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Anitha@Thought Raker has an finished story to which I attempted some endings. Had good fun, the power to change course of lives of characters is thrilling and satisfying. Can’t imagine the fun God up there must be having.

If you read this post, let me know which ending you liked ?

The story:

Dec 10, 2006:
What I really need now is a miracle.

Consider this: I’m forty-plus, I was fired from my job as a Project Manager in a leading software company six months ago, my wife left me a fortnight ago taking our two kids with her, and I was rendered homeless yesterday after my building was razed down as an illegal structure.

I’m sitting amidst scattered boxes in my friend’s apartment, and I light up a cigarette. It is my fifth for the day, and it’s just ten in the morning. I guess I should consider myself lucky that this place was available – it was between tenants. I haven’t spoken to Sharad about the rent, which is just as well, considering the state of my finances. My credit card bill for the month showed mainly liquor purchases, which, I suppose, is an indicator of how I am drowning my sorrows.

Feb 12, 2007:

It’s Valentine’s Day in two days. The romantic mush all around the city is making me sick. I remember our first Valentine’s Day . I was scornful, but Nicky spent the whole night putting up little love notes everywhere. The first one I saw was on the bathroom mirror, and it said: Love you always! They popped up throughout the day, those silly notes, in my pockets, my mail, my lunch-bag… it didn’t feel real. I didn’t think she loved me all that much. It was just her way of being part of the gimmick. She hasn’t contacted me in more than a month. Perhaps she really never loved me.

June 26, 2007:

I’m still in Sharad’s apartment. He hasn’t bothered me much thankfully, just calling sometimes to ensure that I was doing ok. Cash is running real low. I’ve begun selling empty bottles and newspapers to buy my soma. I found this exquisite sculpture hidden inside a cupboard. I hope Sharad doesn’t miss it. I got just 150 bucks for it. But that’s enough to get by. I am not too worried.

Oct 3, 2007:

I almost burnt down the apartment. It was my goddamn cigarette that did it. The security guy had given me some of his cheap liquor (I can’t afford my brand now), and I had passed out before I finished my smoke. Most of my boxes which were still unpacked were reduced to ashes. I don’t even remember what they contained, so it’s just as well.

Jan 13, 2008:

Nicky had come to see me today. With Sharad. She said I was a total wreck. Ha! Talk about irony. What I really need now is a gun.

My Endings:
One:

Jan 15, 2008: Bought a gun. Testing it now upon myself. Goodbye.

Feb 12, 2008: Yeah, I’m still here. I don’t recall everything clearly. I was so drunk. Gun was not real, of course I hardly could afford a real one. I fell exhausted in house for 2 days. Sharad returned from his out station visit. I am admitted to hospital now.

Feb 14, 2008: Nurse smiled. I smiled. That took lot of effort.

Mar 18, 2008: She said, it is not worth it. Sharad said he would recover from me every penny he has spent on me after my recovery. Heh! sometimes friends are a limit. I am going to be admitted to rehabiliation center. She said she would meet me alternate days.

Oct 3, 2008: I am going back to Sharad’s apartment. She is moving in with me (she said just to take care that I dont touch the bottle and cigarrettes again. She knows I wont do it). My ex-CEO called. He is starting on his own. Asked me if I could join him - with a salary 1/5th of what I was earning but he says profits would be shared equally.

Dec 10, 2008: She said Nikita had come when I was asleep and returned not wanting to disturb me. Disturb, ha. What Nikita did not know was, I was not sleeping. Sharad offered me a peg to celebrate my rent payment. I said not when she is looking. Both of us were joking.
What I really now and forever need is what I have - laughter,love.

Two:

Jan 15, 2008: Bought a gun. Trying it on myself. Goodbye. Wait, there is a knock on the door.

Mar 18,2008: Nikita had come that day. No, fate brought her there. I made her past tense. But memories ! Memories will always remain in present tense. I accepted my crime. It was easy.

June 26,2008: Life in jail. No complaints. I have a “legal” shelter (which will not be brought down overnight), I get to eat food, I have no boss who would fire me ! All I really need is paper and pen to pen my thoughts and life.

Three:

Jan 15, 2008: Bought a gun. Have placed it next to bottle and pack of cigarrettes. Which are next to a photo of Nikita and children. The photo was taken after the recovery of Nikita’s fatal accident. She was in coma for 2 days. And was hospitalized for a month. The work,money,dreams,life was in shatters. I was angry at my helplessness which I showed on client and team mates. Client complained and I was fired, citing my mental illness. I am staring at the photo, bottle and gun.

Mar 18, 2008: Don’t know how long I stared at them that day. Finally the bottle won over. I am in hospital now. Nikita and children had come in morning. With Sharad. Nikita said, get a life. Ha. She left. With Sharad. What were those Sharad’s eyes saying - pity or a hint of victory ? I am kicking the bottle. “Get a life”, she said!

June 26, 2008: Havent drunk a drop from 3 months..smoking has come down to 2 a day, which will eventually go. I convinced the computer institute to give me a job. I am teaching “Business Communication” among others, ha talk of irony. I am moving out of Sharad’s house to a rented house.

Jan 18, 2009: I got a divorce. I could have actually won the claim to children, but I let it go. I heard Nikita and Sharad will soon marry.No anger towards Sharad, he saved my life.

( Optional extension 1 below )
Oct 3, 2009: Nikita and Sharad came to leave children with me. They were very stubborn not to stay with new father. Nikita will come and meet them once in a week.

Four

Jan 15, 2008: Bought a gun. When I put it to head, suddenly I felt afraid. It takes great courage to die. Even greater courage to live, my mom used to say. After all, what is there to lose now ? I shot at bottle using the gun. I kept staring at the spilled liquor for more than 2 hours. In the reflection I saw, from the day Nikita got close to me to the day she drifted apart. She may be wrong, may not be. I told myself “Get up, wash your face!”.

Feb 12, 2008: I visited Nikita. We did not speak. Sometimes, silence is enough. She moved with me to Sharad’s house.

Oct 3, 2008: Children wanted to go on a roller-coaster ride. My life has been a ride - what a fall, what a rise ! As if everything was for good, I got posted in a MNC and have been immediately sent to US for long term. Life is good.

Five:

Jan 15, 2008: Am pushed out of Sharad’s house. I am begging on streets. All I have is this book and pen. I dont eat, instead I drink with collected money.

Jan 31,2008: I am still alive.

Mar 18,2008: I am being treated in this community hospital. I can not see the poor and deceased here. I have pledged my service to this hospital after I recover.

Jun 26,2008: Great satisfaction is attained by serving people.

Oct 3, 2008: Nikita found out that I am here. She has a job now, but she realized what she lacks. She came to say sorry and rebuild our life. I have no hatred towards her. But I gently declined and said bye. Her tears may or may not move me, but surely I did not want to see them.

It is sometimes excruciatingly difficult to blog, esp to write a post (not the linking stuff). Writer’s block is one thing and having too much to write but finding no time to write is another.
And then, like it has happened today, the whole time is spent in browsing, chatting, installing and stuff. I haven’t been able to draft a single paragraph!

# As said earlier, I am not daily-digest-posting my del.icio.us links on this blog. Instead I strongly beg-recommend-request-urge you to subscribe to this feed : http://feeds.feedburner.com/Lens/Convex - this will contain the google reader shared items and selected items from my notebook. Together now it is a complete link feed I could wish for. If you want to have a look at the page, it will be redirected from this easy url : http://rkblogs.net/blog/link-blog ,

# As is obvious, the email updates, from the blog will not include the links as was happening earlier. Feed readers request you to subscribe to above feed.

# Waiting for feedburner integration of Twitter daily digest and Reader link blog available under link splicer. How do I get heard ?

# The feed will be a mixture of all things that interest me - numerous blog posts from others, tech news, this and that and all. Be warned but do subscribe !

# Finally I can now use del.icio.us for what it is - bookmarking, instead of link blogging.

# Notebook (combined with this) is actually much more and I am possibly using it to full capability Just for the sake of completion here is my public page and here is the feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Lens/Window ( However, subscribing to Convex feed is enough, the notebook updates will be available there.)

# Not subscribed to Convex yet ? my last reminder, request - Do it now !

Undoubtedly one of the most awaited and most useful plugins is here finally - a plugin to automatically upgrade the Wordpress. No lazy procrastination anymore.

Here is what it can do for you

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins.

The plugin can also can be run in a automated mode where in you do not have to click on any links to go to the next step.

Go here for the release site (and I got it via). I have uploaded and activated it but not yet tried it.

******

Among other changes to this blog, del.icio.us links are discontinued to be posted as blog entries. As I am using feedburner, del.icio.us links are being sliced there to the main blog. So no more blog entries and thus saving little space on my database How I wish some arrangement like that could be done to my twitter udpates too! Also I wish, I could change the frequency to weekly rather than daily. Ah ..wishes…if wishes were horses…

Installed odiogo plugin for audio feed. On my last post about talkr there was a comment from Odiogo that I could try odiogo and hence I am trying it. Now you can compare both talkr and odiogo for sometime. Any feedback would be appreciated !

*****

Among the lows, still haven’t had time to write few posts thats on  my mind. Still haven’t found a way to fix the repeated entries (its only a repeated display and not actually repeated entries though) and still have not been able to figure out why twitter updates often repeat same tweets or as is happening now it does not even update, or to make it post at the Indian end of day or to exclude reply tweets from the post.

*****

And if you haven’t already heard, Windows Live Writer is being used by lots of people. With plugin options and all, it has been the best offline blog editing tool I have seen. It is terrific and just what I wanted - I could save a copy of my blog in my computer and not bother about remembering where I save them, could write/edit in a feature rich editor, that too proper blog editor, rather than in boring notepad, could save on multiple clicks by logging in etc.

Yahoo! pipes was announced back in Feb but somehow I had not tried it. Desperate to mix and play around with feeds, I tried few services like FeedBlender, rssmix and finally with much resistance tried out Pipes. But soon I liked it so much that I spent lot of time trying out various things and had fun. The interface itself is artistic/aesthetic, before even thinking about the use. Rss mixing, I am sure, is just one of its functionalities and looking at it only as an rssmix alternative tool is injustice to its power.

I have put together almost all feeds related to my online activity (blog, cocomments,twitter,picasa,delicious) here. I was feeling proud about my brilliant idea of redirecting my blog’s feed to the above feed, but it is somewhat stupid. Any guesses why ? It may not serve any major purpose now apart from the fun of experimentation and having things at one place.

Here is what visionaries say about Pipes:
Tim O’Reilly :

Yahoo!’s new Pipes service is a milestone in the history of the internet. It’s a service that generalizes the idea of the mashup, providing a drag and drop editor that allows you to connect internet data sources, process them, and redirect the output.[..]This is something I’ve been waiting nearly ten years for.[..]hey allow developers to use two websites in a way that their creators didn’t quite intend, which extends them and makes them more useful. But mashups have generally been limited in their scope, pairwise combinations with their output typically being simply another web site. That is, the pipes and filter mechanism had not been generalized.

But perhaps more significantly, to develop a mashup, you already needed to be a programmer. Yahoo! Pipes is a first step towards changing all that, creating a programmable web for everyone.

Using the Pipes editor, you can fetch any data source via its RSS, Atom or other XML feed, extract the data you want, combine it with data from another source, apply various built-in filters (sort, unique (with the “ue” this time:-), count, truncate, union, join, as well as user-defined filters), and apply simple programming tools like for loops. In short, it’s a good start on the Unix shell for mashups.[..]Pipes can simply be used as a kind of “power browser.” [..] For example, you can build a custom mashup to search for traffic along your own routes every morning, or a news aggregator that searches multiple sites for subjects you care about. All you have to do is start with one of the existing modules

Anil:

There’s also another key accomodation of social functionality: Pipes is pretty.[..]Is Pipes going to be a success? In many ways it already is. It lets Yahoo unequivocally be first at something, and if you count the broader market of web-based application development tools, it lets Yahoo be best at something, too. It’s innovative, exciting, and well-done.

TechCrunch

It takes effort to explain the significance of a new product when the immediate benefit to consumers may not be so obvious, and the awkwardly named “pipes” from Yahoo! is no exception.[...] It works like a visual procedural programming language with the output of the process dropping out at the bottom, in the form of text output, RSS, SMS alerts of even JSON. You can use feeds, user input or other pipes as input.

The beauty of the application is with its simplicity - a user can take any sources, user input requests or the above mentioned module and drag+drop them into place and then connect the pipes. Within minutes I had built an application

And Library clips has few links :

More than just RSS mixing, it allows you to manipulate the data at a granular level, eg. translate data, scan for location metadata within the feed source, limit items in the feed, sort the items in the feed.

Once again, my experiment’d pipe is here. (Click edit source / clone )
**

Talking of mashups, google mashup is the latest on the block. Spent sometime at it Here are few links related to google mashups and looking at the samples , I can think of some similar mashups that could be cooked like

• hotels/eatouts in bangalore
• cricket team’s matches , dates, venues, news, message board

**
And oh yes, Ajax Slideshow from my picasa album is running on the sidebar. Tried in vain, to include it in the post

I had registered for twitter way back in December. For the unknown, it constantly asks you to answer one simple question “what are you doing” either at the site or from IM. It allows you to follow/subscribe to see what your friends are doing. Thats all, no big deal. In short it is like the status message shown on gtalk. Or say orkut self scraps + friends scraps at one place.

But after hanging around a little (2 minutes), I had no idea why it would make sense or how it was supposed to work or any clue why one would use it. I have my blog for my updates and twitter was like self-scrapping in orkut ¹ . And then there is always orkut itself. And I did not want to give one more url related to me to others when the subscribers on this blog itself is 31 ² — hey thats a good news by the way. Hello every thirtyone !!

Distractions, I say! Back to topic.

But twitter saw a huge increase in numbers during SxSw , later they had scaling problems, analysis of increase in numbers showed it increasing at a rate higher than blogs. And now it or its cousins have become a hit. See this site to visually see the updates to twitter acorss the globe - TwitterVision ⁴. There is one with a photo messaging. . And digg+twitter = truemors.

Kept hearing a lot about it but I kept ignoring it but finally, recently understood one key factor which I think makes it work (more than any other reason) : its sms alerts in US - to send or recieve twits - which will instantly deliver the updates to “what are you doing” to those who follow you. Suddenly it makes sense to me⁵ :). Call it mobile-blogging or mundane updates or whatever, its success is quite huge !

In India, alternatives are present like Webaroo [via] but none are offering free sms I know thats too much to ask for but I somehow feel, if such a service comes up ⁶, it would be a hit like orkut, among my peers - some of who are lazy to read/write blog.

Here is my twitter page, twitter feed. You might have observed the pretty thingy on the sidebar too. Once I upgrade the WP, using Twitter tools plugin I will think of integrating in some other way.

Lots of support sites to twitter have born of which - email to twitter and firefox plugin twitbin are my favorites. Other firefox twitter tools.

I guess none of you are on twitter, add me as friend when you join To help you start with, here is starter guide. Huge resource list/help here. Thats it for those with short attention span. Rest can continue reading.

I don’t think in recent times anything has generated as much discussion as the twitter - especially the opinions being diagonally opposite to each other- one swearing this has been the most stupidest and other saying this was being waited for. One saying most unproductive, time wasting-distracting tool to another explaining how it could be put to use

Twitter can be distracting, but it can be useful. It’s up to you.

to explaining how you could be industry expert to how smart men use it.
One swearing its death is around the corner (208 comments) and its just hyped up and other claiming this will long last -(or that twitter to this decade is what email/sms/blog was for previous decade). There will be either an article or an application (either useful or just for fun or “most bizzare app for twitter”) every week or other. ( Even those that I have not linked to are on web, too lazy to search and link)

What I personally think is that - its a damn good integration of various features and it is different for each one depending on how you want to use them. Its like digg for some, its like blogging for some, its just social networking with its connectivity being instant - sms/im. Or for some it could be a combination of all these.

Social networking like orkut, for me now is huge time wasting - unless you are using it while in office! - in the sense that there is no value gain, but among my friends attitude like mine is rare. Even generally, orkut has not died! Today you might understand orkut but I remember when it came about, most of my friends did not join for almost an year - there was “whats orkut?” from everyone (or probably it was totally due to different reason). But today everyone gets the idea with orkut. There is no reason twitter can be any different. In fact it could be more catchy since there are different ways to use it, you need not always log in, the plugins will still operate from office even in twitter is blocked, sms/im interface will let you be in touch even when not using office internet.

Coming to blogging, again, I know lot of people who are lazy to read blogs. For them since all their friends updates is available at one place, it helps. Those of you who are too lazy to have a blog or those of you who are clueless what to update on the blog, this still will work for you.
from here

1. Twitter is easier to use than Blogger was and had a lower barrier to entry.
2. Twitter has more ways to update (web, phone, IM, Twitterific) than did Blogger.
3. Blogger’s growth was limited by a lack of funding.
4. Twitter had a larger pool of potential users to draw on.
5. Twitter has a built-in social aspect that Blogger did not.
6. Twitter’s 140-character limit encourages more messages.
7. More people are using Twitter for conversations than was the case with Blogger.

Here are links to twitter tips and tricks , twitter-blog integration tools.
And here is a description to micro blogging and twitter

Media companies such as the BBC , The New York Times and Al Jazeera are trying out Twitter as a way to send headlines and links to stories. The campaigns for presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama also have Twitter profiles, with thousands of “friends” and “followers” who check out updates.

On a post that says how twitter is a hot cake to be bought over now, Scoble points to the immense advertising oppurtunity

You’re missing the even bigger opportunity for marketers: people are telling us WHAT THEY USE and WHAT THEY LIKE. If you can listen and learn to engage people on Twitter you’ll find a marketing goldmine here. If I were really smart, I’d hire a team to categorize each Twitterer 24-hours-a-day. I’d start building a database of behaviors shared. Someone say “changing the diapers.” Well, now we know they have a newborn at home. What could marketers do with THAT? TONS!

Those who are still reading, here is some more info. One of the people behind twitter is the same who created blogger.

Ev jumpstarted the blogging revolution and tried to do the same with podcasting until Apple jumped into the ring and squashed all the competition. Twitter is his well deserved second home run.

From

There are several cousins of twitter on the same model like dodgeball,(acquired by Google), groovr but a little more famous is jaiku which came a little late than twitter but it includes lot of other things including an important difference - allows feeding to be imported on mainstream. ⁷
Jaiku is like blog posts+Twitter stream+Flickr photos (hey, thats what my yahoo pipe is also!) . Here are differenceexplaining links.

Jaiku is more of who you are than what are you doing which is twitter..[..]Where Twitter has evolved into almost a chat room, Jaiku has evolved into a Lifestream.What’s the difference? Well what you chat about and ‘do’ is only part of the picture. There are also photos, bookmarks, blog posts, music selections and more - each of which are not found on your Twitter stream. In fact I have seen many argue that they should NEVER be found in Twitter. Twitter is for human updates about human things.
“

Blogging is like putting up stalls in an exhibition and speaking the mind blindfolded. Some people enter the room, listen to you and/or converse with you. Chatting is exactly like chatting over a cup of coffee. Orkut scrapping is like, peeking into neighbour’s house to see if he is there and to talk to him, if he isn’t there to leave a note. Emailing is posting a mail to someone. Twitter is somewhat a combination of some of these in the sense it allows multi way communication cum broadcasting plus more.⁸

My final take:
As with any social communication tool, this tends to be addictive, time wasting, interfering, distracting but again as with other services, its quite fun, could be put to use, great way to keep in touch, neat microblogging utility, an unbelievable good combination or orkut+sms+blog+digg, and if you follow me on twitter, I shall follow you
Right now I am twittering in vaccum, come join and hear me
And this is my jaiku lifestream.

Ps: Ah!, this is the length of posts that would do justice to Talkr ! But you can’t follow the links then. Lots of useful links there, let me know how many you clicked.

Footnotes:
[1] I always wondered why did they not plugin the blogs within orkut - either create a new one or to link to the existing blogpost, rest of the footnote grew enough to be a post!
[2] according to Feedburner ³ - which again I had an account long ago but never used it until Google announced to buy it over. Feedburner, I guess that time did not provide email alerts or something, due to which I used Feedster -which gave lot of options. Now feedburner lets me connect feedster for email alerts and after google buying it I thought I can remember one less uname/pwd and logged in now. Now this blog’s feed is redirected to Feedburner feed (via the plugin) and fed to you!! So there, all for you, my dear 31 readers . Now click that ad there or at least leave a comment for my this selfless act!
[3] I know there is some noise there, I should not have tried various feed services with my own feed. Now there is no way to delete it.
[4]Have you seen FlickrVision?
[5]also, as you know I am a huge fan of sms
[6] Inactiv in Karnataka gave such a service but one thing lacking is a web user interface
[7]there is twitku which integrates to look up to updates from both accounts.
[8]Who would have thought The Trueman Show could get real and practical ?

I have now put talkr plugin which automatically converts my posts to audio so that one can listen to it. Again, not that I blog often or that I have posts to be listened or the audience, for all I care, it might be very sporadic as usual now that I have finished my old posts. But experimenting with the site and trying out plugins is my favorite big time passtime.

Talking of talkr, I initially thought converting to mp3 was the ubercool feature of Documents sharing site - scribd.com. I thought thats the fastest way I can convert my posts to audio (or even to pdf ) ! But thats just a side effect and actually its youtube for docs and quite wonderful documents and email forwards kind of documents are available. A very web2.0 site that it is, I liked the most was its interface and the flash paper format. Just the interface makes me use it

If only there was a plugin to
1. (Automatically) Post the blog posts to scibd from my account
2. Link to the bottom automatically the mp3 link of that document.

Anyways came across talkr and odiogo services which do the auto conversion to audio. So you would find audio link ( unfortunately at the bottom of the post ) thanks to this plugin. Do listen.

I would have liked if we could choose between male and female voice though.

Recently Orkut has been doubling up as feed reader. But the real meat is getting scrap book updates through feeds. It might not make sense to some of you but for a feed junkie like me, it is super stuff¹ . I feel one of the prime differences between other leading Social Networking sites and orkut is the absense of Feed support in orkut. And no one has real clue why Google does not give as much as importance orkut deserved, from the beginning. It took a loooong time to be able to use Google login to orkut accounts and the no donut problem was a surprise when it came from Google!

Coming to the main topic, here is how you can get the rss feed of your orkut scrapbook. [via TechBuzz]

Use the URL given below, but replace {uid} with your Orkut user ID

http://www.indian-tv.com/orkut.php?uid={uid}

Your Orkut User ID can be obtained by logging into Orkut and clicking on the profile button on the left.

.
And here is how you can get Rss feed for the communities in orkut.

http://www.indian-tv.com/orkut.php?cmm={community id}

Super stuff, thanks dude !

1. Also orkut is blocked in office but reader isn’t:D [back]

Many times, I feel so good when I read something that is so close to what I would have said otherwise. I will link to certain such items.

Last few days/months, I felt I am spending too much time online, and too much online-time is spent at Orkut, Chatting, Reader, Digg, del.icio.us, reddit, Desipundit, Blogbharti, Indianpad, putvote - you got it. My reader itself not only has too many feeds, but also too many updates. I feel guilty to mark it as read without reading it and to catch up would take enormous time. There are also days where I literally get fed up of catching up. After hours of spending on the net (browsing, chatting, orkutting), the net gain is so less and I feel I haven’t done anything all that time !

As Prof Sadagopan said,

Reading is deep, involves the brain and leads to learning. Browse can often be very shallow with very little learning.

Anyways, coming back to the topic, I have almost stopped orkutting and chatting. I can not stop reader - but will clean up the feeds to include only feeds of friends and important news. I am liking this utility which will combine many feeds into one so that I can mark “mark all as read” in one shot

Coming back to where I started, I liked this post, for it conveys what I wanted to say a lot better. Excerpts:

My next activity would be to do away with Orkut as well. I’ve been on it for 4 years, but all of a sudden I feel so sucked into it. Making new friends aren’t really worth it and I just will have to show my attitude. A stinking one at it, like one of the readers whom I’ve never met, told me on chat sometime ago. It helps. People come and they GO too. They say good things. They throw crap. They are opinionated. I do all that too. But then it will have to just stop someday. …

It is just a phase. Will life be more exciting if I’m away from Internet? Away from all the Information overload.

Of course one difference is that I am still not fed up with “my own” blog or blogging. I would let this continue and I have always seen that blogging does not interrupt my life.
I have to continue, because it is my ranting ground.

Wasn’t life simpler when I was way back in college? When mobile phones were a luxury. When surfing the internet would cost a bomb. When your needs were less. When you had more time to read and watch good TV shows. When you had more quality time with family and friends. When your life was within a circle that you ran around it oblivious to all the filth outside the circle. When the words “best friends” really meant something. When you just have ten bucks in your pocket, yet go and eat with your friends, order for one chilli parotta and share it, order one pepsi and fight for it. When long drives meant, riding a two-wheeler against the wind and feeling so accomplished. When branded clothes were just for commercials, while you can wear anything off the street that makes you look like super star. When library meant book library and not DVD library. When piggy bank meant saving up for summer holidays. When temple visits meant something divine and not a formality. When street cricket and seven stones were religious rituals in the evening, while Playstations and Xboxes were for the westerners. When treats for friends meant tea shops and bakeries. When the rains were the best time to sit and chat outside the classrooms, getting drenched, and staying home complaining of sickness. When the nights were meant for dreamless deep sleeps. When early to wake up and early to sleep was order of the day. When I wrote stories in college notebooks and not on computer. When I painted using oil paint and not Photoshop.

Life was much better, then. With little in life. With more happiness.

Little meant more. Amen.

People think publishing is a business, but it’s a casino.

[via India Uncut]

“A blog isn’t a publication. It’s a person.”

[via Emergic]

And my favorite :

Blogging too is an act of love - the heart posted awaiting comment.- Falstaff, here

I have been thinking about the blogs getting orphaned after the owner’s death. Am sure, readers do not have any type of personal contact with most of the bloggers they read. So they would not come to know about any sad happening. They might keep checking on the site or the empty feed might remain in the reader. Sad.

In our embedded systems, we have a concept called “Watch Dog timer“.

A watchdog timer is a computer hardware timing device that triggers a system reset if the main program, due to some fault condition, such as a hang, neglects to regularly service the watchdog (writing a “service pulse” to it, also referred to as “petting the dog”).

Unfortunately, there is no way to reset the human life. However I found an analogy to this in Wordpress and a variation of this concept would let me achieve what I want - To announce my death to my blog readers.

It works like this. Wordpress has “post timestamp” feature, where if you set the time in future and publish the post, the post automatically gets posted at that time. So I can do a post called

“Hello Readers, I think I have left on a journey to heaven. Unless there is internet access from there, it is unlikely that this blog is going to be updated Be good. Cya soon “

or anything you would want to tell your blog readers. And set the date to say a week or a month in future depending on how frequently (for sure) you are going to access your blog. So, like watchdog servicing, before that time, pet this timer - change the time to next interval and publish. In the unlikely event of your death, after the interval, you would be announcing the news of your death in an unique way. Blog can thus serve a purpose even after your death.

There are few risks :
1. If the server is down and you can not re-schedule the time and server wakes up. Then you would be getting to hear condolences and reactions to your death !
2. If you estimate/usually access the site within a normal time frame but unfortunately if you could not do it.

PS: I expected to get dugg for this wise idea, alas.

Few blogs from blogspot in my reader have not been showing the updates for the last 3 or more months. Is it because of blogspot migration to new interface ? I don’t know. Blogger update resulted in either marking the old posts as new or not updating the feed at all.

For a person who doesn’t visit the site second time if it does not have feeds, this is terrible.

Also, if you (those who are on my blogroll) have updated your blog and haven’t got my comment, let me know. Your feed must have broken.

Like last year, I will look back and ahead.
>>Read 10 (at least) novels/general books. And at least 4 technical books
Ha! I think I failed on the count of general books but almost made more than the target in technical books. To be frank, I did not read the complete books, but at least it was better than previous year. Watched lotsa movies.
>>Wake up before a fixed time in the morning – any day/any weather/any going-to-bed-time
Pretty much there….except on few days. And those few days is either because I sleep late or I am not at peace (the first one is not a valid reason as it had been covered in the goal but second one is a reasonable one)
>>Visit/ spend time with “relatives”
NA now….
>>To *reduce* money spent on movies. Instead watch “plays” and invest in “books”
Partly success…like last time, books are being bought.
>>Go on at least 4 tours
Failed, but went to 2
>>Take food at same time everyday.
Failure
>>Donate blood at least 3 times.
Passed

Flashback:
Toured Siddarabetta, Ranganatittu, Madikeri,Abhey falls, Kollur,Murudeshwar,Sringeri,,TTDC resort, Goa
Bought Bike
Got done lasik
Blog related : Moved to weblogs.us

Goal Settings:
>>Most importantly, try to achieve previously set goals.
And to keep this in mind.
>>Come out with a concrete plan and roadmap for what I want to achieve in long term in terms of career.

Well, its quite a long time since I actively posted anything. I love being busy. I love sleeping. Both of those do not mean the same Various reasons I can think of for not jotting down, but finally all explanations is saying one-n-only reason in different ways. That reason is something else took priority or interest over blogging.
But I did plenty of bloggable activities and have decided to dedicate few posts. So posts, some of them old, will appear here.
There are some changes in the site, notably for visitors is the inclusion of ads. It is right now very disorganised and looking not too clean, but hope to clean it up sometime. I am also aware that the ads this blog might attract might not earn me anything (because I write only about my life or about movies), yet I just wanted to experiment. So if you visit the site, click on these ads and help me in my experiment! For me the major change is the change of the host from negimaki to weblogs.us. As of now there are lot of uptime issues with weblogs.us, but hope it would get better soon. Negimaki is an excellent host but I wanted few more liberties than I could get over there. Among other changes on the site would be to experiment with whole lot of themes and plugins.

So what was I upto all these days (that could be blogged about) - I watched lotsa movies (as usual) - some of them as a part of Chennai Film Fest, read few books, went on a goa trip, read read and read on internet.
Looking ahead, I have some thoughts to make this space meaningful and pretty regular.

If sleep or something else does not take a higher priority, then. For now, posts are following.

There are many blogs where more stuff happens in comment space than in the posts themselves (one beautiful example will be Megha’s). And when comment thread is not available (world is dominated by blogspots) or when you really dont want to keep track of all the comments but just interested where you have commented, or you just want the replies from blog author (There is a plugin for wp, but world is not full of wps), cocomment came to the rescue. cocomment which was helping me to keep my comments on others blogs at one place (to keep “my” efforts at one place as well as to remind myself to check at the replies) has gone a step ahead, and boy! their features rock. Now we can track all the comments on a particular post (earlier only cocomment members’ comments were tracked) and this makes it so easy to see if the person replied to your comment, all from bloglines by using the feed !! Another useful feature is to track the conversation without necessarily commenting in it. I will use the filtering too. Looks like a bunch of useful features and when I complained about my plugin including others’ comments (even though that was not the intent), their response was breezy(I/plugin author is yet to modify)! Man, free stuff and such service and features !! Go register, what are you waiting for!

And if anyone is interested in private beta testing a firefox extension by nowpublic that is expected to make

bookmarking, clipping, quoting, linking, tagging and reblogging a breeze

, then leave comment and email id here. I did.

And somewhere else I am rigorously evangelising WP and mailing few Kannada coloumnists to start a blog.

Why, you ask ? I like doing it

Blogging in its infant stages might have been barking in the backyard, not anymore. From MSM stealing the bloggers’ articles to now someone from Govt blocking the blogs, bloggers have created enough noise to be noticed.

More on the blocking and follow-up here, here, here and here. There are instructions how to bypass that too.(Anyways, there is no probs for web-based feed readers.)

Updated 2006-07-19
“India joins China” reads a slashdot headline and Indblogs puts India together with Pak, China, Iran etc. This day was yet to come, till now! What a shame to the largest democracy.

But what really irks me, more than the right to freedom of speech etc, is that what has been done is logically useless and crazy, technically silly and is easily futile. As bizzare, foolish (..uff I run out of words) as it can get.

At least other countries had a motive that was disclosed and they might have been successful too. But here, neither the ban is announced officially nor was there a correct implementation to justify the motive.There are so many flaws behind the act in all intellectual fronts that ………that feeling of helplessness surfaces. This world is so full of ignorants and fools.

In the MSM, in some corner, it is being talked as “Bloggers” are blocked, as if they are some jokers in some corner. Get this, you another chunk of useless fellows, that he who just reads the blogs need not be a blogger and this ban is affecting anyone - more importantly a citizen of the largest democratic country where there is present a set of “fundamental rights”. When a medium that produces quality entertainment as good as this is will get blocked, I wonder whether I should laugh or cry.

And when it is certain that they wanted to ban few of the blogs, (more here) but blocked entire domain, and they repeat the same mistake done few years ago, I am sure India’s administrative intelligence(&ISPs) becomes even more laughing stock!! I wish I am watching a senseless ironic comedy. Let me take a break.

Update 2006-07-20: Next in line : Skype.

If bloggers were talking about the bombings without either first-hand experience or new insight, that is when you should be calling them pretentious. The fallacy is in assuming that bloggers or the blogosphere have a greater purpose than navel-gazing.

Purrrfect !

It will be normal soon.

Pak helps India

Finally(from me, that is) : I would never have visited the blocked sites, but for the block ! (It is a different matter that some of them were not found, some of them in other languages, but through one of the banned sites, got few correct links.)

to a house. Check out this blog which started July 12-05 started out on trading it with things bigger and better than that. Aim was to get a house. And he did. Some said he was nuts. Others were jealous at his progress. Others wished him luck. And many others, like me, waited and watched!

Another example (like this) that truly innovative and new idea works, however lame it is !

As it is widgets have created quite a stir, I feel the next step is Canvas. Looking at the preview I am very excited even though I have not yet tried it. Looks like it is going to take customization to a new level and at the same time making it as easy as possible.

And some prediction and hope: given that one among two last wishes one can have from wordpress.com would be to change the layout (other one to execute java script/php code in posts/pages). The reason why guys at wp.com have still not given that ability to end users may be that they do not want users to dirty their hands hand coding things or to mess up things. In that sense, canvas will be just what can be offered : easy to use but still not giving complete control. Just like their widgets.

Infacts, canvas is what I like to call - widgets on steriods

This post has been in my mind’s draft since many days.

Like many others, I too started my blogging at blogspot. At that time it was the best one available and very easy to start off. As long as I type and publish it looked all fine. But as I looked around and saw the features and wanted them on my site, when I started changing templates etc the real problem started. My annoyance and frustration increased logarthmically and after a point I just stopped blogging until I could find a comfortable place. After that, it was wordpress and the love just grew !

Whenever I was asked of suggestion to create a new blog, I still continued suggesting blogger, for the starters, because hosting wp is still a problem, where as with blogger it is click and start.

Those who did start their blogs after a couple of days, when they started comfortable, started changing the look. Hey, its easy –go here, click there and you are set. No problems so far. Then the query was to put links in sidebar. Hey thats easy too — create a tag yourself, put this here and paste it there, publish and you are set to go. And any minor hiccups, hardcode it again. You change the template, hard code it again.

All this before the world was blessed with wp.com. And once that happened, I predicted a premature death of blogger. It was not to be. But now I had 2 suggestions.

Those who got ahead with wp, the above queries were solved in a flash. But now queries got different - “I want like this that is on your site”. Importantly, calendar, categories, extra stuff in sidebar. It was impossible in blogger or it was a pain to do this in blogger. Then I started suggesting only wp - links, categories etc managed in a flash, but one thing remained a pain in wp too -sidebar management.

Even in my standalone WP installation, theme independent sidebar management was my dream requirement. Few weeks ago, sidebar widgets have arrived and it is just perfect and it is what I refferred to as last nail in the coffin of blogspot! (Infact why it was not taken up from the beginning is a mystery considering that few of my seimologic plugins worked on all themes without my effort)(And one thing is still pending is the javascript ability in widgets, right now it is only text or php).

And looking at these widgets (del.icio.us, text,rss,shoutbox), I remember using all these without the power of plugin/widget and feel that I should have started late..now it is so painless!

The new widgets‘ list is growing very fast and the oppurtunities are unlimited ! I have decided that I will use only widgetized themes anymore.

PS: There is now a web2.0 service called labelr which manages categories for blogger, for those still with blogger. But to them also, I suggest one click import in wp.com.[This again is so hasslefree, I had to manually do all that :(]Talking of labelr, as Scoble said earlier, name ending with r seems to be a trend..and I have a perfect web2.0 compatible name - ravikiranr

I had been wanting to do this “How-to” and “about feeds” post for quite sometime now. I wanted to do it coz I am tired of explaining each person separately (each of those whom I suggested/forced to start a blog or each of those friends who find it difficult or forget to visit my site).

I came across two useful links: this quick start guide on bloglines and By Chetan
Extract:

If you’re new to Feed subscription

You’re familiar with e-mail, right? You read it as you receive it. Well, feeds are similar in analogy. For receiving and reading your email, you’d either need a software client (like Outlook Express, Outlook, Eudora or others) or a service (such as Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail or others). Similarly, for reading site feeds, you’ll need a feed software (like FeedReader, Greatnews, FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, Newsgator or Sage extension for Firefox) or a service (such as Bloglines, My Yahoo!, Newsgator Online, Newsburst or Kinja online).

All these software (or services) will have an option to add new feed. Click on it (or select), cut and paste the feed link from the above list and your software or service will query the site for new posts and sync it in your client. So, actually you’re letting your software or service pull the latest posts, news from websites for you. Simple, eh?

If you read a lot of websites in the conventional way, i.e., via a web browser (like Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox or Safari), then change that habit, let your software (or service) notify you of new things instead of you checking them out everyday. That way, you save precious time and also read more content rather than just browsing.

With blogs and sites that get updated often, including your favorite newspapers, feeds are becoming a standard method of offering content to their readers without requiring any details from the readers like their email addresses.

What are those colored buttons that I see on websites?

You mean those orange or those blue ones? Yup, those are the feed links. And don’t worry about the color or XML, RSS, Atom, RDF written over them. XML is the technology feeds use to provide you the updated content and all those terms are the derivatives of this technology. Some clients don’t support all types of feeds, in which case, you may try the alternative feed, if available. Generally, most clients (software or service) provide a minimum RSS and Atom support.

Feed links spit out junk code

A common phenomenon that I’ve been a victim of, before I understood how feeds work. Feed links are not meant to be actually clicked. Since the code that you actually see is a machine readable language and is really meant for your software to sync and interpret it for you. So, the next time you see feed links, copy them instead of clicking on them and use them in your feed reader software (or web based feed service).

What software, service do you recommend?

FeedDemon is my favorite feed reader software and I have raves for it, but that doesn’t mean that others aren’t good, especially if you’re looking for something free to start with. Greatnews seems to be a wonderful free alternative. Among the web-based feed-services, I like Bloglines.

I can read the feed, but it looks so pale compared to the website

Well, look at it this way: if the content is more important to you and you want to read the updates regularly, then consider the feed. If instead, you love reading them on the website in its full graphical glory, you could always use the article link and open it in your web browser, but keep yourself automatically updated via a feed reader. Sounds fun? Thought so.

Any other advantages of using a feed, besides updates?

Well, the speed for one. If you’re on a dial-up network, you’ll appreciate the download time. All the posts on certain clients are actually downloaded and saved as cache, so you could read them offline too (just like your e-mail). In addition, you’ll also be doing site owners a favor by reading their content via feed that has lesser bandwidth requirement.

And in my site itself(with semilogic theme) there is a link that explains about feeds:

What is this feed thing everyone is talking about?

It’s a standardized format that lets you subscribe to a web site using a tool called a news reader or aggregator.

The orange XML and RSS buttons are scarecrows meant to put newbies off let you locate feeds in one quick glance.
Why should I care about feeds?

The reasons you should care about feeds reportedly are:

* You want to be notified of updates from the many web sites that you read without visiting them one by one
* You prefer to read your favorite web sites from one convenient location without any interface clutter

In practice, the reasons you should and do care about feeds are:

* You want to be notified of updates from the many web sites that you don’t trust enough to reveal them your email address
* You want to reorganize the raw information that is available for syndication as you see fit

What are XML, RSS and Atom anyway?
It is all meaningless to you ? No worries …most self proclaimed experts have absolutely no idea of what they are talking about either.

In short, though:

* RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom are two XML (eXtended Markup Language) formats that are competing one another
* XML — and Web Services — is the latest means to clutter IT resources, by letting you do the same thing as ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity) and RPC (Remote Procedure Call) in a less efficient manner

History-wise:

* Dave Winer reportedly invented RSS and syndication
* Apple reportedly innovated by using RSS feeds to create active desktops
* Microsoft released an Active Desktop with — *cough* — Windows 95

Standards-wise:

* There are a dozen incompatible flavors of RSS and Atom that are labeled as standard
* RSS is a standardized XML format that does not comply with the recommended XML date format
* Some geeks report that Atom is better than RSS, but noone really cares
* RSS will prevail in the end; simply because it is adopted by Microsoft

Protocol-wise:

* Feeds use a dumb protocol that is equivalent to setting up a distributed denial of service attack on your own web site

And in practice:

* Many feed subscribers are automated web sites set up by spammers who republish your content alongside ads (spam blogs, or “splogs”)

As already explained, feed readers are basically two kinds - web based readers or installable softwares.

The benefit of using web based readers is two-fold:

* A web-based service means your favorite feeds will remain available when you change computers
* Search engines (will) provide tools to organize feeds by topic and relevance rather than by site and date

Among the web based, the popular one and the best for beginners is bloglines:

What is a “feed”?

It’s a Web product that allows you easily to see (and read, if you wish) what’s new on the Web sites and Web logs you visit most often.

Why can’t I just visit these sites myself, one by one?

You can. This way is easier. Your Bloglines home page will tell you at a glance when there’s nothing new to you on a site. It’s a very systematic way of keeping up and keeping track.

Is Bloglines the only such service or the best such service?

No and I don’t know. It works well for me and it’s free.

How do I get started?

To get started, go to the link for detailed Quick start guide.

These days almost all websites (which change over a period of time, irrespective of their content or type-text/pics/audio) provide RSS/Atom feeds.
Once comfortable, see these too:
Top 10 RSS Hacks
Taking RSS beyond headlines

Update: Result is out. Majority feel that the link posts are to be removed out of main page as it is confusing and page looks cluttered. Using my wish (which got one vote!) the result for second poll is tied. So I will leave it as it is.

So in effect, link posts out of main page but not out of main feed.

But, it will be sometime before I can make the changes.
**
Request you to help me make a decision, please :

what am i doing ?

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