The Wareblog

I remember reading in my school books how mankind was helpless with no cure for the condition caused by AIDS. Today, as we find people and celebrities, alike, falling prey to one fatal disease after another - well, I present here some text towards the big one - AIDS.

With all the AIDS-awareness drives worldwide notwithstanding and the clinically proven effectiveness of the antiretroviral drugs, Dr. Boyd Graves chose to differ.

If one were to go by his findings and recommendations, AIDS would eventually be proved to have been synthetically manufactured with suggested intentions of bringing down the third world population. AIDS, as per his research, has its roots in the United States of America’s The Virus Cancer Program which synthetically produced the HIV in its laboratories. The validity of such claims can always be contested and often dismissed as conspiracy theories but the fact remains that if such apparently biological warfare has actually been resorted to by supposedly responsible governments (not to be confused with these as reported here), perhaps it wouldn’t be out of context to mention here that they also (in black & white) harbour the cure in their backyards.

At the end of the day - I leave it to the Almighty to preside over.

I experienced this peculiar problem today when trying to activate the Power notification icon after it mysteriously disappeared from my system tray. To my amazement, the Power checkbox had become frozen and therefore I could not select and get my icon back.

When I opened the Customize Notification Icons dialog box, I found plenty of other icons lying there for applications I had removed long back – but no signs of my dearie dear Power..!

The reason behind this is the Explorer caches a list of every icon that appears through its interface and over a period of time this list could go up to hundreds or more.

The other issue is that Explorer keeps these items in memory somewhere, so it also causes bloat, but we can reset this list through the registry and by restarting Explorer. Note that this will remove any settings you had set for the icons.

To get to the dialog we are talking about, right-click on the notification icon tray and select Customize Notification Icons or go to the same through the Taskbar properties -

Run regedit.exe through the Start Menu -> Run command, and then browse down to this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\LocalSettings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify

Now you will see two entries in the list: IconStreams and PastIconsStream. Select both of them and delete. (You may want to take a backup with the export function before doing this) -

That’s it, done..!

All we need to do now is to restart Explorer.exe through Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc).
In order to do so, we select explorer.exe from the list and choose End Process and subsequently click on the File menu (Alt+F) and click on New Task to specify explorer.exe in the same and then press OK.

Now your Customize Notification Icons dialog box should show you a very clean list of items, but note that any settings you had will be reset to default. 

Please note that some icons might disappear entirely until you reboot your computer.

I have always loved this browser and will never forget falling back on the same to get me there - faster & safer..!

Here’s a snapshot though of what the current build has rolled out in the language we’re all tied together with-

Apple & Microsoft (not necessarily in that order!) undoubtedly have some of the best brains working in their innovation labs. It is therefore no wonder that when they go ahead and toss up concepts and perceptions of how the future of computing would be like - it is often unbelievably awesome..!!

Microsoft Office Labs showcase their prophecies in this short-n-slick clip.

THE PLOT –

Delhi-6 takes a socio-cultural-political-umpteenical take on India and the domestic situation through the eyes of an Indian – Born (and brought up) in the USA.

After R.O. Mehra’s hugely successful and awe-inspiring Rang De Basanti comes Delhi-6, full of anecdotes from our daily lives shot amidst old Delhi’s backdrop and brought to life by quite a few creditable performances.

Abhishek Bachchan is born to parents who married outside their caste and settled in the USA. After several years he returns with his ailing grandmother (Waheeda Rehman) to get a feel of where his roots lie. He immediately starts taking a liking to the place despite its shallows of logic and monopoly of faith and the culturally spun-off politics.

If not for the social messages, you can watch this one just for the director’s intent and the protagonist’s unshakable faith in the adage – Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani..!

THE CAST –

Sonam Kapoor is so wow.!

Absolutely mint fresh and almost picture perfect – no less.

The rest of the cast, including Abhishek Bachchan are very true to their roles and deliver according to the asks of the screenplay.

The two actors that stand out though are – Divya Dutta (Jalebi) & Atul Kulkarni (Gobar).

THE MUSIC –

While A.R.Rehman struck gold with Rang De Basanti – Delhi 6 is sadly a consolation prize at best.

Most songs just have a few keys of notes and pronounced background scores – so characteristic of Rehman’s songs that lack melody or magic.

Except a few occasional sounds here and there – a very forgettable album.

THE VERDICT –

A movie that has pure intentions and they alone are reason enough to sit through this one.

Not a must-watch though.

THE SCORE –

6.00 / 10.00

THE PLOT –

The movie deals with modern-day trysts of the everblue Devdas portrayed superbly by Abhay Deol. Now this has been a trend for quite some time – Abhay Deol is to be found in movies which either have a great screenplay or a tight storyline : this one carries the trend forward.

Our Devdas (DevD) falls in love with Paro and shies away from marrying her thinking about whether the same would justify his family’s social status only to find out later that his family indeed wanted him to get married to Paro. With blues filling his life, DevD takes to alcohol and customary accompaniments as his last straws only to chance upon Chanda.

What does destiny have in store for Dev? What happens to Paro? And what’s the story behind Chanda?

All these and many more answers open up gradually in this entertaining saga of DevD.

THE CAST –

Mahi Gill & Kalki Koechlin are quite natural in their portrayal of Paro & Chanda respectively.

The support cast just about sticks to it. The Brass Band – Patna Ke Presley are one of the high points of the movie.

However, Abhay Deol, without doubt, is superb and often too real than reel. This is definitely one of his better acts till date.

THE MUSIC –

All the songs in the movie are good and extremely easy to relate to the situation in the plot.

But Emosanal Atyachar definitely calls for the once-more vote.!

Amit Trivedi deserves two thumbs up for this one…Well done.!

THE VERDICT –

Let me summarize what this movie is not –

Not an Indian family movie.

Not a movie (let alone the public) every critic will find peace with.

And not a movie you should miss out in favour of an Oscar winner..!

THE SCORE –

7.50 / 10.00