What makes Fantastic Four: First Steps different is that it is set in Earth 828, which is in a different universe than the previous MCU movies. Earth 828 is a retro-futuristic version of Earth & most of the movie is set in 1960s New York City which reminds you of Mad Men. However, even though the clothes, aesthetics are 60s, the technology is futuristic.
Example, the screens are all oval shaped CRTs, video is recorded on huge tapes and audio is recorded on gramophone records.
However, there’s faster-than-light travel spaceships, flying cars & even teleportation.
Earth 828 also has a planet-wide government & no militaries. There’s a mandatory superhero tower and spaceship launches happen just off the coast of New York.
All of these things give the movie a very comic book feel, rather than sci-fi.
Galactus, devourer of worlds is an interesting character, too. Not inherently evil, he is just cursed with an eternal hunger of planets, which he is tired of. All he wants to do is bestow this hunger on someone else and rest in peace.
The movie features several fun scenes, like the neutron star-spaceship scene & the light-speed travel childbirth scene. The Mole man is also a funny character.
If Marvel produces more movies like this, I won’t mind engrossing myself in this universe once again.
My first comment on this movie is that David Corenswet has the most generic face of all the actors who have played Superman till now. His face is so generic, if I saw him in the street right now, I may not recognise him. Kind of like bollywood actresses from the 70s and 80s. So I don’t understand why the movie even bothered to make up the eye-hypnotise thing to explain why no one recognises Superman is Clark Kent.
Otherwise the movie is a departure from the last Superman series, bright, funny and cheerful, instead of dark and broody. There’s no long-winded origin story and one gets dropped straight into the first action sequence, of which there are many.
The antagonist is Lex Luthor, who is not a Kryptonian but a very smart (as per him) weapons manufacturer, something on the lines of Tony Stark who has his employees fly around in Iron Man like suits.
The Justice Gang add a funny side to the story. The portals are really cool and the scenes are quite stylistic. There’s a part-Stitch, part-Gojira creature and the typical Eastern European despot trying to invade a moslem Central Asian country. Krypto was the most adorable part of the movie.
One thing that is common with the previous DCEU movies is that entire cities get destroyed like nothing.
I went to watch this movie only because my daughter wanted to see dinosaurs. This was a sequel of a reboot, so I had very low expectations going on. Overall, the movie slightly exceeded my expectations.
The movie starts at InGen‘s (Another company trying to play god with dinosaurs) laboratories and the most ridiculous thing happens. Just because 1 door in their lab malfunctions, their entire security system reboots and releases all the mutant dinosaurs everywhere. Which designer can design such software and how can such a design go through the design review & approval chain? In contrast, the drainage system they built at a remote tropical island can put most Indian cities to shame.
The movie has typical action movie scenes – A group going to a watering hole in a tropical location to find an indispensable guy & convincing him to join the mission, crew members dying one by one while the others shout their names in vain, a selfless sacrifice by a crew member at the end to give others a chance to escape etc.
There are new dinosaurs, too. The main mutant antagonist looks like a T Rex-Xenomorph hybrid. There’s also a customary cute dinosaur who looks like Stitch and even one that looks like Jar Jar Binks.
There’s also prominent product placement by Altoids. Considering how most of them spent most of their time submerged in water or wet, they could have inserted an anti-fungal cream, too.
Overall, a decent watch if you have nothing better to do.
Continuing my series, this post is about the Costus Woodsonii, commonly known as the Red Button Ginger.
Costus woodsonii, commonly known as Red Button Ginger or Dwarf Cone Ginger, is a tropical perennial. It is native to Central and SouthAmerica. It is prized for its vibrant red cone-shaped bracts that resemble buttons, which often hold small yellow flowers. The plant has lush, spiraling green foliage and is popular in ornamental gardens for its compact size and striking appearance.
I first saw this plant when I came to Bangkok many years ago and since then, have always wanted to grow it. Recently, I asked our plant seller to get one for me and here we are.
I keep this plant in direct sunlight, in the rear balcony in the summers and front balcony in the winters, where it gets 3-4 hours of sunlight everyday.
I water it four times a week and make sure that the soil dries out between waterings.
Additionally, I fertilise it every 2 months or when it shows signs of growth, helping to promote healthy foliage and overall vitality.
With most of my family away for a few weekends, I decided to catch up on movies. After queuing up a few, I realised that Farhan Akhtar was a common element in all of them; hence decided to continue the theme.
Farhan’s Role : Actor, Writer, Producer, Playback Singer My Rating : 7/10
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (You only live once), is a road comedy drama film. The film stars an ensemble cast of Hrithik Roshan, Abhay Deol, Farhan Akhtar, Katrina Kaif, and Kalki Koechlin. The film’s story follows three childhood friends, Arjun, Kabir, and Imran, who reunite for a three-week road trip before one of them gets married.
I had seen this movie before but didn’t remember much of it except the central theme. Second time round, I found the movie quite entertaining and well made; especially enjoying Hrithik’s acting and his character Arjun’s transformation over the course of the movie. I also enjoyed Farhan’s background recitation of poetry at pivotal points.
That being said, I didn’t like a few things, like how desperate the women were, for the men. And how they wanted us to believe that average people from India look anything close to the three lead actors and the 2 actresses.
02-Dil Chahta Hai (2001)
Dil Chahta Hai Theatrical Poster
Farhan’s Role : Writer, Director My Rating : 7/10
Dil Chahta Hai (The Heart Desires) is a coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Farhan Akhtar in his directorial debut. The film stars Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan, and Akshaye Khanna as three inseparable college friends navigating adulthood, relationships, and diverging life paths. It also features Preity Zinta, Sonali Kulkarni, and Dimple Kapadia in pivotal supporting roles. Set in contemporary urban India, the film explores themes of friendship, love, and self-discovery among upper-class youth.
Of course I had seen it before, but I had no idea back then who Farhan Akhtar was. The movie is extremely well made and feel-good in nature and I enjoyed the acting of all 3 lead men, especially Akshaye Khanna’s.
However, the overwhelmingly 90s feel of this movie is a bit of a turn-off for me now, for personal reasons. Also, even though it was considered ground-breaking back then, it still carries some elements of bollywood of yore, especially silly jokes, unrealistic way people talk, characters suddenly breaking into dance sequences etc.
03-Dil Dhadakne Do (2015)
Dil Dhadakne Do Theatrical Poster
Farhan’s Role : Actor, Writer, Producer, Playback Singer My Rating : 7/10
I saw this one for the first time after a recommendation from Chatur; in fact I had never even heard of its name before. It was a nice feel-good movie with a (mostly) happy-ending for everyone. I especially liked the fact that the movie was narrated by a dog and is from his point-of-view.
04-Lakshya (2004)
Farhan’s Role : Director My Rating : 4/10
Lakshya (Aim) is a 2004 Indian Hindi-language coming-of-age war drama film directed by Farhan Akhtar. I think I had seen this movie long ago, but can’t remember for sure. Even if I did, I didn’t like it much this time.
It was annoying the way they kept repeating the word “Lakshya” in daily conversation among the characters. What normal person even uses this word in real life?
Many scenes in the move are cringe, especially the flashbacks where Hrithik tries so hard to be awkward. Even an actor like Boman Irani doesn’t shine, because his character is inconsistent/not fleshed out. Preity’s reaction at Karan running away from the academy is un-realistic.
Also, no Indian war movie is complete without a customary moslem Indian soldier who puts country above religion. I also had to skip 10 minutes when the soldiers all broke into an impromptu song sequence.
I liked the scenes shot at familiar locations in Delhi – Lodhi Garden, India Habitat Center but not much else.
05-Luck by Chance (2009)
Farhan’s Role : Producer, Actor My Rating : 6/10
Luck by Chance is a 2009 Indian Hindi-language drama film written and directed by Zoya Akhtar in her directorial debut, and produced by Farhan Akhtar. It is about Vikram, a talented actor, but a selfish human being.
It was neither great nor bad, just average. I liked it because it showed the dark underbelly of Bollywood. Everyone acted well, but it was just a one time watch. This movie also has dance numbers, but in this case they are acceptable because the are part of the movies being shot inside this movie. I skipped them nonetheless.
06-Rock On (2008)
Farhan’s Role : Writer, Producer, Actor, Singer My Rating : 9/10
Rock On!! is a 2008 Indian Hindi-language musical drama film written and directed by Abhishek Kapoor & produced by Farhan Akhtar. It is also my favourite Farhan Akhtar movie and one of my favourite movies overall.
I remember watching this movie with my friend Bhupesh at PVR at Ambience Mall in the late night show. While on the way back, we talked about how much we had enjoyed the movie.
The songs are kick-ass and capture the rock essence. I appreciate that both Arjun Rampal and Purab Kohli spent some effort to learn the basics of the instruments their characters play. Farhan was already an accomplished singer, but he did the rock numbers well.
Javed Akhtar’s lyrics, at that point considered ground-breaking for Bollywood, feel a bit wannabe now. Aditya’s reaction to the squabble is a bit overboard. Ditch the girlfriend and leave town?
Overall, top movie.
Common Farhan Akhtar Themes
Overall, I found the below common themes from all the movies
Even though the movies are not strictly bollywood-type movies, they do retain common bollywood elements like song-and-dance sequences, which I always skipped.
All the male actors are unbelievably (for real life) ripped. For some characters, it makes sense, but for many, it doesn’t.
Most of the major characters, with some exceptions belong to filthy-rich (by Indian standards) families.
Most of these movies have feel-good themes, with no real villains. The less-good characters more-or-less redeem themselves by the end of the movies.
All of these movies are quite long, even by Bollywood standards, most exceeding 3 hours.
Farhan seems to like working with the same actors
Hrithik Roshan in Zindagi na Milegi Dobara, Lakshya & Luck by Chance
Preity Zinta in Dil Chahta hai and Lakshya
Dimple Kapadia in Dil Chahta Hai, Luck by Chance
Aamir Khan in Dil Chahta Hai, Luck by Chance
Himself in Zindagi na milegi dobara, Dil Dhadakne Do, Luck by chance and Rock On!!
First things first, like me, you must not download copyright protected content via BitTorrent. There’s plenty of open content available that downloads much faster on BitTorrent, compared to https and this article applies to such content.
In this post, I discuss using qBIttorrent to download data from the internet via BitTorrent. Below are the reasons that I didn’t like it
My ISP could see that I am using bittorrents.
Copyright providers can see my IP in the swarm and could trace specific downloads back to me.
Downloads were quite slow, especially with finicky seeders.
The process of looking for magnet links on sketchy websites was painful (a least 4-5 pop-ups for each click/tap). Also, I had to use a separate browser to copy magnet links because Safari doesn’t allow this.
Most RSS feeds topped out at 1080p.
qBittorrent is not under active development for macOS and is likely insecure..
My first reaction was to move to put.io, but I couldn’t justify its high subscription price considering I had already invested in a Home Server.
Enter alldebrid, which is a much cheaper and simplified alternative to Put.io. Here’s my setup
My Torrent setup with AllDebrid, Servarr applications, RDTClient and Ruddarr
The overall setup may seem complicated, but below is a breakdown of what each individual component does.
AllDebrid
AllDebrid is basically a cloud-based service which pulls files from the torrent swarm and provides it to you as an https transfer. This is similar to what put.io does, however, AllDebrid is much cheaper, doesn’t provide permanent storage and relies on APIs for communication with other applications. Its own interface is quite barebones. This way, the torrents don’t touch your home network and your ISP sees nothing.
Files already cached with AllDebrid finish downloading in seconds (Popular TV shows etc).
RDTClient
RDTClient is basically an application which runs on your server/PC which you use to interface with AllDebrid. It uses API keys to access your AllDebrid account. It runs in a container.
The Servarr apps
The Servarr apps are a group of apps which make management of Movies and TV shows easy. Even though they all have native macOS apps, I chose to run them in containers, too, for uniformity.
Sonarr & Radarr
Sonarr is a TV show management utility. You let it scan your existing library and tell it which shows you want further automatic updates for. You can also ask it to download and maintain new TV shows for you. It has it own container.
Radarr is similar to Sonarr, but for movies. Without the additional complexity of seasons and episodes, it is much simpler in nature. Yet another container.
Both apps move the files to the appropriate folders used by Plex. In addition, they can also organise the folder and file names of your existing collection.
Although both apps can interface with torrent search engines directly, I prefer for them to go via Prowlarr for simplicity of management.
I use cloudflare tunnels to expose these applications to the internet for remote management.
Prowlarr and FlareSolverr
Prowlarr is a torrent search engine aggregator and management service. It interfaces with Sonarr and Radarr via API keys. Yet another container.
Some torrent search engines use Cloudflare protection (Like 1337x), Flaresolverr acts as a proxy to Prowlarr and bypasses Cloudflare challenges automatically, using a built-in browser. Last container for today.
Ruddarr
Ruddarr is an iOS application to manae Sonarr and Radarr. It interfaces with them via API keys and the Cloudflare tunnel.
The overall result is
All my TV show episodes download automatically after release and appear in Plex
Any movie I want to watch, I can search for, using the Ruddarr application and they appear in Plex within minutes
I can monitor progress of TV shows and downloads via Ruddarr
Containers running peacefully in Docker Desktop
As you can see, during idle, 6 containers combined use less than 1% CPU and 2GB RAM.
My only problem is, it is a long chain of services interacting with each other and if something breaks, it will take quite some troubleshooting to find out where the problem is.
I recently lost a bunch of videos (mostly concerts) to a disk encryption mis-understanding., so needed to rip them again from their Blu-Ray sources. Having previously done video decoding/encoding on my daughter’s Mac, I was curious to know how the Mac Mini M2 Pro would compare when doing video decoding & encoding.
Video : 1426×1080, 30fps, SDR, H.264 to H.265, 8-bit Preset : Quality, 60 CQ
Audio 1 : BD-LPCM to AAC, 320kbps, Stereo, 48KHz Audio 2 : DTS to AAC, 320kbps, 5.1, 48KHz Audio 3 : AC3 to AAC, 160kbps, Stereo, 48KHz
The first pass was using the default H.265 option, which was noticeable faster than the Macbook Air M1. But then I found the H.265 with Apple VideoToolBox option, which allows the video decode/encode process to be handled on the GPU.
Parameter
Baseline
Regular Encoding
Apple VideoToolbox
Average Power Consumption
8W
52W
18W
Average CPU
5%
99%
22%
Average Fan Speed
1600 RPM
2950 RPM
1700 RPM
Average CPU Temp
55C
101C
63C
Average GPU Temp
44C
95C
68C
Average Frame Rate
—
58 fps
131 fps
Total Encoding time
—
58 mins
23 mins
As you can see, the performance difference is quite noticeable. With Apple VideoToolBox, the entire process is not only much faster (taking almost 70% less time), the CPU utilisation is much lower and the computer runs cooler, drawing much less power.
1080p Blu-Ray to H.265 Software vs Apple VideoToolKit Comparison
2160p Recode
I decided to push the computer further, so decided to document a 4K HDR file next.
Unlike the iPad, UTM on mac has full support for JIT, so performance is much better.
I use UTM Remote to access the VMs on my iPad, even though they are running on the Mac.
Windows 98 SE: Further Setup
The first screen after Windows 98 SE boots for the first time is this welcome screen. Time to disable it and prevent it from ever showing up again.
Welcome to Windows 98
I heard the accompanying (rock) music for the first time ever, because I always had cheap AC’97 chipsets and you needed to install the drivers later, manually. Virtually, I can afford the Creative Sound Blaster 16; for which, Windows has drivers pre-installed.
The next step is to disable the Task Scheduler forever which I also, always did back in the day.
Stop using Task Scheduler
Windows 98 SE: Chipset driver setup
For the next few steps, it is advisable to keep the CD (Or the iso) popped in as windows will install a lot of drivers.
As you can see below, Windows 98 SE has failed to detect the PCI bus (and consequently, everything else connected to it). It needs a bit of manual push to be recognised properly.
Device Manager – Plug and Play BIOSDisplay a list of all the driversStandard system devices – PCI BusTo finish setting up your new hardware, you must restart your computer
We are at the 6th restart since starting the installation, so why not?
After the restart, Windows 98 SE detects a whole bunch of new devices, freshly exposed from behind the PCI bus. Surely some of the names are made up, right?
New Hardware Found : PCI Host BridgeIntel 82441FX Pentium(r) Pro Processor to PCI BridgeNew Hardware Found : PCI ISA BridgeNew Hardware Found : IO read data port for ISA Plug and Play enumeratorNew Hardware Found : IRQ Holder for PCI SteeringNew Hardware Found : PCI IDE ControllerDo you want to restart your computer now?
After the 8th reboot, yet more devices.
Intel 82371EB Power Management ControllerNew Hardware Found : PCI VGA Compatible Display AdapterCirrus Logic 5446 PCI
It’s not Windows if it doesn’t rash a few times along the way and Scandisk gets a chance to check the disks again.
Because Windows was not properly shut down, one or more of your drives may have errors on it
Windows 98 SE: Display
With the display adapter correctly detected and the drivers installed, we can bump up the resolution and colour depth. Of course this brings us to the 10th restart.
Display Properties : High Color (16 bit) and 800 by 609 pixelsCompatibility Warning : Restart the computer with the new color settings?
Now its time to set a proper theme.
Windows 98 : Dangerous Creatures
This used to be my mother’s favourite theme, even if not mine. I used to keep this on in hopes that she would like it and let me use the computer for some more time.
Time to shut down the VM and let it rest for yet another adventure for another day.
For those who don’t know, Jetpack is Automattic’s WordPress plugin, which connects your blog to their cloud service and provides a number of features.
I have been using Jetpack for as long as I remember having this site on WordPress. And for most of the time, it has worked well. However, recently, I noticed that when composing posts, the block editor would get stuck “saving” and not recover at all. Over many months, it led to hours of lost work. After troubleshooting thoroughly, I found that the problem only happened when Jetpack was enabled.
I knew there’s no single plugin that can replace Jetpack in totality, but when I made a list of the Jetpack features I use and how many plugins it would take to replace it, I was shocked.
Below is a description of what I did.
Social Media Share Icons
I decided to start with the easy items and immediately found “Simple Social Icons” to replace Jetpack’s social share icons.
Share button integration with Jetpack
Simple Social Icons by Osompress
All good. Let’s continue.
Commenting System
WordPress’s default commenting system requires a person to create an account on your blog before they can comment. Obviously this is not practical for blogs like mine where no one would bother to do this. So I tried 2 options:
Disqus
I was already familiar with Disqus, because I used it on my blog long ago, but I seem to have forgotten that it shows advertisements. I have kept my blog proudly clean over decades, why would I let a plugin display ads? Hard pass.
Advertisements in Disqus’s comment system
More things against this plugin were the requirement to create & maintain a Disqus account and it maintaining your comments on its servers, rather than integrating with WordPress’s comments (At least by default).
wpDiscuz
In-spite of the childish name spelling, this plugin was quite powerful, even with the free iteration.
wpDiscuz Comment Examples
This plugin actually out-performs Jetpack by allowing users to login with many different social media accounts (Jetpack allows only WordPress and Facebook accounts).
For downtime monitoring, I chose Pingdom’s service. The service is quite powerful, generating detailed stats, certainly more so than Jetpack which only shows up/down alerts. However, I realised later that the free tier only supports monitoring for 30 days. Since I don’t earn any money from this website, I decided to forego this feature and stay in the blind.
Pingdom’s site monitoring tool
Fetch images directly from services
Jetpack’s image fetch tool
Jetpack has this nifty feature which allows you to insert royalty-free images directly from multiple image services (vs finding an image, verifying the license, saving it, then uploading it). I mostly use it for the cover image of each post.
To replace this, I found Instant Images, which allows fetching images from even more platforms.
WordPress shows you graphs of how many people visited your blog and from where. This data is widely disputed to be flawed. Since I was already using Cloudflare, I chose Cloudflare’s stats for this.
However, I didn’t find a way to view these statistics in a formatting suitable for mobile displays.
Cloudflare statistics: Requests by country
Email Subscription & Sign Up Form
I saved the most complicated for the last and eventually this was the item which eventually caused me to give up.
Basically, I wanted people to be able to sign up to my blog newsletters via a sign-up form on the blog page and then receive notification emails when there’s a new post. Simple, right? Not so
MailChimp & MC4WP
MailChimp
MailChimp is the world’s leading email marketing platform. You can use it for free if you have less than 2000 subscribers, which is not a problem for me.
Signing up for an account and starting a campaign requires a lot of verification (To prevent spam, they say), but I was done in an hour, including importing my existing subscribers via a .csv file.
MC4WP
To make a subscription form on my website for people to type their email addresses in, I used MC4WP, which is a nifty tool which can update the subscriber’s list on your MailChimp account.
The free account was suitable for my needs.
However, I got stuck on the next part, which was to automatically send a notification email to my subscribers when there’s a new post. There doesn’t seem to be a native way to do this. The method recommended by MailChimp is to set up a “classic” automation which would read from an RSS feed of my blog and trigger the email sending. However, this feature was paid and I didn’t want to pay to send emails to 30 subscribers. On to the next option, then.
Icegram Express
Icegram Express
The big advantage of Icegram Express was that it all runs natively within your WordPress installation, without a need for an account with them.
It took me 20 minutes to configure everything and setup the automations. However, when I tried testing the email digest (I tried both WPMail and PHPmail), it would only send emails half the time. The other half, it would say it sent the email, but the recipient would never receive it.
I tried my best, but I couldn’t find another alternative.
Eventually, I took stock of where I was. I had replaced Jetpack with 5 different plugins, created accounts with 3 new services and still I was nowhere near the functionality Jetpack provided.
I made the hard decision to give up and go back to Jetpack, with a new found appreciation for how useful this plugin actually is & how much it does for free.
If I edit my posts in Firefox, I don’t run across the “saving” problem anymore, however, I have raised a feedback with Apple to hopefully get it fixed.
Continuing my series, this post is about the Crassula Ovata, commonly known as the Jade Plant.
Jade Plant (Crassula ovata) is a beloved succulent known for its thick, glossy, oval-shaped leaves and its tree-like appearance. Native to South Africa and Mozambique, it has become a popular houseplant around the world. It is prized for both its beauty and symbolic meaning.
Often referred to as the “money plant” or “friendship tree,” the Jade Plant is associated with good luck, prosperity, and positive energy, especially in Feng Shui practices. Its fleshy leaves are thought to resemble coins, reinforcing its connection to wealth and abundance.
I keep this plant in shade all the time, as it prefers indirect light but can tolerate low light conditions. It sits on our living room cabinet, next to the Mac Mini.
This plant requires no maintenance at all, making it perfect for those who may not have a green thumb. With proper care, they can live for decades and even grow into small indoor trees, making them a lasting and meaningful addition to any space.
I water it twice a week. It is drought-tolerant, so I don’t have to worry about watering it frequently.
Additionally, I fertilise it every 2 months or when it shows signs of growth, helping to promote healthy foliage and overall vitality.
