Freddie Highmore

I watched The Spiderwick Chronicles today. And while the movie was pretty good, I was most impressed by actor Freddie Highmore who played the twins Jared and Simon. (Sarah Bolger, who played their sister Mallory was also pretty good).

Highmore's done a lot of other cool stuff as well. For example, he played Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and was the voice of Pantalaimon in The Golden Compass. He'll also be doing the voice for Astro Boy (slated for a 2009 release).

Chalk up one more young actor whose career I am looking forward to following (the other one being Dakota Fanning). Hmmm...I must now watch August Rush.

PC Mag Reviews the M700

PC Magazine has finally gotten around to reviewing the Toshiba M700 tablet PC. Cisco Cheng gives is a 4 out of 5 and says:

Bottom Line: This convertible tablet has the processing capability and an optical drive to maintain productivity at a high level.

Pros: Excellent performance scores. Built-in optical drive. Beefed-up hinges. Wacom and touch capabilities. Superb "green" attributes. Comfortable keyboard.

Cons: Needs 3G support. Plain and bulky-looking.

Awesome.

[Via GBM]

Film Club in Lahore

During my undergrad I became president of Alpha Hour -- LUMS' extracurricular club that showed movies, invited guest speakers to campus, and arranged discussion groups on interesting topics.

While I was president, though, it ended up being more of a film club than anything else. Every Friday evening, then, I'd borrow the video projector, book the school's largest auditorium, and screen a couple of films. We'd show all kinds of stuff and, by the time I handed the club over to my juniors, it had become pretty popular.

The movie screening formula that I used also worked nicely: I'd show a popular movie or cartoon first (usually a comedy, romantic comedy, or action movie), take a half hour break, and then show a more serious movie (usually a drama, artsy movie, or cult classic). The first session usually filled the 370-seat auditorium, especially when we showed films like Titanic or Star Wars: Episode I. The second session, meanwhile, was targeted mostly to film buffs and/or hostel residents (I was both). I remember in particular our second-show screening of Apocalypse Now because, by the end of the movie, there were only eight people in the room :)

Coming to the point of this blog post: Having run a film club in the past, it made me really happy, then, when a friend e-mailed to tell me about the Punjnad Film Club that has recently started in Lahore ("alpha hour - all jumped up on volunteer adrenaline", he wrote). We have a number of cinemas in Lahore but all of them focus on mainstream movies (mostly blockbusters) and PFC is a breath of fresh air for people who want to watch other kinds of movies as well. Here's hoping they're wildly successful.

Internet Radio Explorations: Got Radio

I used to be a huge shortwave radio buff in my teens [1] but that was before cable TV and the Internet came to Pakistan and became affordable to the general public. I never really got into Internet radio, though. I was never in a situation where I could. At home cable TV ruled because we got our first satellite dish antenna a good ten years before broadband and at work I never got the time or the bandwidth.

The one time I did get into 'net radio was when I was working for InterActive Communications and I would listen to Radio Free Virgin quite a lot. Even then, I'd only tune in when I was working late because during the day I was office DJ -- playing music from our pooled CD and MP3 collection via large speakers connected to my workstation -- and, besides, there was rarely enough bandwidth to get a good, high quality stream going before 6pm.

So it's only recently -- thanks to having broadband Internet but no cable TV at home and full days on my laptop at work or university -- that I've really started to get into Internet radio...and there's a lot of catching up to do. So far I've used both Windows Media Player and Real Player to explore radio stations and that's been a lot of fun. I've also checked out Australian stations, NPR, VOA, and, of course, the BBC (with its really nifty iPlayer). They've all been good too.

I'm still in 'net radio investigation mode, though, and I'll share my thoughts on it as I learn more. For now let me just recommend to you Got Radio which has a really good selection of music channels, all of which are on-demand (i.e. if you don't like a song you can press next and move on to the next track in the playlist). The quality of the stream isn't all that great for an audiophile like me (though it sounds alright on my Altec Lansing laptop speakers) but the music selection is really good. And if you sign up (US$4.95/month or $26.95/year) you get a high quality, ad-free stream instead. I don't think I'm quite ready to do that yet, but it's something I might consider for the future.

For more on Internet radio in the future, stay tuned to this blog.

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[1] Ooh, now that's an idea for another blog post: my days as a shortwave radio buff. I should write about how I got introduced to the BBC back in the late '80s (my father used to listen to their MW service every morning and evening) soon after which I became a real radio geek, building SW antennas and keeping a logbook and all.

Ah, the good old days...listening to the latest news, talk, and music from the BBC, VOA, Radio Australia, Radio Moscow, and everything in between. Of course I had a lot more free time in those days. Time enough to sit for hours on the balcony listening to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, live coverage of the '92 Olympics, and music from all over the world.

Good Times: Trekking and Playing Music

UPDATE: The Karakorams.com site has been taken offline so the photos embedded and linked-to from this blog post are no longer available. I am trying to find other versions to put here instead...but don't hold your breath. [Ameel; 25 August 2009]

A couple of friends recently posted some photographs of treks that I've been on and gigs that I've participated in over the past decade and it got me feeling all nostalgic. Since those photos were posted on Facebook, I figured I'd post some of them here while linking to other, public ones as well.

Trekking in the Karakorams

First off are some trekking photos. I did a lot of trekking and travelling while I was in college -- there's nothing quite like travelling with lots of friends while on a tight budget -- and most of those treks are nicely documented on Karakorams.com (which I helped develop, by the way). Here are photos from my three favourite treks.

My first real trek was to Fairy Meadows, which is a camp on the north side of Nagna Parbat. You can find many photos from that trip on Karakorams.com but this one is my favourites (click for a larger version):

Saad, Amir, Ameel, and Yasir at Fairy Meadows

This was taken bright and early on the second day of our trek. Alefia, who'd been feeling really cold and had woken up a couple of hours earlier, got tired of our laziness and came to wake us up. You can't quite see me in there but I'm the hint of a face in the darkness of the tent. Yasir wrote an article about this trip and even he mentions this photo :)

Our second trip was to one of the Rakaposhi base camps and, for this one, both Yasir and I wrote articles -- though mine is more of diary-type recounting of events which, when I read now, I'm itching to edit! I like two photos from this trek. This one is of me, Saqib (one of the two friends whose posting in Facebook prompted me to write this), and Alefia with the Rakaposhi peaks in the background:

Ameel, Saqib, Alefia

And this one, which shows the ridge we had to climb across to get to our camp:

Crossing the Ridge

The path across this ridge was broken in four places and that photo is of one of the easiest crossings! You can find the rest of the Rakaposhi photos on Karakorams.com as well.

My third trip was to the Deosai Plains, which is one of the highest plateaus in the world. There are lots of really good photos from this trek but this one of Hasan as he positions his tripod to take a photo is my favourite:

Hasan Karrar on Deosai

Deosai really is a stunning place and I urge you to take a look at the rest of the photos as well.

Playing Music

Moving away from trekking: Back in 2005 a bunch of us in Islamabad got together and performed a couple of really fun gigs at Civil Junction.

What was possibly more fun than the gigs themselves were the jam sessions that we had at my house in the weeks leading up to the events. Sheharyar posted some of the photos from those sessions on Facebook and here are a couple.

This one is of me and Nadia -- we did most of the drumming and "percussing" for the band and, no, Nadia isn't normally surrounded by a motion blur:

Nadia and Ameel drumming for the F-10 1/2 Acoustic Band

The second one is a wider shot of the room -- the drawing room of our old house in Islamabad -- which had awesome acoustics. Sheharyar is the one with the guitar and mic:

F-10 1/2 Acoustic Band - Jam Session

Ah, good times. Here's to many, many more in the future...

Cool Bananas

"Cool bananas" -- I've been hearing that phrase on and off since coming to Australia and I'd always wondered where it had come from but I'd never gotten around to investigating its origins. Then I heard it again yesterday and, after tormenting Nadia with it all afternoon, I finally looked it up.

Initially I presumed that it was from something like a children's TV show like Bananas in Pyjamas but, as it turns out, it's originally a Kiwi phrase from the 70s -- or at least that's what the Wikipedia consensus on it seems to be. How the Kiwis came up with it, no one seems to know. The Urban Dictionary, for example, defines it but doesn't indicate its origins.

The most comprehensive discussion on it, however, is on an ABC message board in which...well, in which all they manage to conclude is that a bunch of them have been hearing it in various parts of Australia for over 30 years. I guess that's about as close as we're going to get to its proper etymology. (Darn, and here I thought the Internet knew everything!). Oh well. At least I got to blog about it so that's, er, cool bananas! :)

Lolcats to Dogs, Graphs & Politics

One of my favourite place on the 'net is the lolcat site I Can Has Cheezburger. In case you don't already know, these fine folk also have three other equally funny sites:

  • I Can Has Hotdog -- for loldogs
  • Pundit Kitchen -- for lolpoliticians; or a place where you can "cook up pictures for your political blog"
  • GraphJam -- for, well, lolgraphs; or, more accurately, "Pop culture for people in cubicles"

They also maintain Speak LOLspeak, which is the "The Definitive Lolcats Glossary" and an invaluable resource.

And then there are three other funny, but more specialized lol-related sites:

There are, of course, many, many more of these sites but those three are, in my opinion, the funniest of the lot.

Good stuff!

Peter Gabriel & Technology

Peter Gabriel, one of my all-time favourite musicians, continues to be at the forefront of technology usage -- particularly when it comes to technology for music and human rights:

On the human rights side:

  • In 1992 he co-founded WITNESS, "an international human rights organization that uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations"
  • In 1999 he started TheElders.org, which is a "new gathering of world leaders who [have] come together to guide and support our 'global village'".

So it's no surprise that he is involved in recent areas of music technology as well:

Both sound really interesting and I'll write more about them once I've played around with them a little more.

[More PG: Wikipedia, Last.fm, Real World Records, WOMAD]

'Last Night' by Moby...9 Days to Go!

We're still nine days away from the release of Moby's latest album, Last Night. Says Moby:

"last night" is basically a love letter to dance music in new york city. what i love about the new york approach to dance music is the eclecticism and the open minded-ness on the part of the musicians, the dj's, and the people in the bars and clubs. in making 'last night' i essentially tried to take a long 8 hour night out in new york city and condense it into a 65 minute long album.

To keep us busy till then, here's some fun Moby related stuff that you can do:

Enjoy :)

Professional Photo of Me!

I recently wrote about my entry in the Melbourne Business School Class Profile Brochure on my professional blog. Since I wrote that post on the day I submitted my profile to Career Services, I didn't have a copy of my professional photograph that will be used in that publication (MBS hired a professional photographer and got all our pictures taken).

This morning, however, I was e-mailed a copy of that photo and here it is:

Ameel Zia Khan

Good photo, eh? I don't look half bad, either :)

Entertainment on a Tablet PC

Every time I've written about tablet PCs on this blog it's been about how that form factor will improve my productivity, efficiency, and will make my life a great deal easier.

What I haven't mentioned is how I expect a tablet PC to improve my computer-based entertainment experience as well. Specifically, how I expect to use it for reading books, playing computer games, watching movies, recording and editing music, listening to music and podcasts, and so on. I'll write about all that some other time but, meanwhile, James Kendrick has posted a video on how he uses his new Fujitsu P1620 for entertainment. It's an excellent video and I suggest you check it out.

Three Years On...

One of the best ways I have of remembering my mother is through music. When we were little she used to sing us to sleep and it's mostly thanks to her that we're a very musical family (we start to sing at the drop of a hat, for example). Since it's been three years since she died I thought it would be nice to post a few videos of the songs that she really liked or that we used to sing a lot.

She was a big fan of Edith Piaf, for example, and her favourite Piaf song was 'Non, je ne regrette rien':

Her other favourite songs included Dean Martin's 'Under the Bridges of Paris', Harry Belafonte's 'Jamaica Farewell', and Frank Sinatra's 'Three Coins in a Fountain'. I'm sure there were others she liked, but these are the ones she knew the lyrics of and sang most often.

Here's Harry Belafonte singing 'Jamaica Farewell':

Bed Time Songs

A lot of the songs she sang us to sleep with were folk songs like 'Lavender Blue', 'Red River Valley', 'Danny Boy', and 'Tom Dooley'.

Here's a video of The Kingston Trio singing 'Tom Dooley':

And, since this is too good an opportunity to pass up, here's the Muppets version of 'Danny Boy':

I remember Ami having a good laugh over this when we first saw it :)

I believe she was more familiar with the Elvis version of this song, though, so here's the tribute video made for his 29th death anniversary that features it:

Travelling Songs

There were also a number of songs that we always sang in the car, particularly on long journeys. One of those was The Three Stooges song 'Swinging the Alphabet':

Other songs included 'The Animal Fair', 'Why Shouldn't My Goose', 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat', and 'Ten Green Bottles'. There were, of course, many more.

It's still hard to believe that she's gone...and I'm glad we have all this music to help keep her memory alive.

2008 LUMS B.Sc.'99 Class Notes

Calling all of my LUMS B.Sc. Class of 1999 classmates!

If you haven't read the news item I posted on our MyFamily.com site or seen the message I sent 50 of you on Facebook, please read this blog post.

It is time, once again, to write our class notes for the LUMS Alumni Annual. Like we did last year, we are going to do compile them using this wiki: http://bsc99.wetpaint.com/

So please: visit the site and update your (or anyone else's) class note entry. Oh, and make sure you do this before Monday, 26 May. On the 27th, I'll copy edit the notes (tweak grammar, flow, etc.) and will mail them off to the Alumni Relations Office.

Finally, please tell all our other classmates that you're in contact with to do this as well.

Thanks!