Jobs : the movie

UFC 168 : Rhonda Rousey and Chris Weidman wins but UFC is definitely not for me

I was introduced to UFC only in 2013 just out of curiosity of watching some real good knockouts like Tyson did and there was a lot of talk about one of the best sportsperson in the world as Anderson Silva. I got hooked into it and watched a lot of MMA clips and found them good and educative on the techniques utlised and the different holds used in a fight which we are never going to see in boxing.But like any other contact sport this is brutal I knew that.
 Rhonda Rousey Vs Miesha Tate
After Rousey famously broke Miesha Tate's elbow in the first fight which I never really could watch the full clip  as it was just too painful to watch but atleast appreciated the technique used to get that position.

This rematch was especially known for their long feud between the two camps and I have noted down Dec 28th about 2months back to remember watching it online and I woke up early on cue to see it.This rematch was slightly better since Tate managed to take Rhonda to 3 rounds and I had a feeling that if it went to the 4th or the 5th round Tate would have had a better chance but Rhonda somehow managed to get the position she wants and puts Tate on her famous ARMBAR hold and makes her tap out.  
Chris Weidman Vs Anderson Silva 2
Now Anderson Silva was the reason I got to know about UFC and one of the first Live matches i saw online was the first fight between these two. It was kind of comical finish as Anderson was just playing around doing nothing and Weidman got a punch in and it was over..... Hardly a champion finish. So,everyone expected the real Anderson Silva to come in the second match and I was also enthusiastic on the same and after a good match between Rousey and Tate thought the "Spider" would show up. But what followed was this.....

 It was an unfortunate accident but it convinced me that UFC is not for me. I would like to see a knockout but this game is just too brutal and I cant watch that..

Me Playing sheet music of popular songs

Self taught on how to play the keyboard now enjoying this wonderful Piano App by Revontulet Studios. "Silent Night" "Bridal Chorus" "We wish you a Merry Christmas" and others. Hopefully will learn more songs on the way. Wonderful way to learn the keys. Playing the keys on a Samsung Galaxy Tablet

Book Review : A Gift to Remember by Mellisa Hill

I have not read many books of the 21st Century since I had some time to kill in my hands thought I should start doing it.So i downloaded a random book and went through it in my tablet. It is not very long so I finished it in two days.

I did not choose the book based on any reference or reviews ,just thought about getting a very recent book from any author cause I have not read a thing which is created in the past 8 years, so I just downloaded the first book I came across and had no idea what genre was it or about the author. I found out very soon that its a Womens fiction and most of her readership are women. It started with a general description of the main character "Darcy" and the development of her character as a book geek.An accident turns her world upside around and only increases her fantasized reality and phantasm to greater heights and how it affects her in the end.
I loved how Melissa seems to build the tension and in the process also creates new charcters in the book till the end .I especially loved how all the famous quotes by the greatest authors at the start of each chapter.Infact, there are a lot of literary references in this book but almost all are women fiction which made me somewhat ignorant.(Pride and Prejudice, Little women etc)The movies were enough for me!!She has managed to make the book suspenseful and also succeeded in giving a fathomable ending.It is also kind of reminiscent of an imaginative person who revels in the absolute beauty of their vivid imagination and try to project the same to reality. I could relate to that.

Minnesota Timberwolves @ LA CLippers - 23rd December 2013

Wat a match i witnessed today. LA Clippers looking like a top 4 team this season with Doc Rivers at the helm playing against a much improved Timberwolves team with Kevin Love playing like a MVP. Him and Pekovic are like an Offensive front court nightmare. I Beleive that Timberwolves are the only team in the nba where their top 2 scorers are a 5 and a 4. This is a throwback to Old school basketball and Pekovic especially looked unstoppable at the post.

Kevin Love and Pekovic
These two looked absolutely unstoppable.Both Blake griffin and De Andre were abused time and again and a premier blocker like DJ couldnt find any type of defense against the fast hook shots of Pekovic. Kevin Love seemed to hit more hook shots than jump shots in this game which is kind of surprising as Jump shooting is his game.They struggled in jump shots though. Kevin Martin was good though going 7-12 but for some reason he played only 32 minutes.He played similar minutes in OKC but he should be playing more in a team like the Wolves as they have a very thin bench and with rubio becoming worse everyday his minutes should and eventually will increase. They finished with a combined 79 points in this Overtime game.
Clippers defense
I remember watching the Celtics Clips game and was amazed how good the Clips defense was. They clearly played better defense than the Wolves. Darren Collison was amazing in this category and even scored the same points as Chris Paul.Even CP3 has become more of a facilitator under Doc and would be grateful for not expounding excessive energy like he used to under Del Negro.The Clips look like a bonafide Payoffs team and the tenacity and will power showed today against wat looked like an unstoppable duo in Love and Pekovic. I liked how they went for the steal and not fouling K.Martin who made the mistake of going to his own half to get the ball and was immediately double teamed by Collison and Paul which enabled them to get a quick basket.I like how Jared Dudley was still in the game even after going 0-6 before in the final minutes.
The reason for the Wolves loss
The minutes of K Martin and Corey Brewer has to increase. Brewer is a top rated defender and is almost unstoppable transition offensive option.With the two bigs doing the bulk of the scoring and Rubio becoming a dud I believe that Corey brewer can be made into a ball handler and a viable third option along with K Martin. T.Wolves can still make the Playoff if they could find more defense and it might also help K Love in his MVP bid as his stats are just PURE GOLD !!! and being a losing team would take a lot of sheen out of it.

Clippers @ Celtics - 12th December 2013

Clippers @ Celtics
Couldnt miss this one when one of the champion head coaches goes back to his old team which he lead to their first championship in two decades like Doc Rivers.There are a lot of equations at play here like the famed Celtics defense Vs the unstoppable Clippers offense. A veteran Head coach like Doc vs the 37 year old rookie head coach Brad stevens.
Docs effect on the clippers

Both these coaches have been amazing for their teams. Doc has instantly made the Clippers a championship contender just by being there ans stressing on defense which the Clippers lacked severely.Especially the way he is treating and preserving his star players are amazing. In this game he rested Chris paul and rarely encouraged Blake griffin to be the offensive star for the Clips. Expecting more than 20 points from Blake is unfair to him especially if you have offensive players like Jamal Crawford,Chris Dudley ,Riddick and now the infamous Stephen Jackson. I think the very fact that Jamal Crawford takes more shots than Blake makes this team win more.But the most visible effect by Doc is the defensive approach he has bought to the Clips. Collision,De andre Jordan are first class defenders and can hold their position quite well, even Blake is gettin better in defense and rebounding.Chris paul should be loving to play under Doc system as there has been significant less pressure on him than the previous two seasons with the Clips under Vinny Del Negro.Chris Paul used to run his own plays,create opportunities for others and also be a closure for the Clips in the past two seasons.Now sometimes he isnt even on the floor when the Clips makes a run.
Brad stevens effect on the Celtics
He is famous for making a mediocre College team into a champion team at Butler and when Danny Ainge blew up the Celtics team for rebuilding thought that it would best rebuild with a rookie head coach in Brad. Wasnt he right....Brad has somehow managed to make a Rondo less team which should be way below the playoff teams into a top 6 team in the East. He has continued the defensive approach by Doc at the Celtics by encouraging the Bradley.Courtney Lee stranglehold on the defense and making Jeff Green and more importantly Jordan Crawford into a superstar. The rise of Jordan Crawford was a surprise to everybody and it is a testament to Brad's system.The Celtics usually defies their regular season standing at the playoffs and usually making it to the conference finals.Maybe they can make a run with their defense first approach this year as well
The Game
Clippers does not have a illustrious history at the Celtics centre. Infact Chris Paul - th ebest point guard in the league averages 8 points against the famed Bradley,Courtney Lee defense.Going into this Celtics were holding their opponents to a 40% FG% and making it low scoring games.The game was pretty close most of the way but the Clips defense with the combination of Jamal Crawford amazing offense pulled the clips through.This game is a testament of how good coaching makes better teams.

The Avengers Funniest moments

Back to the future in real Life

How does Apple make Billions of $s as profits but does not pay a cent of Tax

This article by Simon Bowers of the Guardian enlightens us how????
Cathy Kearney, an accountant in the Irish city of Cork, appears to live a fairly modest home life. A graduate of the local university, her home for 15 years has been a dairy farm outside Youghal, a seaside town a short drive from the city.

The 49-year-old lives with her husband and children in a large, but far from grand, farmhouse. Outside work she is involved in the local church. She is also, at first sight, the brains behind much of Apple's exceptional global success in recent times.

Kearney is the Silicon Valley computer giant's top lieutenant in Ireland, and has overseen the explosive success of the company's operations in Cork, responsible for selling iPads, iPhones and MacBooks to scores of markets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. No less than $22bn of Apple's profits – two-thirds of the total for the group – came from Kearney's Cork companies in 2011 alone. Back in the United States, Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive, has described this international success as unprecedented.
Two years ago Kearney featured in a list of Ireland's 20 most powerful women produced by the Irish Independent. It declared that Apple's success owed much to her "shrewd direction", though it also noted that she was a very private individual and had refused to provide biographical details or a photograph of herself.
"We focus on our products rather than individuals as we like to recognise the team effort at Apple," a spokesman said.
Kearney did give one interview last month, however – speaking in private to US Senate officials. They have been gathering information about Apple's Irish operations on suspicion that the group is aggressively – though legally – shifting profits from operations around the world, particularly from the US, to Ireland in order to pay less tax.
Of particular interest to the investigators was a cluster of companies, registered at Apple's Cork office, to which had been transferred development rights, outside the Americas, to many of the group's products. As one senator put it last week, Apple had "shifted that golden goose to Ireland". Poring over paperwork for these companies, Senate staff saw the familiar names of senior California-based Apple executives, including Cook himself. They also saw Kearney's name – again and again.
Probing further, among the companies they alighted on was Apple Operations International, the top Apple holding company in Cork. Kearney is the only AOI director in Ireland. Directors' duties usually include attending board meetings. But the Senate officials discovered she had attended just seven of 33 AOI board meetings over almost seven years – once in person, the other six by telephone. All but one of the meetings were in California, where the other directors were based.

Meanwhile, in four years, almost $30bn of profits poured into AOI, though it has no physical presence or employees in Cork or, indeed, anywhere else on the planet. One source on the Senate subcommittee on investigations joked that AOI and others were "iCompanies – i for imaginary, invisible".
Back in 1997 Kearney's job title at the Cork office was financial controller, though she may have worked there longer than that. Apple declined requests for an interview with her. Guardian inquiries were redirected from Cork to Apple Europe Limited, a company in Mayfair, London, with about 300 marketing and sales staff. Today, Kearney's formal business title is vice-president of European operations for another Cork company, Apple Distribution International. But it is her directorships of AOI and other Apple subsidiaries that have attracted attention. They help satisfy incorporation requirements under Irish law, and some of them do employ staff in Cork. What surprised investigators most was that at least three of these companies, including AOI, appeared to have no tax residency anywhere in the world.
Their boards have been able to tell the Irish tax authorities that Kearney, the sole Irish-resident director, cannot be judged to manage or control these companies, and that important decision-making rests in California.
As a result, AOI and others are not deemed tax resident in Ireland.
Meanwhile, because these same companies are incorporated at addresses in Ireland, under US law they appeared not to be tax resident in the US either. "Magically," observed Senate committee chair Carl Levin, "it's neither here nor there."
The Cork accountant is indeed an important woman, running a Cork office of up to 4,000 staff.
But she has also helped saved Apple billions in tax.
It is amazing that how this model helps to make Apple Operations responsible for two-thirds of the profits of the Apple Enterprise as non - tax resident in all the countries,it is unbelievable how the DTAA(double taxation avoidance agreement)which is drafted by OECD allows this to happen if the taxable entity is a non-resident in both the countries.

Why are the Spurs so good.... season after season

I always had this question that how can a basketball team made up of essentially three veterans of the past decade and a handful of other team rejects or very low draft picks seem to have a 60% win ratio in the past 16 seasons. Kelly Scaletta from BR had this wonderful report on the same.
Gregg Popovich, the head coach of the San Antonio Spurs, has established his place on the Mount Rushmore of coaches, alongside Red Auerbach, Phil Jackson and Pat Riley. What makes him and his team so successful, though?

Establishing he belongs with the greatest is not hard.
According to Basketball Reference, Popovich is 247 games over .500 for his career, putting him third all time.
If the Spurs win 58, he’ll move into second this season. Considering the Spurs are off to a 14-2 start, that’s a distinct possibility.
He is on pace to have his 16th consecutive season winning at least 60 percent of his games. No team in history, not even the Boston Celtics of the 60s, has ever come close to that. No other coach, not even Phil Jackson, has even brushed up against that.
In fact, after perusing Basketball Reference’s data, it appears no other coach or team has ever even had more than 12 such consecutive seasons.

That he has been able to have such a sustained level of success in a league that has extended to 30 teams and in an era of free agency, it’s all the more remarkable. When you consider that San Antonio is a small market, it’s phenomenal.
(The city of San Antonio is the seventh largest in the country, but based on market size, it is only 37th, making it the fourth-smallest market in the league).
With four wins in five finals appearances during that span and two Coach of the Year awards, the credentials are clearly there for Popovich to lay claim to the title of hands-down greatest active coach in the game. But, what has he done to get there?
There are three things that make him so successful: the X’s and O’s of his system, his cultivation of an atmosphere where players desire to put the team and system above individual glory and his developing a familial environment that relieves the pressures of the game.

The X’s and O’s


Ultimately, coaching begins with a system. Nothing else matters if you don’t have one. It’s very hard for a player to be where he is supposed to be on the court if he doesn’t have somewhere to be. That’s not a problem in San Antonio.
Popovich has developed an offense that is consistently one of the best in the league.
These are not your slightly older brother’s version of the Spurs that dominated the aughts with Duncan-led boring ball. No-sirree-Bob! These are the new and improved, Parker-led Spurs. These guys run up and down the court.
Since 2011, they are the seventh-fastest paced team and have the fourth-most efficient offense in the league. Only the Miami Heat have a higher effective field-goal percentage. How do they generate so much offense?
The Spurs' use of screens is outright beautiful. They’ll use pick-and-rolls, double screens, triple screens and even quadruple screens to set up an open shot. Here’s a perfect example. (This was literally the first play I looked at. I didn’t have to go scouring for one). Look at the number of screens set for Tony Parker on this “loop play” to create an open shot.

First, the Spurs set up a screen with Matt Bonner, also forcing the Utah Jazz into effectively screening out Parker’s defender, Alec Burks, and themselves as well. Burks fights through the screen, though, and keeps up.
Parker runs through the screen and loops around, where Kawhi Leonard sets a second pick. Now, Parker can either come around Leonard, catch the pass from Duncan and drive to the rim, having a serious mismatch against Richard Jefferson, or, if Burks can fight his way through the second screen (which he does) Parker can go high and let Duncan set a third one.
Now, Parker is running at full speed, and Duncan is setting the pick. Burks can’t get through the third screen, and Parker has the wide open jumper for an easy two.
This is the essence of Popovich’s offense. Create open shots by setting screens.
And, it’s not always multiple screens setting up a shot. Sometimes, it’s one player blocking out two players at one time. Watch Matt Bonner (sort of) screen two Orlando Magic to set up this open three for Marco Belinelli.
he Spurs run a beautiful kind of team game, with every player constantly doing his job. They use team ball to set up shots, and that’s on coaching.
The defense is no different in that, once again, it’s the team concept that rules the day.
Popovich likes to have as many players as possible in the paint, keeping it packed, utilizing as much of the three seconds as possible. Each defender bobs in and out, maximizing the time they can spend in the paint. This sort of discipline comes from practice and deliberate coaching.
They shift their perimeter defenders to the strong side, and when the ball gets passed to the opposite side, they just seamlessly flow to where the ball is, always keeping the paint packed and the point of attack protected. Again, this issues from coaching.
The Spurs have ridden this team-oriented defense to the second-best efficiency in the NBA.
There’s no “I” in Spurs, but there is a “U”.
The amazing thing about the Spurs is that they’ve had so much success in spite of the lack of perceived “talent” on the team. For a team without it, they have an awful lot of it.
Consider the facts.
Apart from Duncan, who was taken first overall in 1997, the Spurs start Leonard (taken 15th), Parker (taken 28th), Tiago Splitter (taken 28th) and Danny Green (taken 46th).
Green came within a Ray Allen miracle of going from the D-League to the NBA Finals MVP.
The other heavy rotation players include Boris Diaw (whom they picked up off the waiver wire), Manu Ginobili (taken 57th), Marco Belinelli (signed with a mid-level exception) and Patty Mills (taken 55th).
This is a group of players that Popovich has developed into something more than they were before they got there. If you have a few players who end up being more than you thought they’d be, it’s good fortune. When it’s virtually every player you coach, it’s good coaching.
There are no attention-seeking glory hounds on this roster, and there is no room for them.
It helps that leadership, from the owner, Peter Holt (if you’re not a Spurs fan, you probably couldn’t even name him), down to the stars, Duncan, Parker and Ginobili, all buy into the philosophy. The system is what matters here.
For the Spurs, ultimately, it’s Popovich who calls the shots. Make no mistake about it. Ben Golliver of Sports Illustrated quotes Manu Ginobili.
If Pop is really mad, then you drop the discussion. We might talk for 10 minutes about how to defend the pick-and-roll, and he may change his idea. But once he is convinced that is the way, then that is the way. And if you don’t follow, you end up in the Pop doghouse.
The players all buy into the system, in part because they’re required to, but in part because it works. This amalgamation of lottery leftovers and waiver-wire waifs has had greater team success, but each individual has also enjoyed a greater career for having bought into the system.
On the Spurs, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and each part has become happily greater because he has been content to merely be a part of the whole. There are no divas on this team. They have no place here.
Cultivating a Culture of Winning
For a man name Gregg, there are a lot of “gr” words that describe him well. “Great” comes to mind, but so do “grump” and “gruff.” Then again, so does “gregarious,” “gravity” and occasionally it seems (on the inside at least) “grinning.”
Perhaps the best word, though, is “grandpa.” The particular mix of grumpy and love he seems to deliver to both players and commentators alike is grandfatherly. How apt that his nickname is “Pop.”
For all the task-mastering Popovich does, he does so with a genuine concern for his players. They realize this, and it pays dividends. They want to play for him. They want to play for each other.
And, this is something absolutely cultivated by Popovich. As he reveals to Golliver.
Yes, we’re disciplined with what we do. But that’s not enough. Relationships with people are what it’s all about. You have to make players realize you care about them. And they have to care about each other and be interested in each other. Then they start to feel a responsibility toward each other. Then they want to do for each other.
And I have always thought it helps if you can make it fun, and one of the ways you do that is let them think you’re a little crazy, that you’re interested in things outside of basketball. ‘Are there weapons of mass destruction? Or aren’t there? What, don’t you read the papers?’ You have to give the message that the world is wider than a basketball court.
In this little bit of goofiness on the bench between Ginobili and Duncan here, you see the kind of harmless fun that happens on a team where the players have a genuine affection for one another. That’s a chemistry cultivated by Popovich.
With other coaches, the tough, exacting style that Popovich has wears players down over time, but the reason he has been able to sustain success with it for 16 years and counting is because he blends together his expert understanding and exacting style with a human side.
President Theodore Roosevelt once said, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." It's an apt expression to describe the relationship between the Spurs and their coach. In short, it’s more than what Popovich does that makes him so successful, it’s who he is.
It’s not any one of those three things that account for his success as much as it is the way he’s managed to weave them together into something that has become what you expect from Spurs basketball.

***
Often, when people discuss the Spurs, they ask whether Duncan made Popovich or Popovich made Duncan. That’s the wrong question. Duncan would be great anywhere, and so would Popovich. But Parker, Ginobili, Bruce Bowen and a host of other players are who they are because they had Pop.

He didn’t make Duncan great, but he turned the Spurs into a great franchise. Outside of Jerry West and the Los Angeles Lakers, it’s hard to think of any one person who has had a greater impact on one team for so long a time. He truly is one of the great coaches in the history of the game.