That was my situation when I went about searching around the web for cheap prescription eye glasses. I ran across some online sellers, and many of them got my eye ( no pun intended! )

I was amazed to see the huge collection of glasses available for such low costs. The web really helps one in such cases. I always wanted to get one with an half-rim frame, and I got one in the price range I was looking for. A pair of backup spectacles was just a search away!

Vinnai Thandi Vaaruvaya - one of the most anticipated movies of the year is out. With the album proving to be a scorcher and Gautham and A.R.Rahman teaming up for the first time, the expectations for this movie have been riding high.

A realistic performance from Simbhu shows him as Karthik - a Mechanical engineer trying to enter the world of Cinema and become a director. Trisha, as Jessie, is a IT professional. Karthik’s family move into the lower portion of Jessies’ house and it is love on first sight for Karthik, and as later revealed, Jessie. Karthik is the upfront romantic guy and Jessie is the practical thinker. Karthik’s love being revealed right from the word go and Jessie’s love for him being revealed much later show the kind of characters they were. Karthik doing things on an impulse and Jessie thinking about her family, talking about practical difficulties etc. have been portrayed in a realistic way.

The first half has some great bone tickling moments seamlessly inserted into the storyline. Like when Simbu decides to go after Trisha to Kerala and says “Some people go to America for their love. Why not Kerala” - an obvious reference to Surya’s antics in Vaaranam Aayiram. When asked about which director he wants to become an assistant with, Karthik says Gautham menon. To this, his cinematographer friend replies “The one who puts english dialogues in Tamil movies and takes them for 2 years? No!” Such dialogues and scenes kept the audience yearning for more whilst the more serious second half started. With Karthik slowly winning over Jessie, relationship between Karthik and Jerry, Jessie’s brother, worsens and leads to a brawl. This splits the two families and puts the love in even further jeopardy. Jessie’s marriage gets fixed, and she says no at the last moment during the marriage in a church in Kerala, witnessed by a wet eyed Karthik, hidden amongst the guests. Karthik asks Jessis to “cross the skies” with him, but Jessie refuses saying that her family’s permission is needed.

Cut to second half and things start to get more serious. The love between the two develops in secret, with the condition from ever practical Jessie that her father’s permission is needed before marriage. Karthik’s film career starts and he becomes assistant director to K.S.Ravikumar. A shooting trip to Goa sees the love being stretched, with Jessie’s father vehemently against Karthik. Trisha, uncharacteristically, wishes to “cross the skies” and elope, but Simbhu, has to think of his career and refuses to take hasty decisions and ask her to wait till he returns from the 45 day trip. Jessie decides to break the relationship and prevent all the pain, and the love breaks, despite Simbhu cutting his trip short and meeting her.

Karthik doesnt see Jessie for a few years and becomes a director. The movie he is taking is titled “Jessie” and is about his love life. He meets Jessie in a shooting spot in the USA and what happens from here on, shown through the scenes of “Jessie” the movie and “Vinnai Thandi Varuvaya” the movie form the crux of the movie. The point where “Jessie” movie and Karthik’s life diverge has been shown in an excellent manner, with a huge turn of event towards the end. Pure magic from the master storyteller. The rest of the movie is about whether or not the two unite, and one has to watch the movie to feel what happens hereafter.

Simbhu is awesome in the movie - he lives as Karthik and has brought out some excellent acting. His subdued dance steps, the great fight scene(s?) all show matured acting. Trisha looks beautiful in simple dresses and has played the role of Jessie to perfection - a woman with romantic feelings for a man but torn between family and lover. The chemistry between the lead actors cannot be missed.

Ganesh, who comes in as a cinematographer, and friend of Simbhu in the movie, is a revelation and delivered much of the chuckle inducing dialogues in the movie.

Since music plays a vital part this movie, what with it being composed by ARR, I would like to delve on the songs a bit. The picturization of the songs is mind blowing. Great effort has been taken by Gautham and team to ensure that the songs go along with the flow of the movie and not seem like mere jumps from normal world to a fantasy world / foreign locales. Hosanna, as expected, received roaring welcome when it started playing. Omanna Penne and Kannukkul Kannai are refreshing.

I really like the way the songs have been experimented with. The scenes shown in the songs are like these fantasy scenes mapping the real world actual scenes with all the bells and whistles that love and romance brings in. And since the movie itself is about how the protagonist becomes a director, bringing the subtle touches like how the song sequence actually happened in a shooting spot by showing the set being dismantled shows whats really happening - that how two lovers meet at each other’s workplaces, but through such imagined scenes. Real genius on the part of Gautham. He has done justice to A.R.Rahman’s music and also the audience. One thing I really didnt like about these songs is the clichéd inclusion of break dance / hip hop - stuff that we have been seeing in many of Gautham’s songs like Manjal Veiyil and Adiye Kolludhe.

Cinematography from Manoj Paramahamsa’s is the third leg in this tripod of a movie having Gautham at the helm and A.R.Rahman composing the music. The synergy is apparent and the movie a visual, auditory and emotional treat.

A simple love story narrated beautifully in a manner that is possible only by Gautham Menon. A.R.Rahmans music adds the magic and the other world feel to the exceptionally real world movie - a combination that has come out very well. The second half dragged a bit, but that can be easily ignored.

Vinnai Thandi Varuvaya - a realistic love story, and a must watch…and feel!

The above is the Google.com trends.

And do you think anything else would have been in the minds of cricket crazy Indians? Below is the trends from Google.co.in. Just look at the hot searches on the right.

Wow! It is really a great moment indeed for Indian Cricket and International Cricket in general. One of the finest batsmen of the game, made the world talk about him. 200 runs in an ODI, 25 fours - spell-bounding.

Let’s bow to the master blaster.

As the demand for websites grows, so does the number of web site hosting providers. Some good, some not so good at all. There is definitely no dearth of web hosts. The real difficulty is in finding the right web host satisfying your requirements, and perhaps more importantly, your budget.

While some hosts are suitable for static HTML pages, they may not be so for dynamic pages (PHP, ASP, etc). Your website may only work with Windows hosting and not Linux Hosting. The cost of the web host may not be justified for your needs. Sometimes you just want to host a blog. Sometimes you want to host your own ECommerce solution with all the bells and whistles. A web host suitable for a situation may be a very bad choice in another.

Provided that choosing a web host can be a daunting task, what you need is a comprehensive categorized review of web hosts, from an independent reviewer. Web Hosting Geeks is one such reviewer. Take ECommerce hosting or business hosting for instance. Web Hosting Geeks provides you with every kind of possible info, like the carts supported by the hosts, how to install the applications, the recognitions bestowed on the host, expertise level required from your side and so on, so that you can make an informed decision. They also have a customer reviews section, making it all the more better.

Your search for a web host ends at Web Hosting Geeks. See you around, on the web!

Vaaranam Aayiram - Music Review

With Gautham moving on from Harris Jeyaraj to A.R.Rahman, every one started talking about what this new combination can deliver. Given that the Gautham-Harris combo was rocking, the expectations from the new combo was always high.

To me, Vaaranam Aayiram was the best album from Harris. While A.R.Rahman has produced lots of wonderful albums in his career, his work with Gautham must be compared with the work Harris did with him. After all, now that Gautham and Harris working together is ruled out, we must be assured whether the new pair can bring out the same magic. And what better way to do this than by comparing the two of the best songs in recent times - Hosanna and Nenjukkul Peidhidum.

Nenjukkul Peidhidum, sung by Hariharan, is a truly soulful song, bringing out the romantic mood that was also beautifully captured in the movie. The song has the best lyrics I have heard in recent times, kudos to Thamarai. The song had simple but delightful music, great lyrics and awesome picturization.

The first time I heard Hosanna, I was hooked to it. Now, after listening to it over a hundred times, I am still hooked to it. Though a romantic song, it does not give the same feel as Nenjukkul Peidhidum, but the song has so much variety and nuances to it that you can continue to listen to it for years. It would still seem as refreshing as it did the first time. While this is true for many of A.R.Rahman’s songs. this applies more so to Hossana. Lyrics, again from Thamarai, are great, but cannot match up with Nenjukkul Peidhidum. That song, really did have the best lyrics in recent times, no kidding!

As a romantic song, Nenjukkul Peidhidum wins. It managed to catch the attention of everyone ( I personally know of a Chinese guy who sings this song.) And Surya and Sameera, had the chemistry to pull it off and made the song “look” good as well.

Hosanna has more variety to it, what with the seamless transition from melody to rap and back to melody again and from the bits of visualization that have been made available, it promises to be a very enjoyable song.

Both songs are right there on my favourites list. But Nenjukkul Peidhidum beats Hosanna. As an album, Vinnai Thandi Varuvaya is miles ahead of Vaaranam Aayiram. The sheer variety, awesome combination of instruments never heard before together - all that symbolizes an ARR album, make Vinnai Thandi Varuvaya an excellent album. And one of ARR’s best works in Tamil in recent years. It takes Gautham to bring back ARR to Tamil. I am really glad that Gautham started working with ARR. Somehow other Tamil directors do not manage such output from ARR, including Shankar. And sadly, Gautham seemed to bring the best out of Harris as well.

PS: I know of reports that many of the songs from Vaaranam Aayiram were “inspired” (to use a lighter word) from some English song and after listening to these English songs I too felt the same. While this brought some embarrassing comments on the output of Tamil cinema and should have been avoided by the composer, I really enjoyed the songs and it doesnt bother me that the songs could be direct rip-offs of western music.

If you had tinkered with Buzz, you would have noticed that your Buzz feed is actually collected from a set of connected sites. You can have only Blogger, Flickr, Picasa, your Google Reader Shared Items, Google chat status, and Twitter accounts in your Buzz feed.

Even though not available by default, you can add you (WordPress) blog to your connected sites in Google Buzz.

Update : Rather than waiting for Google to crawl your site and get the connected sites, you can use the following SGAPI crawler to recrawl your site at your whime

Such an association between a public feed and a Buzz user, which relies on the Social Graph API to verify that the Buzz user is the owner of the feed, can be done through a bi-directional claim. This means that the blog or site you want to add to your connected sites must be first added to the My Links section of your Google profile.

Then, you must point back to the Google profile from your blog or site. Do this by adding a <link> element of type rel=”me” and type=”text/html” with a href value of http://www.google.com/profiles/{user}.

That is, adding the following code to your blog/ site :

<link rel=”me” type=”text/html” href=”http://www.google.com/profiles/your.username”/>

The above is an example of an XFN (XHTML Friendly Network) link . I came to know about XFN while trying to add my blog to Buzz and now, this blog is an XFN friendly blog.

And when Google crawls your blog again and finds this association, voila, you will find your blog as a connected site on Buzz.

Happy Buzzing!

As the demand for websites grows, so does the number of web site hosting providers. Some good, some not so good at all. There is definitely no dearth of web hosts. The real difficulty is in finding the right web host satisfying your requirements, and perhaps more importantly, your budget.

While some hosts are suitable for static HTML pages, they may not be so for dynamic pages (PHP, ASP, etc). Your website may only work with Windows hosting and not Linux Hosting. The cost of the web host may not be justified for your needs. Sometimes you just want to host a blog. Sometimes you want to host your own ECommerce solution with all the bells and whistles. A web host suitable for a situation may be a very bad choice in another.

It is always better to begin with a web hosting review site, providing a list of web hosting providers in various categories and budgets. Your search for the right host should begin, and hopefully end, at such review sites. Catch you on the web!

ThoughtWorks India is organizing the first ever Ruby Conf in India. Scheduled for the 20th and 21st of March 2010, it will take place in Bangalore, the IT capital of the country.

Ruby Conf India 2010 will feature talks from Chad Fowler (author of The Passionate Programmer), Ola Bini (contributor to the JRuby project) and others from the Ruby community.

Over the 2 days, RubyConf India 2010 promises to offer Ruby enthusiasts with an opportunity to meet the key people in the Ruby community and learn about the latest technology changes first-hand. It is definitely an exciting opportunity to brainstorm, network and share information on the latest trends and developments in Ruby.

Don’t miss it!

The effects of debt can be quite drastic. Having debts is like being put up in a cage. For example, there is every possibility that a person in debt can lose his home because he wasn’t able to pay back the loan. Just the thought that he could be losing his home limits the persons actions and leads to worser conditions. See, debt is a vicious sircle. If you cannot pay them off, since you cannot pay them off, it becomes even more difficult to pay them off…

Those who have various small loans should look at debt consolidation. With proper planning, it can be ensured that the actual interest payed is reduced. To reduce monthly repayments, one can look at debt management services, but it usually means you pay for a longer term. The kind of solution you need depends on the situation you are in. Weigh all aspects of your debt situation before making a decision. And there is no lack of companies providing such services.

Debt web is not as scary it seems!

Predictably, I approached Mass Effect 2 with very high expectations. And that made me uncomfortable as well, since many a times high expectations may ruin our perception of the game even if it had only minor glitches.

Thankfully, Mass Effect 2 has proved to be a worthy sequels and has even surpassed my expectations. There have been so many tweaks to the game and almost all the weaknesses of it predecessors are gone. Small additions like the “Mission Complete” screen are mighty welcome. Experience points are now given at end of missions and not midway as in Mass Effect, where you had to scramble to the squad menu and level up, partway through a mission.

The third-person shooting is vastly improved and gives a better sense of speedy action. The balance between action and role playing has been well struck. Shield and health regenerate and ammo can also be picked up. These features are commonly found in many games, but were badly missed in the first game.

A very good game, followed up with a better sequel. That does raise my expectations way way high for Mass Effect 3!