FIFA World Cup - Fussball-Weltmeisterschaft 2006

With about 9 days to go for one of the biggest events in sports to kick-off, FIFA World Cup is the flavor of the season everywhere you go. When the tournament was last held in Japan/South Korea in 2002, I was preparing to leave for Germany for my MSc.

The performance of Germany was not very great, except for the miraculous hands of Oliver Kahn. My all time favourites Brazil displayed some amazing performances in the tourney. My personal favourite was the one against China, when all the 4 R´s (Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos, Ronaldinho) showed their skills and the one against England when Ronaldinho´s free kick showed his true talent which was raw then. Now after an amazing season with Barcelona, he is back to create some Samba magic again. Clearly, he is one of the players to watch out for in this tournament. There are some others as well, who will keep you excited with their game. The legendary Zidane is probably playing in his last World Cup, then you have Ronaldo (though he has not shown any great form, but you can expect him to strike form soon). Rooney is said to be in the squad for England, he was a great talent in the Euro-2004 in Portugal. Christian Ronaldo is also a player to watch out for. Among some senior legs, Nilsteroy, Beckham will be a great sight. Ibrahimovich had shown some magical skills in Euro-2004, I hope he carries the same form in this tournament as well.

Well, the tournament is missing some good teams and players like Turkey and Eto´o (Cameroon striker) who could not qualify. But among the less glamourous teams, Iran is supposed to be a dark horse. The team is ranked 24th in the FIFA rankings, much higher than other Aisan entries (Korea and Saudi Arabia). In the Iran line-up, there are 4 players who play for various clubs in the Bundesliga and are sure to make use of their "home advantage".

My personal favourites (in order of preference) this year are Brazil (naturally), Italy, Germany (biased because of living here), France (Zizou for sure), Argentina, Portugal, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Sweden, Iran. I would love to see a final between Brazil - Italy with Ronaldinho bagging the golden boot award.

Berlin Hauptbahnhof

Berlin´s new Hauptbahnhof (main train station) opens this week. The 5 storey steel and glass structure took 8 years to complete on a budget of 700 million euros. It features glass panels with an amazing display of Glass and Metal, the motive of almost all the major constructions in the capital city. It also has Berlin´s largest photovoltaic system, a network of solar cells mounted onto the glass itself and is designed to produce 160 Megawatt-hours of electricity each year. It is Europe´s largest station and will handle 1100 trains each day. It has about 54 escalators and 34 lifts offering a full view of the city. Located on banks of river Spree, it is close to where the Berlin Wall once stood. "The gleaming hulk of glass and steel is a "pyramid" for the modern age" according to the Egyptian-German Hany Azer who supervised the construction project. Also referred to as "the gigantic glass armadillo", the whole architecture is armor-plated with 9,000 separate sections and the station's curvature means no two pieces of glass are of the same size.

The whole building is a collection of individually crafted pieces and special attention to detail:* Grooves in the floor help blind passengers find their way to the platforms. For further assistance, raised numbers and Braille have been integrated into metal signs on the hand rails.

* Travelers will be spared some of the noise and bustle associated with train stations, since the approaching high-speed ICE and regional trains slide up to the platform with not much more than whisper. The tracks are embedded in concrete rather than the more commonplace gravel, reducing noise to a minimum.

* Engineers have also come up with nifty precautions against unforeseen accidents. In case of a train derailment, it will automatically slot into an extra track. Compact walls of concrete are in place to prevent the bulky carriages tipping onto adjacent tracks.

* A suspension system in the body of the platforms radically reduces vibration as the trains -- each weighing several hundred tons -- roll in. Thanks to this technology, the buildings close by at Potsdamer Platz and the government quarter won't shudder every minute as the locomotives trundle through.
But of all the fancy innovations, the fanciest may be the loudspeaker system. It's almost impossible to make sense of the garbled, barely audible announcements in most of Germany's train stations. But in Berlin's Central Station, sound engineers have created speaker system that make the computer-automated announcements crystal clear and understandable.

Disclaimer: The photographs are of the courtesy of AFP.

Il Codice Da Vinci

This is my first movie in Italian language, and one of my eagerly awaited movies. After reading the novel and visualising most of the scenes on the cast, I wanted to verify my imaginations with the directors interpretations on the screen. The problem with movies which are adapted from novels is that people have read the book before and hence know the plot in detail. So that takes away any thrill or suspense in the plot. Moreover while reading people visualise the story according to their imaginations and most of the time they are not satisfied with the directors adaption in the movie. In my opinion, only the Lord of the Rings triology stands out for exact interpretation of the screenplay according to the book. The screenplay of Peter Jackson comes very close to Tolkiens fantasy. I was once an avid reader of Alistair MacLeans novels. Personally for me, notable among his work was Where Eagles Dare. But when I saw the Movie adaptation of it (starring Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton), I was not quite satisfied with the direction of Brian Hutton.

Well anyways, Da Vinci Code stands between ok and good reviews. Personally to me the casting was the best part of the movie. I couldnt have imagined Robert Langdon to be much different from Tom Hanks ( his hairstyle was a little odd though! ), Audrey Tautou and Ian McKellen fit the bill for Sophie and Leigh Teabing perfectly. Though there are several differences in the movie from the book (for instance, only one cryptex is shown, there is no second cryptex inside the first. In the novel, Robert and Sophie go to a library in London to discover the relevance of A. Pope, while in the movie they borrow a cell phone web browser on a city bus). More or less the movie is deserves one watch, cannot be recommended for repeated viewing.

Personally I would prefer Angels and Deamons anytime over this novel for its thrills and plot.I hope that it is also adapted into a movie some day.

Bits n Bytes : Windows Academic Search

I came across this site of Microsoft, which makes search in Academic Journals and publications. The concept is very similar to Google Scholar, CiteSeer or DBLP. The interesting thing is the side frame which gives you some information of the link/paper like abstract, keywords etc. for more information about its working and trying it out. go to http://academic.live.com/

Bits n Bytes - Real-Time Mapping of the World

SenseWeb, a project being done at Microsoft, attempts to enable Windows Live Local to have real-time mapping and localized data. The real-time data which would be refreshed on a per minute basis could provide information on local gas prices, traffic flows, parking information etc. According to the research team, people could make informed decisions based on real-life conditions which will be fed directly by people or automated sensor equipments.

For further reading, check out this article -
http://www.techreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=infotech&sc=&id=16781&pg=1