I intend to write a review after most movies I watch, but have ended up doing so for just 3 movies over the last one year. I would like to attribute the dismal intention:action ratio to two technologies - Facebook and Twitter. Usually I update a 140 character review no sooner than I finish watching a movie and that generates the ennui to do more justice to the review later. One of the resolutions I took this morning while in the 'I-must-do-something-fruitful' moods, is to review most movies going forward.
To make up for the lost ones I am jotting down the 140 character reviews with ratings of the movies I saw over the last year or so.
Pulp Fiction
Kaminey
Love Aaj Kal
Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince
Angels & Demons
The Usual Suspects
The Prestige
Black Friday
Gulaal
Frost/Nixon
I couldn't search my tweets beyond this (around 6 months from now), and that by itself was a pretty tough task. In case you want to search your previous tweets you can try the following steps.
1) Go to www.tweetake.com and enter you Twitter username and password.
2) Download the .csv which will give you all your tweets till around 6 months back.
3) Search for your tweets in the .csv file and check the date.
4) Go to www.twitter.com/username/?page= and put a number after the =, this is the page number of your tweets. E.g www.twitter.com/username/?page=6 will give you the 6th page (starting from the latest) of your tweets. After this you just need to narrow down the tweet by changing the page number depending upon the date of the tweets you see.
I know this is not close to the most elegant way of searching tweets, but that's the best option as of now to my knowledge. If you know of a more convenient method please do let me know.
UPDATE: Just found a much better way of archiving ALL your tweets and searching through them as well! Please follow the instructions here. You just need to use my favourite Google product - Google Reader.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Pista House's Haleem - Divine Gastronomy
This post has a very high probability of wandering into the realms of exaggeration, and if some of you have gathered such from the title I don't blame you. However, hand on foodie heart, I shall try and be as objective as is practically possible writing this piece after having a plateful of it, three to be precise. The 'it' is obviously the haleem from Pista House, Hyderabad.
To get everyone on board I think we should know the basic facts right.
Ramadan (Arabic: رمضان, pronounced: /rɑmɑd̪ˤɑːn/) (also written Ramazan, Ramzan, Ramadhan, Ramdan, Ramadaan) is the ninth month of the Islamic Calendar. It is the Islamic month of fasting, in which participating Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking, and indulging in anything that is in excess or ill-natured; from dawn until sunset [Source: Wikipedia]
It is during this time that many Muslims break their day long fast by the dish, the protagonist of this post, Haleem.
Haleem "is a type of stew made from pounded wheat and mutton (or beef) made into a thick paste. It is the mainstay during the Holy month of Ramadan. It is a tradition to break the daily fast (roza) at Iftar with a plateful of haleem." [Source: Wikipedia] Detailed recipe here.
Okay, now that the basics have been covered, time for the details.
Think of what Sachin Tendulkar is to cricket, Ustad Bismillah Khan to the flute or Madagascar to vanilla. Now, that is what Pista House is to Haleem.
We are in the month of Ramadan and having spent a year in Hyderabad I had this craving for Haleem earlier this week. After a few tweets and status updates, God in the guise of Pratyush Prasanna told me via a Facebook comment that Pista House in fact delivers Haleem to quite a few cities of India (research tells me they are - Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Kochi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad Coimbatore & Pune) and what's more they also accept orders and payments over the internet using credit/debit cards! Mahatma Gandhi's great grandson confirmed it. The minimum order has to be 1 kilo, which comes at a very reasonable 320 INR and is usually shipped within 1-2 days, the package will arrive between 8-11 PM if you are outside of Hyderabad.
I did what I was ordained to.
A bad thunderstorm in Hyderabad and some logistical difficulties tried to stand between my destiny and me, but only for a day. Around 10:30 PM tonight our doorbell rang and Veni came rushing to tell me it was The Haleem!
I leave you with a thought and some pictures. There are very few food items that make you, urge you to live that bit longer just so that you can taste it one more time, Haleem ranks right at the top of the chart. The other of course being Hyderabadi Dum Biriyani. On second thoughts, the culinary God's seem to have been a bit too blatantly biased towards the city of Nizams! God bless Hyderabad, God bless Haleem!
To get everyone on board I think we should know the basic facts right.
Ramadan (Arabic: رمضان, pronounced: /rɑmɑd̪ˤɑːn/) (also written Ramazan, Ramzan, Ramadhan, Ramdan, Ramadaan) is the ninth month of the Islamic Calendar. It is the Islamic month of fasting, in which participating Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking, and indulging in anything that is in excess or ill-natured; from dawn until sunset [Source: Wikipedia]
It is during this time that many Muslims break their day long fast by the dish, the protagonist of this post, Haleem.
Haleem "is a type of stew made from pounded wheat and mutton (or beef) made into a thick paste. It is the mainstay during the Holy month of Ramadan. It is a tradition to break the daily fast (roza) at Iftar with a plateful of haleem." [Source: Wikipedia] Detailed recipe here.
Okay, now that the basics have been covered, time for the details.
Think of what Sachin Tendulkar is to cricket, Ustad Bismillah Khan to the flute or Madagascar to vanilla. Now, that is what Pista House is to Haleem.
We are in the month of Ramadan and having spent a year in Hyderabad I had this craving for Haleem earlier this week. After a few tweets and status updates, God in the guise of Pratyush Prasanna told me via a Facebook comment that Pista House in fact delivers Haleem to quite a few cities of India (research tells me they are - Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Kochi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad Coimbatore & Pune) and what's more they also accept orders and payments over the internet using credit/debit cards! Mahatma Gandhi's great grandson confirmed it. The minimum order has to be 1 kilo, which comes at a very reasonable 320 INR and is usually shipped within 1-2 days, the package will arrive between 8-11 PM if you are outside of Hyderabad.
I did what I was ordained to.
A bad thunderstorm in Hyderabad and some logistical difficulties tried to stand between my destiny and me, but only for a day. Around 10:30 PM tonight our doorbell rang and Veni came rushing to tell me it was The Haleem!
I leave you with a thought and some pictures. There are very few food items that make you, urge you to live that bit longer just so that you can taste it one more time, Haleem ranks right at the top of the chart. The other of course being Hyderabadi Dum Biriyani. On second thoughts, the culinary God's seem to have been a bit too blatantly biased towards the city of Nizams! God bless Hyderabad, God bless Haleem!
The package has arrived on our dining table
The famous Pista House emblem
And we are one step away from the first look.
Nothing has looked more deceptive than a kilo of lumpy haleem.
And there it is, in all it's glory after being heated for 3 minutes. The aroma of meat, ghee and a hundred spices filled our dining room and I guess and hope will not leave it in a hurry!
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Who Am I?
Nowadays quizzing is all about hi-tech rounds and roundabout connections. So, I have decided to go retro and bring back the quintessential '90s round of 'Who Am I?' where the question has clues about the answer (usually a person) and the sooner you get the answer the more points you get. Simple? Okay, one more rule, you cannot click on the clues. Once you do the game is over. You start from 0 points and every clue you miss you get a negative 10 points.
Let's get going!
Clue 2: I sometimes dabble in high end technology like Video Conferencing and also some inventions of a certain Mr. Kalashnikov.
Clue 6: I wish someone ties me Rakhis.
Clue 10: This is my story
What's your score at the end of the quiz? His was 166.
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