Rungta’s Webmarks

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu ∞

[…] translates roughly as The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one. At 85 letters, it is one of the longest placenames in the world.

Try pronouncing that!

Rowling writes an 800-word Potter ‘prequel’ ∞

She wrote it for a charity auction and ended it with this:

From the prequel I am not working on - but that was fun!

Let’s hope the winner of the auction is kind enough to share the story.

Mac OS X 10.5.3 ∞

Improves 802.1X behavior and reliability.

Yay! Hoping this means I’ll finally be able to connect to Monash-Connect.

Fixes an issue in which certain function keys may be disabled after using Time Machine.

About time. This one irritated me big time and I hope Time Machine never disables my shortcuts again. Fire up Software Update on your Macs!

Grand Prix de Monaco 2008 ∞

The jewel of the Formula One crown it is called, and this year’s certainly lived up to the name in terms of being chock full of incidents. Rain for most of the first half of the race at a street circuit was bound to make the result unpredictable, but seeing a Force India at P4 towards the end of the race was still very surprising.

Luck did not favour them all the way and it was very painful to watch Kimi Räikkönen slam the back of Adrian Sutil’s Force India and end his best race so far. Also, I discovered that I was more disappointed to see Sutil and Force India’s race ruined that I was to see the Ferrari make the mistake. The first wet race of the season certainly turned out to be very eventful, and just like at Melbourne earlier this year and Canada last year, Hamilton kept his cool and drove to victory. (Results)

Earth Film ∞

Planet Earth on the big screen! Granted it’ll only be a 95 minute summary instead of the 11 hours in the original documentary and will be narrated by Patrick Stewart and not David Attenborough, but I can guarantee its still going to be jaw–dropping.

“Earth” was apparently released in 2007 around Europe but only on 29th May will it hit the theaters down under. Don’t miss it — I know I won’t.

“Welcome to Facebook!” ∞

19 word summary of Facebook by Wil Shipley.

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels ∞

Hard to describe as anything but awesome, although the only way to do justice to the genius of Guy Ritchie would be to watch the movie.

Also, now I know where Phir Hera Pheri got most of its story from.
(Trailer on YouTube | Wikipedia)

The evergreen Lalu Prasad Yadav ∞

Playing the funny at a Lok Sabha session. (Via Varenya)

The day the music died ∞

Bought (or planning to buy) music online? Care about digital rights management? Have no clue about DRM? Looking for a nice read?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of those questions, I would highly recommend reading the linked piece.

The Dark Knight - Trailer 3 ∞

70 days and counting. (Via Rakesh)

Pangea Day ∞

4 hours. 24 films. A new way to see the world.

A global, multi-cultural film festival with the aim of uniting the world through the power of film.

Found out through David Pogue’s recent post:

Sure, people of all nations have been joined by Internet video before, thanks to a little thing called YouTube. But YouTube joins people without them realizing it; there’s not much sense of community (unless you count the juvenile, raunchy comments), and zero sense of mission or purpose. It’s very unlikely that, after watching some YouTube video of someone putting Mentos into a Coke bottle, you’ll stand up and announce, “I’m a changed person.”

Pangea Day, I suspect, will be different.

You can attend a live event, catch it on TV, or watch the free live stream over the internet at 18:00-22:00 GMT, May 10 2008.

Harry Potter goes off the NYT Best-Seller list after 10 years ∞

The New York Times created a whole new children’s best–seller list in 2000 to “clear some room”. Guess they were right in thinking “this ain’t goin away anytime soon.” (Via MuggleNet)

twistori ∞

Of the multitude of web apps that feed on twitter that I’ve come across so far, I like this one best. Awesome design! (Via Shaun Inman)