I Signed up for PayPerPost

For people like me who are still pursuing their education and write a blog passionately about something specific, like movies and music in my case, it's a icing on top of the cake when PPP-payperpost approves your blog. Now you can earn money writing those posts you anyway do.

I have heard about payperpost even earlier from friends. So I said to myself, I am blogging anyway. Why not sign up for payperpost ? So I decided to sign up for PPP. What's best about PPP is that they have very well documented guidelines as far as the do's and dont's go. This means that there is no room for misunderstanding or error. Also, I heard from friends that payment is prompt. Also the available opportunities and all that are very clear and lucid.

By now most of my friends are into PPP and all of them recommended it to me very highly. I have made many new friends in my city who also use the PPP service. Reason enough to join their blog network now.

I already have plans for the money I shall be making. First is that since my blog is a movie and music blog, I'll be requiring money to keep buying those movies and music. Maybe in a while even a portable movie player. :) Who knows ? Anything and everything is possible. I also have a few other things in mind to buy.

External Hard Disk-To Store Movies-Part 02

In my previous post I had written about the disadvantages of using optical discs to store your data. They can be summarised as follows:

1. Searching the Disc for a particular movie
2. Sorting long after you have got the movie.
3. More physical space required.
4. Lack of flexibility in terms of storing a certain amount of data.
5. Scratching of discs
6. Expensive re-writable discs.

Keeping all these things in mind, it's better to go in for an External Hard Disc. I would prefer a 1TB (Tera Byte = 1000 GB, Giga Byte) hard disc. Because assuming a movie takes about 1 GB on an average, I can still store about 1000 movies on this. However, I have to be content with a 500GB Hard Disk for now. These are actually pretty cheap compared to their prices a few years back. A 500 GB Hard Disk costs about 125 USD. (Here in India) That's alright. Of course, certain brands cost more and there are also some drives which have an inbuilt Ethernet port. Such discs are obviously expected to cost more than the conventional Hard Disks even if it means that you will be losing some functionality.

Another option is to buy a Hard Disk and then buy an external casing. But then you won't save much doing this and moreover the quality and also the finish of the casing might not be great. So it's always better to go in for proper External Hard Discs. I'll post here once I have made a choice of Hard Disk and also bought one.

External Hard Disk-To Store Movies-Part 01

When you have close to two hundred and fifty movies and counting, not to mention various other videos such as those TV shows and other music videos, etc it's hard to keep track of all your discs and managing them becomes quite a problem. What's more, you always have to search for the disc in which the movie you want is. Other problems include flexibility. That is supposing I want to put all movies according to say either Director or based on the year of the movie, it's impossible to do so when you have them on discs. Renaming movies, or even deleting movies after watching them becomes a problem.

On top of all that, discs occupy more space, need to be stored carefully. Never expose discs to dust. Another annoying thing with storing movie on disc is that when you want to store 6 movies on a disc, sometimes it exceeds disc capacity by some 2MB. Shucks!! You now have to waste space on the disc. Also if your discs get scratched, then you are done for. Doomed. You can no longer watch the movies on the disc. This has happened to me when I lent some discs to friends. I stopped lending discs after that. :)

You can not delete movies from discs either. Yes you can delete it such that you are no longer able to access that movie, but then you cannot use that space back to store anything else. Yes, sure there are rewritable discs available. But they are a pain really. Writing and formatting them takes forever and they are also prohibitively expensive.

Now I don't know what's going to happen once Blue Ray discs start coming out. But till then, I think an External Hard Disc makes more sense. Read about it in my next post.

Making a List of Movies I have

So, I sat down today wanting to make a list of movies that I had with myself. I also wanted to get other statistics like the number of discs I was using to store the movies and how many movies I was able to store on a disc on an average. Also, I wanted to know how many movies I had watched, would like to watch again and how many movies I hadn't watched.

To a little bit of my surprise, I found that I had in excess of 200 movies with me currently. (I am not including movies in my brothers collection in this.) Not to mention TV shows and other such things which occupy a good percentage of discs themselves. Of these 200 movies, I am yet to watch close to 100 of them. (Bad, Isn't it ? ) And of the movies I have already seen also, I would like to watch some of the movies again. It's vacations right now. So I have all the time I want to watch movies. :)

Adding More Movies to My Ever Growing Collection

My exams have just concluded and I already find that I have an amazing number of movies that I need to watch. What's more the list keeps growing thanks to me adding movies to my collection constantly.

These are the movies I have added recently to my collection:

• 28 Days Later
• 28 Weeks Later
• I Am Legend
• Superman Returns
• The Mist

Also added to the list are,

• Beer Fest
• Equilibrium
• Outsourced
• Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Yet other additions include,

• Alvin and the Chipmunks
• Death Sentence
• No Reservations
• Rush Hour 3
• Vantage Point

Now, I just need to watch these movies and start posting their reviews. Stay tuned. :)

Thank You-Dido

Absolutely Mesmerising Song. Thank you by Dido is an inspiration for musicians. In fact even Eminem uses parts of this song in his Stan. (featuring Dido) This was a single and was released in the year 2001. It's the biggest hit by Dido form her album No Angel. No Angel also happens to be Dido's debut Album.

The song was written by Dido herself. The song lasts 3 minutes and 33 seconds and is quite short and nice without getting too repetitive. It belongs to the pop Genre. That means you can't expect too much out of it in terms of the music. But the music is nice and soothing and definitely not as irritating as some of the other pop songs.

On a scale of 10, I'd probably rate this song 7. I'd love to rate it 10, but then I am docking points because of the fact that the music is not played by Dido. :)

The Best of Me-Bryan Adams

Bryan Adams is once again at his best. The Best of Me was one of the first English Albums I heard. Back when I listened to it, (1999 was 8 years back you know) we didn't have CD's in India. So I found myself repeatedly listening to the Audio Cassette. (I still treasure the Audio Cassette and it is safe in my house.)

I had heard of Bryan Adams and few of his songs thanks to MTV and Channel V for which we didn't have to pay back then. They were free channels you know. This is also the name of the Album and a song in the Album. The Song plays for about 3 minutes and 33 seconds.

Bryan Adams' voice is mesmerising as always. I would rate this song 7.5 on a scale of 10 for the amazing vocals and the lyrics.

Beautiful Day-U2

Splendid Song by U2. In fact one of my all time favourites. OK that's a long list. So it's hard to say where this song would stand. It depends on your mood really. If I had to rate it on a scale of 10, I'd rate it 7.5. (Which is quite a lot)

The Song sounds different from most other songs. Almost like it's bad quality recording. :) But that's essential to the feel of the song itself and is not to be mistaken for poor quality. The song plays for about 4 minutes and 5 seconds. That means there aren't too many repetitions.

It's from the Album All That You Can't Leave Behind. It's one of their best songs and has won U2 three Grammys.

Bono, Rock on!!

Movies to Watch

As I have written in my previous post, I have some catching up to do on the movie watching front as well. I don’t have a concrete list of movies as such, but I have a few movies with me and I have been wanting to watch them for a while now.

Some of these include:

• Spirited Away
• Hotel Rwanda
• Requiem for a Dream
• LA Confidential
• The Maltese Falcon
• Alien

After watching these, I shall be watching the remainder of the Kubrick movies,

• A Clockwork Orange
• Barry Lyndon
• Spartacus
• Eyes Wide Shut
• Lolita

Well, so a lot many more reviews to come. Stay tuned.

Movie review:Full Metal Jacket[1987]

One way I catch/watch movies is to take a director who is critically acclaimed and start watching his/her movies. This works better than choosing an actor and watching his/her movies. Maybe using an Internet portal like IMDB is a better way of choosing movies if the number of movies you watch is limited and you don’t have all that much time.

Stanley Kubrick more than qualifies as a well acclaimed director and so, I have been watching a few of his movies of late. (He is a celebrity director in fact) This movie in particular was suggested by quite a few people. I have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey by Kubrick earlier. I liked the movie, but as all critically acclaimed movies, I did not get up after the movie with a smile all happy and pleased feeling good about myself or feeling pumped up and motivated in life.

Well, I did not recognise anyone in the cast while I was watching the movie. Adam Baldwin I seem to have heard off somewhere. Matthew Modine who narrates the tale as Pvt.Joker I later on found out has acted in Transporter 2 and Notting Hill. While I have watched both movies, I have no recollection whatsoever of me having seen him. Maybe he looked different and I did not recognise him. Oh,wait I didn’t know him when I saw those movies and hence would have ignored him as just another character in the movie.

Coming to the movie itself, it is the tale of a Marine, his training and later his experience in Vietnam. As a former student of an Army school (though not as intense as he movie portrays), I was able to confirm and appreciate the going ons inside the training centre. That’s how they really work.

As for the Vietnam part, it was very brief and well done. The sniper towards the very end and what happens when you disobey a direct command is portrayed wonderfuly-you endanger your life and also others’ lives. People who play games like Counter Strike should be able to appreciate the strategy of having a lone sniper hidden in a deserted location.

The ending like with the other Kubrick movie I have watched was not one with a message or an inspiration. It was just a normal ending to an otherwise beautiful movie. Watch the expletives though. They are many in number.

a-17