New Top 5 TV Shows to watch out for this Fall Season - 2013

1. Under the dome

Imdb rating : 7.2/10

Under the Dome is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. It tells the story of the residents of the small town of Chester's Mill in Maine, where a massive, transparent, indestructible dome suddenly cuts them off from the rest of the world. With no Internet access, no mobile signals and limited radio communication, the people trapped inside must find their own ways to survive with diminishing resources and rising tensions. While military forces, the government and the media positioned outside of this surrounding barrier attempt to break it down, a small group of people inside attempt to figure out what the dome is, where it came from, and when (and if) it will go away.

Tip : Steven Spielberg is amongst the executive producers. Enough said. Also, crazy first episode.

2. Masters of Sex

Imdb rating : 7.8/10

Masters of Sex,” a new hour-long drama on Showtime, is a fizzy, ebullient quasi-historical romp about the team of scientific pioneers who transformed American attitudes toward sex. But let’s not bury the lead: it’s also a serious turn-on.

For many viewers, this will be reason enough to watch, and there’s no shame in that game; this is adult cable television’s bread and butter, after all. Luckily, the show has an appeal beyond solid date-night viewing. “Masters of Sex” is based on Thomas Maier’s lively 2009 book of the same title, which tells the story of the rise of William Masters, a renegade who aimed to study sex in the lab, using human subjects

Tip : Date night watch

3. The Blacklist

Imdb rating : 7.9/10

Metacritic Score 74/100

The highest rated new TV series and the breakout hit of the fall starring the attention grabbing James Spader as a career criminal who decides to partner with the FBI for reasons we’ve yet to learn. This is the first series to receive a full season order of 22 full episodes. We love watching intriguing creeps and Spader is up there with the all-time best.

Tip: Must watch for Boston Legal Fans

4. Sleepy Hollow

Imdb rating : 7.8/10

The biggest hit for Fox, this modern fantasy mystery twist on the classic story featuring Ichabod Crane has greatly improved Fox’s ratings on Monday night up against powerhouse reality shows “The Voice” and “Dancing With The Stars.” It gets a big boost from delayed viewing and Fox is quite satified; it’s the second series to get picked up for the entire season.

Tip: Watch it for the special effects and a decent watch for fantasy fans

5. The Crazy Ones

Imdb rating : 6.7/10

The big winner among the new comedy lineup for CBS on Thursdays starring Robin Williams, who is whipping his competitor Michael J. Fox with his own headline show over at NBC. They won’t be competing with each other all season but it’s a nice victory for CBS nevertheless. UPDATE: CBS announced Oct. 18 it has ordered a full season of “The Crazy Ones.”

Tip : David Kelley is the show's creator and the cast includes Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Must watch comedy this fall. Expect the imdb rating to increase pretty soon. 

HIMYM Season 6 Episode 1 : Big Days

I've started on season 6 of HIMYM (greatest sitcom ever). A short synopsis of Episode 1 is as follows:

Ted reunites with Cindy (Rachel Bilson), a girl he had a bad date with and who is also the roomie of the future Mrs. Ted Mosby. Lily has a problem with Marshall telling everyone their decision to have a baby. Robin deals with her and Don's break-up, while Barney deals with the end of "the season of exposed skin".

This was a pretty good start to the season. I feel like we are getting closer to finding out who the mother is, which I am really excited about. I know once the mom is revealed, there won't be much more to go, but I feel like it's about time Ted finds the "One". Barney had a great episode, but then again Neil Patrick Harris always makes me laugh. I am glad Robin and Don broke up, I like her better without him(and his undies of course). Marshall was also pretty funny this episode, but I hope he and Lily don't argue about whether or not to have a baby any longer. I miss them being funny, rather than arguing. The ending with Cindy was pretty funny (She kissed a girl Ted wanted to hit on) and we learn that Ted meets his future wife when he is best man at a wedding. Overall, I am pretty excited about this season, it looks promising.

Funniest Quote of the episode:

Marshall : Lily, we have been looking forward to this magical, special night for two weeks now ans, sweetie, during that time I have been, umm, how do I put this delicately...saving all my love for you.

Lily : I have read eleven books on conception, I have cut out alcohol, caffeine and sugar, I take my temperature every hour but, good for you for not playing with yourself ! :D

Midnight's Children Book Review

A friend of mine recommended it to me saying that it's a fantasy novel but I found it otherwise. Many incidents in the book are for real. I would like to call this one da de facto diary of a schizho. It is so twisted and smartly written you will just be lost in the story. A very powerful and politically inclined narrative, this could have easily been the heroes of the old times. Every page is a predictable gripper and you will want to read more as you find out that the author is letting you take a lead on the story. The beauty of it all lies in it being a story full of how such common occurences of your every day banalities of life blend under the cover of a dark and unspoken era of political turmoil and unspoken injustices on human freedom, exodus' and mass killings, the plot unfolds the sheer will of four hundred something child prodigies born at the hour on the midnight India attained its independence, with supernatural abilities conspiring to have under the powers of it's leader and the main character of the book Mr.Saleem successfully united after 31 years of awaiting, having unfolded many a unbelievable feats through it's telepathic midnight congressional communions and a skeptical stand point on the regress of a disillusion that subtly sinks into reality as Saleem, the vanguard of the army of midnight children, the unspoken covenant a victim of holocaust reveals to the comfort of a stabilizing 3 decade era from the night of independence the new generation of prodigals in his son and in successors of the missing age revolutionaries who fought and stuck to their ground and fought it out with governments ruled by royals with dark sides to their apt descriptions. The book is a lovely read through time as the reader will find himself geographically moving north and northerly around the subcontinent visiting the oldest cities crossing the largest rivers and the highest mountains and the meanest marshes with forests breathing their breath taking magic on a lost undercover troop, through beautiful ice clad valleys to intoxicatingly intense vast fields and beyond. A marvelous journey through spaces history unfolded itself and stands witness today. A snake charmer and his super prodigal son with ears used to uncommon sonic manifestations pristine. On his acquaintances with new found virtues Saleem himself with unusual nasal powers that sniff out emotions and color, the very human expression has to relieve his time finding humility in such a beautiful succession that has set the juggernaut rolling for a crave that will surely supersede any reader’s appetite for a complete entertainer. 

You will particularly enjoy sections of the book where the nasal revelations start to direct the story in a different dimension and the midnight confessions start coming in with such well thought of fluency that every time you will turn a page you will be taken by the events as if you picked the right time to read this book as these events start superseding you as if it were to be following a phase, unless you can relate well to a schizo the main character of the book, it’s a classic work of literature very few with such accurate exploitation of language almost as mystical to its content as to it’s implications through the narrative, only a very pensive and collective historian could have pieced together events of unspoken times and substantially created a fabulous art of fiction as a inspiration of sorts
Now this is what I call clever writing. It's not a page turner, it's a line tuner, if there exists something like that.

I mean this guy(Salman Rushdie) can leave his reader's anticipating for every single line.

If you are a regular reader, you will see through his narrative though. Midnight's children is about a guy who was born at the strike of the hour on the midnight of India's independence. Though I found a striking resemblance in his narrative style with that of Robert Ludlum( Author of the Bourne Triology), as he talks about a whole new legion of post-indipendent India's children just the way Ludlum has his 3rd reich in the Holcraft Covenant.

But Rushdie is predictably imaginative. There is extensive use of Hindi(My mother tongue) and this is not the kind of book you would like to stop looking for words, or you will loose the flow.

The subtle message lying underneath this compelling story telling style is to highlight the socio-political changes that were happening amongst the masses in India as she was basking in the glory of its independence.
The bottom line is probably that this is an excellent novel but one that I didn’t like it as much as I would have hoped to. Maybe this was due to the fact that it felt a little boring in the beginning. So, if you get through the first 80-90 pages, you will want to finish the book asap!

Gadgets and Gizmos

Nokia E7 SmartPhone with Video

What a Phone by Nokia! This Nokia MobilePhone comes up with 4-inch “Clear Black” display with the full QWERTY slider.

Here are the detailed description/features of this SmartPhone:

Dimensions:

• Size:123.7 x 62.4 x 13.6 mm
• Weight (with battery): 176 g
• Volume: 97.8 cc

Keys and input methods:

• Full QWERTY keyboard
• Home key, Power key, Lock key, Camera key, Volume key
• Finger touch support for text input and UI control
• On-screen alphanumeric keypad and full keyboard
• Possibility to use capacitive stylus
• Full screen handwriting recognition

Colours:

• Dark grey
• Silver white
• Blue

Display and user interface:

• Screen size: 4″
• Resolution: 16:9 nHD (640 x 360 pixels) AMOLED
• 16 million colours
• Capacitive touch screen
• Orientation sensor (Accelerometer)
• Compass (Magnetometer)
• Proximity sensor
• Ambient light detector

For more details, visit Nokia’s page. See the below video of this “Ultimate Business Smartphone”:

Linkin Park-A Thousand Suns

Linkin Park - The band that inspired me to get into metal and rock music. The first metal song I really liked was (and is) Numb from the legendary album Meteora released in 2003 following Reanimation.


Three years after its last effort, the back-to-basics Minutes to Midnight, nu-metal band Linkin Park returns with the politically-driven A Thousand Suns, an album that is, in many ways, a step forward for the band, and in others, a step back.

Linkin Park's first two albums, Hybrid Theory and Meteora, are primarily well-produced ventures into the realm of teen angst. The band's third album, Minutes to Midnight, attempted to diversify the band's lyricism, with the political "Hands Held High." Such diversification has not gone unnoticed, and the new album is political at heart. The quality of the lyrics have tightened up. 

However, if there's one aspect of Linkin Park albums that have made the band stand above the other rap-rock albums, it's the production quality. Unfortunately, in Minutes to Midnight, the band ignored the fantastic production quality that Meteora had and attempted to go back to the basics. This may have been the band's single greatest mistake. Linkin Park is forgettable at best when attempting classic rock. Minutes to Midnight was produced by the legendary Rick Rubin, who proved he makes mistakes.

Although he returns to produce A Thousand Suns, he's clearly recognized the error of his ways; the production on the new album shows a drastic change from the previous album, one that is more in line with the first two albums. Synthesizer dominates the soundscape and piano is used to a more brooding effect than in previous albums. This helps to create an album that is significantly moodier than LP's previous efforts, which were more about rage than melancholy.

The album is full of short vignettes(depictions) that help listeners move from one real track to the next. "Wisdom, Justice, and Love" is a minute and a half of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking as his voice gradually becomes distorted to the point of sounding like Megatron from Transformers. In fact, if you removed these tracks, you'd be down to a mere ten full-length songs.

There are several stand-out tracks on the album. "Wretches and Kings" is the album's most aggressive song, with a crunchy guitar, heavy hip-hop beat and bitcrushed chants of "Hey!" in the background as the band lays down some of the best verses on the album.

"The Catalyst" is the album's next-to-last track and serves as a fantastic synthesis of everything the listener has heard thus far. The song begins with ominous synths and gradually becomes more and more intense, adding on layers of stuttered beats, guitars and harmonization between members Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington.

There are other notable moments on the album. "When They Come for Me" has a tribal beat and Shinoda asserting, "I am not a criminal, not a role model, not a born leader; I'm a tough act to follow." "Waiting for the End" has a beat that sounds uncannily similar to Jay-Z's "99 Problems" (also produced by Rubin).

A Thousand Suns is unlike any album Linkin Park has released, due to the nature of its lyrics, structure of the album and its fresh production from Rick Rubin. It's a pleasure to see Linkin Park pushing the envelope sonically again, rather than regressing as it did in its last album.

The Fountainhead-Book Review

I read this book when I was 17. At that time this book went a little over my head due to its objectivist philosophy. But now after reading it for the 2nd time, the point was crystal clear. It's a wonderful combination of story telling and philosophical presentation. While some of the main characters lack an arc, it was refreshing to get to know them as self realized individuals. Resist temptation to not like this book when disagreeing with a motivating philosophy.This seems to rank with the best of both religious and political books in terms of how polarizing it is, which at least makes sense to me in the sense that many people use the objectivist philosophy as it espouses their political basis and arguably a "religion." This is still a novel - a fiction with characters - and I think it succeeds on that level outside of some hilariously pretentious relationship decisions, general length, and overuse of the word "bromide." Appreciate that the characters have interesting motivations. I found the material completely relevant to today's world.  As a philosophical delivery agent, it's unsurprisingly heavy-handed but definitively makes its case. I had assumed that I'd vomit if I were to even glance at philosophy in general, but this book makes me think I might really like example-based presentations of them.The only reminders of when it was written adds to its charm rather than detracts from the message.
There is a reason that 70 years later, this book still sells.