 1 beneficiary.

Legacy Locker - http://www.legacylocker.com/