As of right now, I have finished redesigning my blog. It took a while and numerous trial and error sessions to finally get everything to look good. The default theme for my blog now is Neo Sapien although I have retained my old one [Quentin] and another theme I thought was interesting: Durable. Of course, I have greatly modified the look but I made no change to the original PHP code. All I did was add some things to a few files.

If you haven’t noticed, there are plenty of ads. I do need to pay for hosting every year, you know. And I think I’ve done poorly over the past year or so with ad-revenue although it seems to have imp;roved since I put all those ads in there.

The logo was made in two parts. First, I used Apophysis to generate a fractal with the triangular shape in the center. Then, I ran it through Photoshop and fiddled around with color and stuff and then cropped the file. Then, I just added the text, a blue shadow, and the white border. The background in the header took some effort. I used a 1×135 file [the theme had a 1x288 file on repeat but I cut down the size] zoomed 1600% and first colored it black. Then I added some blue. After that, I had that thin blue line through the center. Finally, I just added a fancy blue shape towards the top and bottom for that zig-zag line effect.

I also changed the background to black and moved the top menu to under the header image. I modified the text colors and fonts and put that Archives drop-down option to save space. As a last change, I added a page called “Videos” which will feature a couple of videos that I found interesting - courtesy YouTube of course. I’ll change them every now and then. I also removed the Archives page since it was redundant. I am also testing out (at leisure) a new gallery software which I may or may not implement.

So that’s it folks - the new site is complete and I’m back to posting blog entries. Expect some interesting posts in the next couple of weeks - I just pre-ordered a new Nintendo DS Lite (Black/Onyx) and have been listening to a bunch of new music which I will write about.

Samuel L. Jackson. A BIG Plane. Hundreds of Snakes. Put the three together. Snakes on a Plane. 1 hour and 45 minutes of pure, unadulterated, uncompromising, _____ [insert more adjectives here] action and fun await those who dare to go see SoaP. The title is the most obvious movie title ever but the opening couple of minutes are completely misleading. The makers spend a decent amount of time on setting the whole thing up and that is good. None of the characters seems forced although they end up putting in every imaginable personality on there - angry Brit, newly-weds, guy afraid of flying, Hilton-esque bitch with puppy in tow, germophobe rapper with his boys, two kids flying alone - you name it, you got it. And the movie is unapologetic - women, kids, old people, young people, naked people, pilot, air hostess - everyone gets bit and most die. The snakes are shown going after every human part imaginable, male and female. It was a good thing that the makers decided to go all out and get an R rating rather than the PG-13 they were initially aiming for. Without the R, we would’ve missed two great scenes:

1. The scene where the first people get bit

2. The scene where Sam “the man” Jackson delivers THAT line

All right so here’s the story in brief: A dude witnesses the murder of a prosecutor by a gangster identified as Eddie Kim. Eddie sees him get away on his bike and sends his henchmen to kill the aforementioned dude. Jackson saves the dude and takes him into FBI protective custody in an attempt to get him to testify against Eddie Kim. In oder to testify, he must fly to Los Angeles from Honolulu. Left with no other choice, Eddie hatches a plot to take down an entire 747. How? No bombs or crash landings or any of that horse crap. He puts goddamn SNAKES ON A PLANE!!! A few hundred of them and uses a pheromone which makes the snakes go crazy or as Sam the man says, snakes on crack. A few minutes after take-off, the snakes start slithering out as a hatch door was left open. After the first few deaths, there’s a bit of a lull as the snakes start getting into the cabin. A pilot dies, plane instrumentation goes screwy with those snakes going all over it. And then with a jolt, oxygen masks are released and more snakes fall into the cabin. What ensues is best described as mayhem caused when you put hundreds of SNAKES ON A PLANE!!! From here on it’s a regular procession of deaths and gruesome snake bites as Sam the man desperately tries to keep everything under control. Beyond that, the movie behaves like any other action adventure. Sam the man saves the day and all is hunky-dory.

If you go in looking for anything other than a fun time, you will come back disappointed. Leave your brains at the door and just sit back and watch the mayhem. It’s as cheesy as it gets and the movie intentionally forces all those action movie cliches down your throat - you’ll see what I’m talking about. While not as grossing out as something like Saw II, this movie still provides a few pukey moments. Special effects are adequate and unless you are really PICKY about your SNAKES, they get the job done. After all, the movie had an initial budget of just $30 million [they went back and reshot some scenes since they were looking for the R rating anyway] which it should collect at the box-office this weekend itself. I’d say even if it makes around $70-80 million total, it will be a box-office success.

Ultimately, it’s about snakes being unleashed 30, 000 feet above ground and how Jackson kicks some snake-ass (do snakes have asses?) to save the day. If you have a stick up your ass like a lot of movie critics do, then please avoid the movie - that stick will begin to get very painful after almost two hours of sitting down. The movie does exactly what it promised and does it well. I didn’t look at my watch at all once the movie began - not many movies do that for me.

I uploaded a bunch of new themes to try out.  While I’m not done yet, I already like 2-3 and might end up staying with them.  Currently, the default theme is “Rounded” and I’ve added a theme switcher to all themes.  You can cycle through all the available themes and let me know which ones are good.  If a particular theme has no switcher and you get stuck with it, let me know.  I might have missed one or two

I finally decided to go ahead and reinstall Windows. My hard drive was full of a lot of junk and unnecessary programs. And for some reason, XP was crashing every now and then for absolutely no good reason. I mean, I know Windows is meant to do that as a reminder that you are using a crappy OS, but beyond a certain point it gets annoying. It took 3 BSODs in 2 days for me to make up my mind. I’ve seen worse with my WiFi nightmares but then those were my own doing and had a reason behind them. Besides, WMP11 Beta and Gaim made it a habit of eating up large chunks of CPU time. System cleansing was in order.

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I’m soooooo excited right now. We managed to land Floor tickets to see Tool when they play in New York on October 7, 2006. Me and friend were both trying at the same time. He got through quicker and ended up with Section C1, Row 17. I only got Section 110, Row L.

In other news, I went to the Indian Embassy yesterday to get some paperwork done. Typical Indian setup - opened late, was somewhat chaotic, too many people crammed in a small area, etc. Good thing is I handed in everything in the morning and then returned in the evening to pick it up. On the flip side, I had to wake up at 6am and catch a 7:44am train to the city. Although to while away time, we went to the ESPN Zone - awesome gaming arcade and to Toys-R-Us for a while. Fun.