Rungta’s Webmarks

BJP’s hide-and-seek with history ∞

Vir Sanghvi provides us with the longstanding facts to put the recent BJP debacle in context.

Coming Attractions – Trailers ∞

Follow-up to Rashmi’s trailers webmark with a few that she missed due to technical reasons and a few that I caught on my own.

• Ishqiya — Directorial debut by Abhishek Chaubey, Vishal Bhardwaj’s assistant.
• It’s Complicated
• Paris
• Paper Heart
• Only
• The Great Indian Butterfly — Don’t know much about this one, but whatever I have read seems interesting.

Those should help in procrastinating.

Gigantic ∞

Quirky?

Well, its got Zooey Deschanel.
(Official Site | Wikipedia | Apple Trailers)

Dispatches: Terror in Mumbai ∞

From Channel 4’s guide:

The untold story of 2008’s terrorist attack, in the words of its victims and the gunmen. The programme contains graphic images and descriptions of the atrocity which may upset some viewers. […]

As real as it gets. This documentary has left me blank—I don’t know what to think or say.

COP15 and International Policy on Climate Change ∞

A good overview of the international politics of climate change, the current state of events and hope for a lot more in the upcoming convention in Copenhagen.

Rehna Tu ∞

Homage to a timeless masterpiece by A. R. Rahman. Created by the biggest Rahman fan I’ve had the privilege of knowing.

The President is Coming ∞

My friend Rashmi:

It’s like The Office, this movie. Bollywood style.

Gives Hera Pheri a run for its money. Brilliant stuff!
(Wikipedia | YouTube Trailer)

The Hunt for Gollum ∞

Independent Online Cinema presents an unofficial and free high-concept Lord of the Rings prequel made for under $5,000. The film remains true to the style of Peter Jackson’s films and the world of J.R.R. Tolkien telling how Aragorn tracked down Gollum between The Hobbit & The Fellowship of the Ring.

40 minutes of footage on a budget of just 5k. Impressive!

Sibal plans to scrap ‘traumatic’ Class 10 Board exams ∞

[Kapil Sibal] believes that it is for the students to decide which stream to follow in Class 11 rather than for the schools to force it on them. “Ultimately, it is the student’s aptitude that should decide whether he or she wants to study arts or science… not the school,” he said.

Hear, hear!

The new HRD ministry, at least from the outside, appears to be really getting on with the mammoth task of fixing India’s education system.

Flickr Fodder ∞

Some new and some not so new flickr photo-streams that I’ve been enjoying for a while now.

• rushs / Rashmi Swamy
• rakeshrach / Rakesh Rachamalla
• rohittalwar / Rohit Talwar
• mayankaustensoofi / Mayank Austen Soofi

Don’t forget me though.

Wimbledon 2009 Draws ∞

The tournament that started it all, back for 2009. Sad to see Nadal withdraw from the tournament, but it should a good championship nonetheless.

• Gentlemen’s Singles
• Ladies’ Singles

No longer out of focus ∞

Ashok Malik, in an excellent editorial for Hindustan Times:

Other countries have think-tanks, India makes do with prime-time chat shows. The problem with the medium is that it has only one, reductionist template — good versus bad, right versus left, BJP versus Congress. When it extends this framework to explaining the rest of the planet, the effects are hair-raising.

Excerpts From the Diary of an App Store Reviewer ∞

Wow.

Roland Garros 2009 Draws ∞

Double feature this Sunday. The 2009 French Open Grand Slam gets underway in Paris while 20 super fast cars go screaming around the streets of Monte Carlo.

On the heels of his victory over Rafa in Madrid, will this be the year Roger Federer finally wins his first Roland Garros title, or is the Spaniard going to dominate on his favourite surface once again?

Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS ∞

Andy Clarke suggests and offers a universal, typography–only CSS file for IE 6.

I’ve been thinking of going down this path myself. No time wasted getting frustrated trying to fight work around IE bugs for the designer, and a simple, usable experience that works for the visitor.

Bits & Pieces ∞

Brand spankin’ new section on prateekrungta.com, designed to serve as a platform for me to share the numerous little experiments that catch my fancy from time to time.

Long time visitors would no doubt be aware of just how fragmented my site has become. At the last redesign, all this site had was my photoblog. Fast forward (almost exactly) two years and this site now hosts a photo blog, a link blog, tennis draw charts and a blogroll plugin, each debuting at different points of time. The design painfully shows the lack of anticipation for such expansion, as a result of which most new visitors are completely unaware of the rest of the site. Because of this, I’d decided not to introduce any new sub–sites (if you will) and make the situation worse, until I got down to redesigning the entire beast.

So, “Bits & Pieces” sat quiet and covered up in a corner of my hard disk for four long months. Hindi transliteration with copy–paste support, the bit that got me started on B&P in the first place, had been laying dormant for almost seven months though. The renewed interest in Hindi around here made me want to share “हिन्दी transliteration” and I decided to risk yet another section for the time being, with the hope that someone might find it useful.

P.S. – I’ve also (finally) created a global RSS feed for my photoblog + webmarks + bits & pieces, so go crazy.

Hypercritical ∞

A fantastic essay by John Siracusa on the importance of criticism, and how “knowing [what’s wrong] is half the battle”. Lots of quotable bits in there, but I’m going to go with this one on the extensive online analysis of the tabs in Safari 4 beta:

This stuff is what makes the Mac Web—and, by extension, albeit indirectly, the Mac itself—so great. At its best, it’s critics all the way down.

I find it ironical when some people accuse us—what’s the term, fanboys—of being critical of everything but Apple, because in my experience, the Mac faithful are amongst the most critical users one can have.

Web Advertising and Fusion ∞

Michael Mistretta, the creator of the Deck-like Fusion ad network has written a nice essay on the state of web advertising. He quotes Kyle Baxter:

Online advertising is broken. Web sites place ads to the side of content, and readers learn to ignore it; so web sites put ads in the header, and readers learn to ignore it; so web sites put ads in-line with content, and readers learn to scroll past it; so web sites use video ads and create ones that overflow into the content, so readers stop reading.

I think there’s a lesson to be learnt here for everyone. People don’t like being controlled. The harder you try to enforce things on them, the faster they’ll run away from you.

I Hardly Know Her ∞

You thought flickr was minimalist? Wait till you’ve browsed a flickr stream or two through IHNK.

So clever and well made that you almost feel stupid. Hats off to Justin Ouellette!

Political Lampposts And Independent Candidates ∞

Amit Varma explains why voting for independent candidates like Meera Sanyal (representing Mumbai South) is worthwhile in current India’s “fragmented” political environment. I’m linking to this because I’ve had people suggest otherwise.