Well, it barely started, and already the experiment is over. I cancelled my MySpace account and shut down the page. It just wasn’t working for me. The lack of good features and tools combined with my lack of time to cultivate it, resulting in a page that really had no meaning for me.

I read a couple of places about the high attrition rate that social networking sites like MySpace are facing. Well, count me as one of the folks leaving that neighbourhood behind. And when I look at it, the only reason I can come up with is that it wasn’t proving to be of any value to me.

The inordinate amount of effort involved in skinning the site, and the inability for this blog to be automatically fed into my MySpace blog (a huge issue in my opinion) meant that the page never felt my own. It was more like a resume than an online avatar. And the effort it took to make “friends” is worse than in the real world, primarily because most people are simply interested in getting their friend count high. And all that spam was horrendous.

My LinkedIn membership is far more useful to me. It is also true that I am the wrong demographic for a site like MySpace, which is about teens interested in connecting with bands and stuff. Oh well, let’s see how my FlickR experience goes.

I finally, finally got to see “300″ tonight, on the large IMAX screens no less. And it was totally worth it. The movie is stunning to watch. The adaptation of Frank Miller’s style is just amazing to behold. And the battle scenes are awesome.

And that’s where it ends. Like “Sin City” before it, the material is definitely adult in nature. But unlike that great movie, the story and script for this one felt a little childish and dumb. The storyline was pretty basic, and was peppered with some really cheesy lines. And I could have done without the whole storyline involving the queen. I was expecting something smart, a la “Gladiator”, but this was nowhere near that. And the ending is unsatisfying, though I understand why it is the way it is. After holding out that long, it feels just wrong that they would get destroyed in 5 minutes just over a strategic choice. And where the hell was this goat path anyway that the Spartans couldn’t retreat to another point in the pass and re-establish their defenses? Xerces’ massive float managed to fit through it just fine.

All that being said, the movie is totally worth the price of admission. It is unlike anything you have ever seen, and makes for great entertainment.

Saw Mira Nair’s adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s book “The Namesake” last night. The book is one of my favorites, striking an emotional chord that only an Indian living in America can truly understand. And the movie tries to be faithful to it’s source (though I have no idea why they moved the Ganguli’s from Boston to New York).

The main performances are really good, and I have to say that this is the best job of casting that I can remember. Irfan and Tabu are flawless as the Ganguli parents. In fact, Tabu fits perfectly the image of Ashima that I had in my mind when reading the book. And Mira Nair did a good job of trying to cover all the main parts of the book.

Which may have been her undoing. The movie is great, emotional through and through, with some heart-wrenching scenes. But in trying to cover the book so thoroughly in a 2.5 hr movie, she isn’t able to do more than scratch the surface. The depth of the emotions and perspectives that make the book so good just could not be captured on screen. You barely feel the anguish and isolation that Ashima goes through upon her initial arrival here. You just get a hint of Gogol’s identity crisis without truly feeling it yourself. And Moushami’s character is not explored enough to make you feel the conflict the book arouses in you.

I guess that is the unavoidable problem of adapting such rich material for the screen. If you have read the book, the movie will never live up to it. If you have not read the book though, I am sure that you will love the movie. Either way, you have to check it out, if only for the flawless performances.

Well, the inevitable has happened. Billions of Indians watched as their highly touted team of superstars made an ignominous exit from the World Cup after Bangladesh beat Bermuda. Such a wretched end for the best batting lineup in the world.

This thing is gonna have consequences. And it is a shame that one of the greatest cricketers of all time will not get to lift the Cup.

Just saw Mark Walhberg try his best Matt Damon act, and establish for himself a super action hero franchise. And I have to say that for the most part, “Shooter” was a pretty good action flick. It was beautifully shot, and had some great action sequences. But towards the middle, it veered away from “Bourne Identity” territory, and ended up in the “Commando” neighbourhood. Yeah, he may be a great sharpshooter, but watching Swagger (what kind of a name is that?) dispatch a 30 man elite team single-handedly just feels silly. And the ending of the movie totally ruined it. It was made for catcalls and whoops, not a satisfying, feel it in your gut climax. This franchise (yeah, I heard there are gonna be more movies because it is based on a book franchise) lacks the intelligence that the Bourne franchise has shown. And while I like Wahlberg, he just does not have the depth that Matt Damon has.

I headed back home today after my week long trip to California. Thankfully getting home was not nearly as eventful as getting there. But my thoughts weren’t on my trip. It was firmly on the match going on in Trinidad between India and Sri Lanka. A must-win match for the Indians to keep their hopes in the World Cup alive.

Alas, the Indians proved true what I said a few days ago. This team shows no fire in their belly, no hunger, no desire. They fell rather meekly to the Lankans, who now stand as the lone representative for the sub-continent. Once again our much vaunted line-up failed to deliver when they really needed to show their class.

Now all hopes rest on the slim (non-existent?) chance that Bermuda will beat Bangladesh to let India into the Super-8’s on run-rate. But after the way they played, maybe they shouldn’t get through. Maybe that is the jolt that is needed to walk up the staid cricket establishment in India that has become too comfortable with selecting players based on how many advertisements they do in a year.

I just had the most horrendous travel day, and the worst part is that I don’t understand why. Continental cancelled the flight to San Francisco that Tanu and I were planning on taking this morning. And there was no notification. I did not receive any email from them informing me of the cancellation. And the lines at Newark were horrible. No other Continental flights were cancelled, and the weather wasn’t even that bad.

I later found out that they simply put me on a flight the next morning, which totally doesn’t work for us given that we have to attend our conference the first thing the next morning. We managed to get onto a US Airways flight later at night, that would get us into SF (via Las Vegas) at around 1 am.

As luck would have it, the flight was delayed, so we just got to the hotel at 4:30 am (7:30 am by our body clock). And we have to get to HQ by 8 am. This totally sucks, and I know I am going to be feeling it later today.

How is it possible for a team of superstars to fail so miserably against a team that is made up of part-time players? The Indian cricket team proved by their loss to Bangladesh that talent amounts to nothing if you don’t have the will and hunger to use it. To fall without a fight to a team that is indisputably weaker is an utter embarrassment.

One can only hope that this wakes them up from their slumber. Mathematically they still have a chance, though one now has to hope that Bermuda has some way of beating the Bangladesh team in the last match. Of course, all of this will be moot if India cannot get it together against the Bermudans, and then really come together against the Sri Lankan team. Pakistan’s dramatic exit is proof that the world of cricket is starting to equalize, and that no longer can the first round be treated as an exhibition (which is the way I suspect the Indians were approaching it).

I saw this T-Shirt in the window of a store while walking to work this morning. Seem’s like Bush’s last day as president is becoming a hallowed day in the mind of many a patriot.

Riding the subway this morning, my eye landed on a newspaper headline: “Sudan slams UN for ‘hostile’ attitude”. Now if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black. Hostile? I would say that the UN response has not been hostile enough. In what I hope is the start of substantial action, a United Nations Human Rights Council mission to Darfur said on Monday that the Sudanese government had organized and taken part in human rights crimes against its own population, and that international action to stop the killings and rapes had been inadequate. In their report, they strongly criticized the government of not just failing to prevent the atrocities, but actually orchestrating and carrying out a number of these horrific crimes. The council called for UN Security Council intervention, sanctions and criminal prosecution.

Already efforts are underway to prevent this report from seeing the light of day. with Sudan’s words being backed by its “allies”. In a brazenly hypocritical statement, Sudanese Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi said Sudan ‘’strongly and resolutely” opposes any consideration by the council of the report, which he said should be dismissed because it was written without the team having visited Darfur. What he failed to mention is that it was the Sudanese government that refused the team entry visas.

The whole thing is so damn infuriating. We can invade Iraq on the basis of a false pretext and lies, but we sit by and do nothing but talk when 200,000 people have been killed and countless more savagely and brutally attacked in the most horrific ways possible? Something must be done!