As if my weekend couldn't get any worse, I've just finished wasting my last two hours watching 10,000 BC, the movie. A predictable plot, bad acting, badly made and badly titled movie. If this is what Hollywood produces these days, then it's truly a sad day. This movie surpasses the other badly made blockbuster, I Am Legend.

Earlier, the Dutch were truly terrible against the Russians in the quarter finals of Euro 2008. The superstars were incredibly bad. Disgusting and dissapointing.

Last night the Adelaide Crows lost to Brisbane Lions.

A bad weekend!

Last weekend I had the displeasure of driving to and from Nadi. The road condition for most part was nothing less then shite! So I've decided to refer to it as the Nadi-Suva Shite-way.

It's unbelievable that the authorities in this country aren't able to maintain one of the main highways to a decent standard. The highway is littered countless potholes and sinks. Even where the pot holes are patched, the road is bad. The patches are applied so badly that for most part they're at least an inch higher then the normal road surface. On some parts, the road surface has sunk and the seal has become extremely rough. It's a problem that has been like that for years.

I am not sure if the roads engineers responsible for this abomination are at all driving up and down in a car; because if they did, they'd surely apply some patches. I guess they drive their cushy Land Cruisers or Pajero's, so don't feel the impact of bad road conditions.

Some of the worst parts of the shite-way is just outside and around Nadi. Nadi is one of our main ports of entry. Thousands of tourists pour in and out of Nadi every day and I can't imagine the image they carry of our roads infrastructure. I guess they don't really feel it because they mostly ride around in comfortable tourist coaches or executive limo's with very soft suspensions. It still is inexcusable though, that road conditions especially around Nadi is in such state of neglect.

Let alone the road surface, the signage for most part only include those that indicate humps, speed limit and cattle. In the western division they can't even get the signage for cattle right. It appears more like an ass! Someone blogged about this not to long ago; I just can't find the link right now. Most other standard road signs indicating the type of bend, the steepness of hills, junctions, etc. seems to have disappeared.

The safety of the Nadi-Suva Shite-way is of grave concern. Any road trip on it is nothing less then stressful and it leads to undue fatigue and road rage. People who drive on these roads for a living should consider them OHS non-compliant and take appropriate measures. Unions? Someone's got to do something this. We deserve a lot better.

And it's all thanks to some very bad coaching!

Just finished watching the quarter finals of the Scotland Sevens and watching the Fijians lose to Samoa yet again is heart wrenching. I wonder the kind of mental preparation the team gets before playing the finals stages. The team just never seems to be prepared enough to handle the tougher opponents or the "do or die" situtations. For Nasoni Roko to kick when he knows the support was right behind him is stupefying. For Vunibaka to get held up; what was he thinking!

I often blame bad referring for our losses, but it's time to put the blame sqaurely on the coaching staff. They just don't know what they're doing. We've gone through an entire season without a single IRB Sevens Tournament win. For the current world champions it's an absolute disgrace. There cannot be any more excuses. We need to retain the players and sack the underperforming coaching staff.

Late this afternoon, I was conferred the "Super Sexy Hero of the People" award, by the Self Appointed Chancellor, Ian McGregor.

The award recognises the hard work and dedication I've shown to the cause. To date only three people have received the award, including the Self Appointed Chancellor, myself and the founder of the award, Mr. Jachin Sheehy (a former colleague) and the current IT Chief of the embattled media organisation, the Fiji Times and the editor of the famous blog, Strange Pants.

I have invited Mr. McGregor to write up details of the award, so I hope to receive something from him soon.

If you like me hated the SMS text scrolling at the bottom of the TV screen during the Hong Kong and Adelaide Sevens, then welcome to the club. You would also have noticed the same thing during the coverage of Coca Cola games.

It's sad watching all these poor sods wasting their hard earned dollars on something that stupid. Not to mention the unwelcome distraction whilst trying to concentrate on the moving pictures above.

I did find an ingenious solution (below) to the problem during the Adelaide Sevens. I can't say if I have applied for patent on this one, but rest assured, I am working to refine it.

FIGURE 1: The annoyance in as seen on TV

FIGURE 2: The solution to the annoyance.

Some of you have asked for pictures of my baby. Well...here goes: http://aunik.sarnil.com

It took me a whole weekend to find an easy to use gallery, and in the end I settled with Imago. It isn't the easiest one to use, but that isn't because it is complex. It's just that it doesn't really have much in the way of a gallery management tools. There's a lots of FTPing and editing of xml files to be done for any significant additions to the gallery.On the upside it's very lightweight. Easy in terms of deployment.

The wife wants more features for the gallery, and easy management tools, so I might turn to the combination of Flickr and nFlickrViewer this weekend (my initial plan..don't know why I decided against it).

Anyway, enjoy my baby pictures. In case you haven't already figured, we have decided on the name for him; Aunik. What do you think?

UPDATE
I couldn't make nFlickrViewer work on the site, and with little time to experiment or force the issue, I took the easy way out. I placed the Flickr gallery inside a frame on a html page and voila! Instant Flickr gallery.

I've just finished watching a wonderful movie, Brick Lane. It's a must movie for those that enjoy alternative cinema.

Those that know me know my passion for foreign, alternative and art-house cinema. They also know my particular disdain for bollywood and most hollywood movies.  Whereas most people would occasionally watch and alternative movie, it is quite the opposite for me. I avoid most hollywood crap and haven't seen a bollywood movie since 2004.

With such taste in cinema it is really difficult to find anything from these genres in Fiji. Most movies in these genres aren't very popular and tend to mostly travel the film festival circuits around the world.

So how do I satisfy my desire for these movies? Simple! Either torrent or download using Rapidshare. These downloads are DVD rips essentialy making them illegal.

But it isn't just about the movies. It's about PC games as well. Earlier this year, I really wanted to play the latest version of Sid Meiers Civilisation. So I decided to visit Amazon.com and buy meself a copy. Nope, couldn't do it. Amazon tells me that it can't send the game to Fiji due to publisher restriction. Bugger! I wasn't going to be detered though and after a few minutes of googling, I located a version for download via Rapidshare. I bought a EUR16 account from Rapidshare and within a day of downloading, I had the game. Where as it would have cost me in excess of USD50 for the game from Amazon, I had the Rapidshare account for much less. With this account valid for about 3 months, I got busy and downloaded a whole bunch of other goodies difficult to find in Fiji.

I take the view that piracy in my case is justified because most what is easily available in a developed country is simply not even on offer here. Even if it is, it costs way too much anyway.

What do you think? Show me the error of my ways...

Past few weeks have been pretty intense for me. First it was an anxious wait for wife go into labour, then it was the delivery itself and now it's been two weeks of pure joy (but still intense). The anxious waiting was hastened by a pill from our doctor as it seemed that our little one was not making any moves to exit. The little bugger was "smoked out" as I like to put it amidst protests from the wife. The actual labour wasn't as bad as I expected and had seen them in the movies, etc. The midwife and our Dr. Brown were excellent professionals, resident at the Suva Private Hospital.

Being a first time father, has taught me so far that newborns are high maintenance toys. They mostly spend time sleeping otherwise wetting diapers and wailing for milk.

They however are the cutest and most adorable little things and you can end up spending lot's of time simply staring at them enjoying their beautiful forms.

The video shows the near crash landing of the Lufthansa Airbus A320 in Hamburg. Brilliant piloting I say.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23316266-954,00.html 

My lazy post of the day involves this interesting article I read last weekend...

If you are not telling your customer when they are wrong, it is not their fault the project is a mess, it is yours.  It is not their skills that are lacking, it is yours.  Anyone (sales people, managers, software architects, developers, politicians, etc.) who is doing their job right has learned to say no effectively.

The article perfectly narrates a long held view of mine.

http://realworldsa.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/deathtotheyesmanworkaholic.htm