I Am Legend

I am sure one must have heard of this movie. It stars Will Smith, the greatest actor according to me of all time. This charismatic actor will be playing the role of Robert Neville in the movie.

I Am Legend is actually based on a book by the same name written by Richard Matheson. This book has had three remakes till date.

- The first one The Last Man On Earth, originally an Italian film, but the screenplay was written by Richard Matheson. This movie was released in 1964.
- The second one The Omega Man, realesed in 1971 had a few changes to the storyline. It did not do too well as a movie.
- And of course the third one I Am Legend, releasing on December 14th, 2007, starring Will Smith will acording to me definitely do exceedingly well.

The project was initially started off in 1997 by Warner Bros. This movie has seen many changes in the directors. Ridley Scott, the first director wanted to star Arnold Schwarzenegger. The movie soon got disrupted due to continuos budgetary concerns.
The movie changed hands from Scott to Michael Bay to Francis Lawrence. Lawrence and Will Smith had an agreement and Will Smith agreed to act in the movie.

Will Smith who of course has many awards to his credit has disappointed me only in one movie out of the 18 films that I saw of his, and that was Men In Black II.

I Am Legend: Teaser Poster

The outline of the story is this: A new man-made virus attacks and wipes out the entire population of the New York City., leaving Robert Neville as the last man to survive in this city or even the world. The virus turns people into some sort of mutants which are nocturnal. Robert Neville who is running out of time is searching for survivors across the world.

Some parts of the movie were shot at Brooklyn Bridge in New York City for $5 million making it the most expensive scene in the New York City.

As far as the marketing is concerned, DC Comics and Vertigo Comics had an agreement and in a joint venture along with Richard Christian Matheson (author's son) are going to create a comic based on the movie.
Also, Warner Bros. launched an online multiplayer game called I Am Legend: Survivor in the virtual Second Life.

This movie will surely be a great movie. I am expectantly waiting to see Will Smith kick some virus butt...

Western Digital MyBook

There was a time when I thought 9.52 GB was more than enough for me. That was what my HDD space was on my very first Desktop. Well, it seems the amount of space needed by an average person has increased drastically! A few of my friends are cribbing because they don't have enough space on their 250 GB Hard Disk Drives! :O

Yep.... we are on that phase where even 250 GB is easily shattered by the likes of high speed broadband Internet.... I mean just imagine.... I was searching for the movie, Jackass Number One.... I got a Blu-Ray result.... 44 GB !!!! Thats what am talking about....


I recently got a Western Digital MyBook 250 GB for my 18th birthday.... xD

For those who don't know Western Digital... go die... :P ...hehe its a rival company to Seagate...

OK... the MyBook is basically an External HDD. Note that it is NOT a portable hard disk...its an EXTERNAL HDD... it means its huge... :P

Now, I had an option of going for the MyBook Pro, Essential and Premium....but I chose the Essential... a pretty good choice if you want to just store your files and want a good bargain for the best per GB price.

The difference was that....
Premium: It has a FireWire (thats IEEE 1394 port) 400 port along with the usual USB 2.0. It has a back-up software and a really nifty disk-usage indicator.

Pro: The best in line... but too expensive. Its got a FireWire 400 and two FireWire 800 ports and a USB 2.0 port. It has a better back-up software.



Now, all the MyBooks look like...well... books! I sometimes keep them with my books. :P

Front View


Rear View


The specifications of the WD MyBook 250 GB are as follows:

1] Price: Rs. 7000/- as of 7th July, 2007... now for same price we get 500 GB!
2] Drive Capacity: 250 GB.....but after the cut-downs on the FAT32 file-system etc... 234 GB
3] Interface: USB 2.0
4] Other Stuff: Got some wires n plugs, some back-up software and other crap...
5] Write Speed: 25.5 Mb/s...... once I got a burst speed of 27 Mb/s
6] Read Speed: 29.8 Mb/s
7] Dimensions:
Height 6.710 Inches (Max)
Length 5.550 Inches (Max)
Width 2.25 Inches (+/- 0.010 inch)
Weight 2.90 Pounds
8] 7200 rpm

This External Storage device is definitely worth a buy at the moment, considerinthe fact that the cost of External HDDs have drastically crashed rock-bottom low. But unfortunately, it is EXTERNAL, pretty annoying if you want to carry it around, for which I would suggest a Western Digital Passport 250 GB.

AMD: The New Quad Cores

AMD's Athlon 64 series was one of the biggest hits before Intel Core 2 Duo. Costing at a whooping Rs. 44000+, these babies performed well.
The AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 was really great, with the new 65nm technology, this baby has a processor frequency of about 2.8 GHz.
But if you think this is good, wait till you hear what AMD has in store for its high paying customers this mid-July.
To complete the brand new Quad FX platform AMD is introducing three new processors: the Athlon 64 FX-74, FX-72 and FX-70, running at 3.0GHz, 2.8GHz and 2.6GHz respectively. Each physical processor features two cores and a 1MB L2 cache per core, much like previous dual core FX processors, but what sets these CPUs apart from previous FX chips is that they are sold in bundles of two. So when you buy an Athlon 64 FX-74, you are actually buying two dual-core CPUs in a single box. It's not the most elegant way of getting four cores, but it gets the job done and AMD manages to do so at a competitive price. Note that these CPUs are effectively Opterons but with the memory controller configured to support un-buffered DDR2. The FX-74 is the first LGA desktop CPU made by AMD.

AMD Athlon 64 FX-74

These are the new competetive pricings for this year.
CPU Clock Speed L2 Cache Price
AMD Athlon 64 FX-74* 3.0GHz 1MB per $999

AMD Athlon 64 FX-72* 2.8GHz 1MB per core $799

AMD Athlon 64 FX-70* 2.6GHz 1MB per core $599

AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 2.8GHz 1MB per core $713

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.6GHz 1MB per core $403

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 2.66GHz 4MB per 2 cores $999

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600** 2.40GHz 4MB per 2 cores $851

Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.93GHz 4MB $999

Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66GHz 4MB $530

Intel Core 2 Duo vs AMD Athlon 64 FX-74. The left one is Core 2 Duo and the right one is AMD Athlon 64 FX-74