Persepolis movie review

Today I watched Persepolis. It is an animated movie in French about the life of an Iranian girl who was born in Tehran. She had to leave Iran due to difficult living conditions brought about by the revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, the harsh regime, etc. It is a true story and directed by the same girl. Enough about the story. You can read about that here.

What is interesting is the animation style. Even though it is in 2D and black and white it is extremely riveting. The simple style gives it a clean look and adds to the beauty. Classic example of less is more. The humor is good with some nice dramatic scenes that show how people in repressed societies have to battle for everyday freedom that we take for granted. Although we will
I wont give out any spoilers though. It is a definitive watch for those who are willing to experiment with some alternative cinema.

Must have plugins for Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox has thousands of plugins. Here is the list of some that I use and found to be the best over the years. I particulary struggled to find a good plugin for downloading videos from . Most of them are used for increasing productivity while some just make your web surfing more pleasurable.

1. Hyperwords - With a host of functions that include a converter, translator, search and communication options this is one plugin I just cant do without.

2. Stumbleupon - Random sites recommended by others that match your interests. Internet surfing just got a whole lot more addictive. This includes "stumbling" through popular sites like Youtube, Blogspot, CNN, BBC, Wikipedia, Flickr and many others

3. Better Gmail 2 - This addon provides some improvements to Gmail's interface like inbox unread count in tab title, attachment icons. Useful when searching for attachments in a long list

4. Cool Iris - Makes browsing google images, deviant art and many other image based site fun and fast to browse. All images are displayed on a 3D wall like a virtual gallery. Just click and drag to browse. Click on an image to zoom in.

5. Video DownloadHelper - Download videos, audio and images with a click of a button. Most of the common video sharing sites are supported. It also detect video s most of the time from sites that are not supported and provides a download option for them as well. This was the best plugin I could find for downloading videos from youtube.

6. Greasmonkey - This is a plugin that runs scripts to customise your web surfing experience

7. Sage ++ - This is a lightweight RSS and Atom feed reader. The best part of this pluging is that it renders all the RSS feeds in one window. The site is in Japanese. Click on the button that say 'Agree' to install the plugin.

8. Skipscreen - If you dont have a premium account in rapidshare, megaupload, hotfile, mediafire or any other filehosting service you will find Skipscreen invaluable in downloading stuff from these sites. As the name suggests, all you gotta do is enter the link in the address bar and it will perform the rest of actions (click on 'free user', wait for specified time and finally click on 'download' button).

9. WOT (Web Of Trust) - This plugin displays a circles next to links. Green circle for safe and red for unsafe. The links are rated by users like you and me, so it is very reliable.

10. Screenshot Pimp - With just a click you can save or copy an entire web page, only the visible portion or a custom selection. Very useful while making presentations.

11. Xmarks (previously Foxmarks) - It saves all you bookmarks on its server. so if you login in to another computer just install the addon, login to you account and it will download all you bookmarks for you. Very useful for people who use multiple computers.

Any plugins that should be added here please let me know.
Happy surfing

Best sites for watching TV shows and movies online

Ok, after searching for a long time on sites that offer streaming of TV shows in India I compiled the list below.

1. Surfthechannel Streams videos from other sites like youtube, metacafe, hulu, etc.

2. Sidereel Same as above

3. Hulu Provides streaming of TV shows. Available in US only. Will try to find and post a way to circumvent their site restrictions.

4. Movies-links Search engine good for movies and tv shows. The content is streamed from other sites like www.megavideo.com

5. Megavideo This is also a huge site with videos ranging from documentaries to video game trailers.

6. Documentary Heaven As the name suggests its paradise for people who love watching documentaries. Whether it is conspiracy, nature, biography or science, you will find it engaging and addictive.

7. TED Although not a tv show or movie site the videos here are absolutely mindblowing or in Russell Peters' words 'mindblasting'. Btw TED stands for Technology, entertainment, Design.

There are many options available for viewing videos online the main drawback in India is the lack of broadband penetration and affordability. Once 2Mbps and above speeds become available for below Rs. 1000 then we will see a real spurt in broadband usage, especially in the student and working bachelor groups.

Batman slaps robin again

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Don't Drink Water

While reading/watching a funny post/picture/video don't drink water unless you want it to gush out of your nose. Look away, drink till you are satisfied and continue reading. Especially important if done at work