Variety is the spice of life

This year has been pretty good on the reading space with few really good books that I had a chance to read, courtesy Brags and other nalla ullams who share their loot. Keigo Higashino tops my list of thriller genre authors and have almost read all his translated books. Was super impressed with “Devotion of suspect X” and “Malice” and Peter Swanson conquers all with his masterly depiction of suspense genre. “Her every fear” still resonates with its effect even while reading the review and would await his next realase in 2018 with bated breath. The year was quite good on the movie front as well with quite lot of interesting movies in tamil. 2017 started off with Jallikattu protests, which tuned all of TN in same frequency, with the emotional outpour flooding the sands of Marina. I had firsthand witness to some really senti scenes on MRTS stations that would put any mass scene on movies to shame, even without the BGM. Politically, it was a watershed year for TN with so much of chaos and...

Maayavan – Sci-Fi movies in tamil is a rarity and that too one with good script/screenplay is even more of a rare case. A sci-fi movie in tamil with a good script/screenplay and solid performances is probably the rarest of rare cases. The last such movie was “Indru netru naalai” which was impressive right from the title. “Maayavan” is from the stables of the same house with the story department helmed by the producer himself. C.V Kumar and Thirukumaran entertainment have become synonymous with good movies with excellent storyline. He doesn’t disappoint in his maiden venture as a director as well. The storyline is pretty original (with no Korean/foreign movie yet to be identified from where it was lifted) with a police official investigating a series of murders following similar pattern. Right from the opening scene the story picks up tempo and it continues till the end with no lag anywhere. There are lot of activities happening within the first fifteen minutes of the movie that are nea...

This would probably the last book in the Keigo Higashino I may get to read this year. Another intriguing tale of murder investigation where the suspense around “Who” and more importantly the “how” gets prolonged almost till the last chapter, unlike his other novels where it’s mostly open book case of who is the killer with only the investigation procedure taking everyone on a thrill rider. Here again, the police investigation and the detailing around it makes it a compelling read. There is a death pretty much at the very beginning of the novel with more than sufficient hint as to who is going to kill the victim and even on the “how” part. But as the investigation progresses, there are so many view points and details that crop up which makes one wonder where the initial apprehensions as simple as they seemed. Whatever could be the point of view of the reader, there is a character that voices out and thinks on the same line and thereby the author makes a big win. There are immediate co...

Aruvi – Ever since release, there has been so many reviews and feedbacks and appreciations and accolades around this movie that, it was really surprising to see such an unanimously positive comment. And surprisingly, not a single one of the review carried any link about the story and the comments were also an exact replica of each other. Felt as if, someone typed a review and circulated it to all newspapers and social media to “touch upon” and circulate. Every single one of them had praised on the finer aspect of the casting, be it the heroine, the soothing bgm or the wonderful supporting cast. The words were a repeat across all media. Usually, such kind of reviews are reserved for Karan johar, SRK movies, which are often “sponsored” content. But for this movie, everyone went out of their way to promote word of mouth publicity. When I saw the movie, I felt, all those adulation were more out of guilt rather than anything else. Guilt that as a society we have failed to take care of the...

Post dedicated to Thala Ramesh 😎 The only superhero I knew for a really longtime during my childhood was Superman. The bulging biceps, well-oiled mop of black hair, billowing red cape and shiny blue body suit were irresistibly matched with x-ray vision, heat rays and above all his ability to fly, made the comic hero a real superhero. When the cartoon series used to play on and off on DD, the starting of the series would have a mini-intro about Superman, like how the man of steel, came from Krypton as a child, his ability to outrun a train or be faster than a bullet. The most famous tagline/catch phrase of all being, “it’s a bird.. it’s a plane..its SUPERMAN”. Unfortunately I never had a chance to watch the toon series for long for it was discontinued. When I chanced upon the drama series, “Supergirl” I was in two minds before I started watching the series. If at all there could be an antithesis of Superman, the ultimate macho superhero, that would be “Supergirl”, with the name itsel...

This is the fourth book on my Keigo Higashino series. Easily the longest of the four and setting wise quite different from any of the other three. I felt, “Devotion of Suspect X”, probably had the best translator and wish the same person had done the other three as well. The strain of translation is visible at places in this book though not as worse as “Name of the game is a kidnapping”, which was worse right from its title or “Malice”, which had its fair share of mistakes. The other aspect that was notably different in this book was the sheer number of characters. There is an army of them and trying to follow who does what is a tedious task in itself. In almost all the book, there is a leading lady character who is a hostess. Now that I think of, that’s the only profession they belong to on all the four books!! And a teacher character is a repeat across most of them. Probably the author has his own favorite of professions I guess. Story wise, it’s one of the most detailed and circui...

The concept of public and private in the context of Block chains is less to do with sharing but more to do with who can authenticate a transaction or not. In a public Block chain – like bitcoin –every node can authenticate a transaction. But in the case of permissioned ledger or private Block chain, you select a certain number of entities who have preferential rights to authenticate that transaction. So when we come to access, that’s where we come to the privacy bit. So what does this do in terms of security and in terms of confidentiality? On the security front – the database is replicated across different nodes and each can view the transaction – as a result, any change which is made to the database all the nodes in a system have to verify that and authenticate that change. Even in a private Block chain, for example in a supply chain, confidentiality is an issue. Not everything in a supply chain transaction is meant to be viewed by all the actors and you need to restrict access. ...

The private equity market, while attractive to investors and businesses, has seen little technological investment or innovation in recent years. However, as calls for greater transparency, efficiency and security are made - especially in a world where cyber-attacks are a common occurrence - private equity funds and services need to address the lack. To tackle the problem, IBM and Northern Trust have turned towards the Block chain. To take the hassle out of regulatory and legal compliance, the technology has also been designed to support current rules and was created by working with government officials and regulators during the process. Ownership stakes can be transferred and managed through the ledger, and the companies say the service offers "one version of the truth" to users on the platform. Current legal and administrative processes that support private equity are time consuming and expensive and a lack of transparency and efficient market practices almost always leads...

In a system like Block chains, where all the parties involved are know all the information for a transaction, is it even possible to have privacy?  If so, what kind of data should be left out of the system? But first, it is important to distinguish a distributed database and a decentralized ledger system. A distributed database could very well be where there is a central authority which holds the data and multiple copies of that data is there for others to view it. A classic example of that could be a central government database – say with the taxman, the RBI and others in a governance framework. But that really is not Block chain. In a situation where different actors do not trust each other, what you do normally is that you would set up an intermediary that you all trust. The good example being currency - One wouldn't know if the currency they have has any value, therefore, the RBI authenticates or certifies that it has value.’ That is the centralized intermediary concept. In ...

How to setup a Block Chain? The term Block Chain is often bandied with various other terms like “distributed ledger”, “smart contracts”, “mining”, “crypto currencies”. What do they mean? What will happen to incorrect data, accidentally stored? How to correct the immutable chain? If there is a way to fix the data, wouldn’t it be in contradiction to the concept of immutability? Let’s try to get some answers around these queries. When cars were first invented, they were called as horseless carriages. Any invention, in its initial release state, is often compared with the nearest service that it would be rivalling or replacing. Likewise, Block chain, if at all can be renamed, could well be called as “Ledger on the net”. With the ever rising rates of BitCoin, one particular area where Block chain can be implemented is already well renowned. But other than crypto currencies, there are lot many areas where the concept of Block chain is creating revolutionary ripples, having far reachin...

Ever since I read this post https://www.marketsimplified.com/disrupting-fintech-blockchain/ by mister Goku, have been fascinated by the concept of cypto-currencies and block chain and have long wanted to do a post on them. Have tried my hand a bit with whatever little info that I could understand from the materials online. Feel free to pitch-in to correct anything contrary to what is stated below. How critical it is in current world to create “trust”, considering we’ve companies that solely run on them – Airbnb, Etsy, Uber, Facebook. These are the current generation’s super giants, who go by the concept of not owning any inventory, but selling the concept of a better user interface. Reputation and trust which their clients have on them is very critical for their existence and survival. How important it is to verify contents when reputations are at stake with fake news taking on MSM? One wrong or false information on the net, with conspiratorial tone, can cause irreparable damage to t...

There is a clichéd thought process in IT world, where “senior” developers often tell their “juniors” that how coding used to be much tougher during “their times” as compared to spoon feeding GUI’s at present. Especially the coders from pre-google era who often complain that developers these days have to learn only one skill – “how to search for codes in google” whereas they had to actually type in the code. When I was watching “Dheeran – Adhigaram ondru” I was acutely reminded of the above fact. Especially during the scenes where Karthik, painstakingly gathers file after file on the dacoits and when the forensics expert, checks each and every finger print manually. To me, if anyone can understand the enormity of the content of these scenes, they would be able to appreciate the movie better. Police investigation, as against what is shown on most of the movies and drama series, is often tedious, boring, monotonous, painstakingly irritating job, wherein you’ve to labor through volumes an...

Just finished reading the third book on the trot of Keigo Higashino. Probably the least thrilling of the three one can say upfront. What kept me hooked till the end was, again the simplicity of the thought process and the sheer logical approach towards making the perfect crime. And above all, the audacity with which the story had been lifted and made into a tamil movie – Sarabham. When I saw the movie, without knowing about the book, I was stunned by the twists and turns in the screenplay and the movie was quite a watch. The least the director could’ve done was a nod to the book. (If the mention was really made but I only missed out, it’s my bad) While movie is a page to page lift off from the story with minor twists, it did really was well “translated” onto the screen. Same can’t be said about the book though. Unlike the first two novels, which made the English version as good as any written in English, the effort on translating the content is literally visible in this book. At many...

As junior takes baby steps towards schooling, all those dormant fears about that “place” raises its ugly head again. Reading books like “Malice” which talks about bullying in school didn’t quite discourage that thought process and the more I read news, more scary it becomes as to the kind of world my kid would be entering into. The more I observe school going kids, the more I get confused that where is the innocence that is usually associated with childhood!! Words that were once taboo for us as kids, are style statements for present generations and nothing seems to be sacred. As news about pollution causing institutions to shutdown, rains causing havoc and summer getting more and more intense, the next decade could very well be witnessing scenes from sci-fi movies I guess. We may soon start living in underground bunkers. With ever increasing trend of greedy and imbecile people lining up for usurping powerful posts in politics, anarchy is just around the corner. The biggest challenge...

My list of favorite authors went up by one ever since I read “Devotion of suspect X” by Keigo Higashino. If at all there was an investigative thriller with such an exquisitely simple premise, I would be really surprised if it would be a shade on the book mentioned. Such was the mastery of the author that, had it been a poker game, he played with all his cards turned upfront and yet won the bet!! “Malice” his other novel may not be in the same category of “Devotion”, yet it stands out on its own merits. And yes, in this book also, the murder happens within twenty pages and the killer is identified in the next score of pages. Yet the book which is over 200 pages long, almost never lags in its pace and seldom loses its hold on the reader, keeping them hooked till the end. One similarity between both the books being, the relatively lesser mention about local culture, cuisine or setup, but for the names of the characters. It not just makes the theme universal, but also easier to follow...

When I started with the book, I had so many prejudices that any discussion on the reason why would’ve been sub-judice. I’ve a tough time following storylines involving any country other than American or British and even in them the number of characters can’t be more than 5 for I would be confused with each of them. European novels with Baltic/Nordic setup’s and Japanese ones come with even tougher nomenclature and almost every setup would feel alien and difficult to read at the basic level. Even if the scene involves a restaurant, the kind of food the characters eat, right from that, it would be off-putting, for the lines wouldn’t be as simple as “took a bite of a burger or pizza” but something like “quiche” or “Sashimi”’ or “Nigiri”. I would get distracted to imagine how those dishes would look like or whether they are juices? It might sound absurdly trivial, but if I am unable to visualize I pretty much lose interest in the story line. I never had high hopes for this book but had bee...

For previous parts click here Part 6 “So what is it that you are going to gift Monica this time?” Ross asks Chandler “Its something I’ve custom made for her..see” Chandler shows a card “Seriously..a greeting card? That’s the best you can come up with?” An exasperated Chandler points him to look at the card and  open it to see. “Wow..a MENU card. How original Chandler. She is a chef so you get her a Menu card for birthday? Even Joey could think better than this” comments Rachel “Whoa..whoa…whats with me and my thinking?” enters Joey “Chandler has got a MENU card as gift for Monica’s birthday” quips Phoebe “Dude..what’s wrong with you? What are the dishes you’ve mentioned in it? Is Meatball sub there in it?” Chandler plucks the card from Ross and hastily goes to his room. Monica enters the apartment, looking all dazed and tired. “Whoa..what were you cooking at the restaurant today? Crystal meth? You look stoned” says Phoebe “I wish..by the way..why you guys are always ...

Some years back I had posted about finding purpose in the below post. Or rather how I didn’t knew anything about having a purposeful life. http://supershanki.blogspot.in/2012/08/vedikkai-manitharai-pol-veezhveno.html Vedikkai manitharai pol veezhveno?? supershanki.blogspot.in A blog about movie,music,book reviews and on every topic under the sun Do I know the answer now? May not be a resounding yes yet. But slowly there seems to be a pattern appearing in horizon. After certain stages in life, things get into a routine. There is only an extent to which you can rebel against and keep deliberating on what’s, how’s and why’s and thinking about why not’s. End of the day, the routine that is called society catches up with you and wears you down to conform to its norms. May be that is why it’s called “settling down”. Like a dead weight tied to your limbs so that you don’t keep fluttering your wings and drags you into what is exactly called as “ocean” of life. It’s not drown...

Usually Dan Brown’s book fall into the below set of process – when you are reading it you will feel the thrill of a roller coaster ride with adrenaline rush, as it reaches climax you would feel the excitement of a kid opening birthday present, after the initial few minutes of completing the book the mind would be reeling with all those information trying to process and after few hours you would be left wondering was the climax worth all those events that transpired in the course of the book. Also his novels will double up as travelogue for the respective city/country of the premise and would definitely send in flocks of tourists, curious to visit those places so beautifully crafted into his stories. In fact, locations have almost played the role of a key character in his books. Origin is no less different. And the guts of the guy to portray the king of Spain as gay!!! If you need any reference in stirring a hornets nest, Dan Brown should be on your speed dial. Like all his novels, th...