andamu

[ update ]
I spent most of the weekend creating "CAST"-pages, little who's who entries for those who would feature most frequently in my blogs. This way, I wouldn't have to repeat necessary context information every time, but rather point to the CAST entries.
I found it a tough exercise: I wanted to convey a true sense of who these people are and what they mean to me, without exposing them or infringing on their right to privacy.
But, here they are: mpo, Nini, Angel Face and Anamika.
::
[ blogging ]
While doing this, I was reminded of a friend I had known for some time before learning that she had been keeping a candid online journal long before it became "blogging." She went through the normal ups and downs, suffered an immense tragedy, and then after several years became involved with someone that many of her readers were directly familiar with through a different forum. She continued writing candidly about her experiences, thoughts and feelings, but now they directly included her significant other.
And when some major issues arose between them that they were working through, the journalling became a vehicle for the intrusion into their personal life of every person they knew in common.
At which stage her significant other pointed out the responsibility she had toward people in her real life, while remaining true to herself and her compulsion to journal.
::
[ life ]
Today saw The Return of the Phantom Ice-cream Truck.
Our apartment is a corner unit on the corner of the street, with a four way stop. On many late afternoons we would hear the Dopler effect of the tinkly music-box "Pop goes the weasel," but no matter how quicly we rushed to the windows or out onto the balcony, and despite the fact that we could still hear the music, we would never be able to catch a glimpse of the truck. (And remember, there's an excited 3.5 yo driving this activity!)
We haven't heard it for a while now, then suddenly we started hearing the music box sounds compressed as the truck approaches the intersection. This time it is a different melody, I can't quite place it, but the truck is still as determinedly invisible as before. And our Angel Face is just as desperately disappointed.

I keep forgetting to mention that I have added another link to the side bar. "Past Pictures" is, suprise surprise, a link to pictures that have appeared previously in this blog. A blogallery if you will. (Yes, having come up with something pseudo-funny and clever, I have to milk it for every last drop. Or did I perhaps see it during one of my journeys through the blogosphere, and did it mull around for a while before popping back up?)
Anyway, the link is up. Now if traffic were to suddenly pick up I would be in trouble, but at current levels the server should hold up quite nicely.
I expect that it would be updated sporadically, if at all. For the moment though it is a nice look back at images from earliers posts, non-chronologically arranged.
::
One of my favorite admonishments to tourists in cities (and often to city dwellers themselves) is: "Look up!" So much care and attention to fine detail has gone into creating the intricate facades of buildings, all beyond eye-level. Just about everyone who has visited London extensively could spend another equal amount of time, this time raising their eyes to the higher levels, and see a completely different city.
Looking through pictures of our recent Californian trip, I noticed some pictures that brought to mind a different piece of advice: "Look underfoot! There's a whole new world hiding there."
I grabbed these few pictures taken over the course of the past year to illustrate the point.

[ lists ]
Blog To-Do List:

• Put up a blog roll
• Put up my list of recently-read books
• Put up my reading list
• Put up a music list
• Tweak the template
• Create categories for stories
• Install and use Trackback
• Consider moving to a different blog host.

• Put up a blog roll (but how do I select who to put up there? I'm still new, finding things that interest me, but frequently it turns out not to be what I thought it was after about a week of regular reading. And I don't want to just put up a huge list...)
• Put up my list of recently-read books (hmm, but everything I read? Or only the ones that could be considered literature? And do I review them?)
• Put up my reading list (Oh great! Now have a public record of my resolutions and a demonstration of how I break them and/or procrastinate.)
• Put up a music list (Well, at least that would be static, if truly eclectic. I haven't bought any new music for years (barring birthday/christmas gifts.) I haven't been keeping track of new music developments, nor of new performers and performances of classical music.)
• Tweak the template (Yeah, but coding for a living for a fair chunk of my work day hardly leaves me energized to come home and figure out how to twiddle the knobs on css.)
• Create categories for stories (You mean like "My Life in India" and such? Shades of Lionel Hardcastle... I would have to manually maintain them if I stay with Blogspot)
• Install and use Trackback (I would have to get a third party Trackback if I stay with Blogspot)
• Consider moving to a different blog host (Well, it would address the above two issues. But it would mean all my links need to change and all my hordes of loyal fans have to be informed of the new address, and now I would have to shell out money for the blog and I am not even sure whether this is just a passing fad on my part. And I kinda like the general look of my current template - minus a few tweaks.)

I've found Nancy Gandhi's blog under the fire star in a circuitous way through a link on another blog through which I was browsing. Utterly absorbing and engaging, I am starting to read through her archives, and can't stop myself from posting long comments in reply on archived material.
In most cases I wander off in the yonder, triggered by something in a post that vividly recalls something of my life in India. A bit like that free association word game. A says "red," B says "rose," C says "Shakespeare," D says "Hamlet," A says "danish," B says "breakfast" ...
So I've decided to start blogging here about disjointed reminiscences. Now, the anal part of me wants to start at the beginning, and do this in strict chronological fashion. But I sat myself down and gave myself a stern talking to, and will blog as I read Nancy and memories arise.
::

Note to self: One of the tweaks needed in the template is to widen the text area. Css is great because you can precisely define placement, but here two nice sentences end up looking as if you've written a saga. Which can be intimidating to the reader, and deadly to someone as chronically verbose as me.

[ change ]
Everything is falling behind right now. We are in the middle of something big, something exciting, but something that might still fall through. I am trying my best to prepare myself for disappointment, but I cannot help getting all excited, planning and anticipating.
Of course I am not superstitious in the least but I can't shake the feeling that speaking too much about it too soon would jinx the whole thing (knock on wood).
I promise I'll tell after we know for sure, one way or the other.
::
At work I've been busy, with some things becoming more urgent in our research, and I am desperately trying to put in enough time to manage the work and offset any time I might require for the aforementioned big thing.
I've been having way too much fun reading other people's blogs to get seriously updating here.
::


[ sunday ]
We spent some time with mpo's son and his family. Anamika is the world's most amazing 3.5 month-old! She focuses on people, really interacts with her parents, giggling and gurgling, making well-defined sounds, and of course loves playing with her fingers and toes.
Before going to Curry Leaf for their North Indian Chaat buffet we spent some time in the morning sun in their garden. I love this time of year where the sun is kind and gentle, not a ferocious bully that sends you scuttling toward the nearest shady area.
::
[ tuesday ]
No fog on the drive to work, but once I enter the campus there is a low blanket, maybe hip-height, laying on the ground. The cows in the pasture on the other side of the chainlink fence appears to be floating, their legs invisible, for once strangely graceful as they glide along.
Sorry, didn't have time to grab the camera - I was driving.

A quick note on images.
Today all our stuff is being packed up, and tomorrow it will be moved to the new house.
We won't actually be moving in until Sunday, but that's another (long) story.
What this means though is the server from which I serve my images will be offline for a little bit. The moment I get it set up at the new house it will be back - when that might be I'm not entirely sure though. At least the cable internet is already installed there, so it shouldn't be too painful a process :-)

Thanks for your understanding.

Managed to grab a few minutes in the end, and have updated the blogallery. Next on the short term to-do list is to add a few more pictures to the blog itself - I've been postponing that for a while now.
Maybe later I can get to the longer term to-do list...

*sigh*
So Nini tells me that the last few paragraphs in my previous post do not "flow" - that it seems disjointed from the rest, with only a tenuous link in the theme. In fact, I had barely made it through the front door, and had just been shepherded to the stove by mpo to have a taste of his concoction in the saucepan, when she pounced with a "Hello, I liked your blogging, except the last bit doesn't make sense. It doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the piece."

Apologies, little sister. Next time I will either have a proper segue, or make it a separate post. Will that do?

whippersnapper

(thanks anan)

My goodness! I've received my fair share of search engine referrals in the past, some more unusual than others.

This one from yahoo search takes the cake, though:

how to figure a quote for a chainlink fence estimate

Now admittedly I showed up only on page 3 of the listed results, but the fact that the person doing the search actually ended up on my page shows you that the results on the previous two pages were not of any more help to them than mine was.

And I thought search engines were supposed to be getting more accurate and intuitive...

(I hope the poor guy found what he was looking for, eventually)

• Figure out a nice template
• Get a domain name
• Get a DNS service
• Get the local DNS server running on the intranet
• Set up forwarding from blogger to andamu MK. II
• Sent out address change notifications
• Buy the next level up in Movable Type (after thoroughly testing out the free version) to allow multiple (5) users and unlimited blogs.

• Put up a blog roll
• Put up my list of recently-read books
• Put up my reading list
• Put up a music list
• Tweak the template
• Create categories for stories
• Install and use Trackback
• Consider moving to a different blog host.

• Figure out a nice template
• Get a domain name
• Get a DNS service
• Set up forwarding from blogger to andamu MK. II
• Sent out address change notifications
• Buy the next level up in Movable Type (after thoroughly testing out the free version) to allow multiple (5) users and unlimited blogs.

"Some settlements with diocesan cathedrals are cities, therefore all settlements with diocesan cathedrals are cities."

"A settlement with a diocesan cathedral is a city. X is a city, therefore X must have a diocesan cathedral."

I've just been granted fifty (50) invitations to GMail!

If anyone out there still would like one, or who has an auntie whose next-door neighbour but one's son-in-law would like one, please let me know.

Leave a working email address when commenting - I don't display email addresses as links even if you don't leave a website address, so the spam-bogey won't get you as a result of this :-)

Mukundan has put up a list of Indibloggers, sorted by the location in which they reside.

A nice idea for those who would like to make contact with others in their area, or on their travels. Of course the only other indiblogger in the Portland area on the list thus far turns out to be on indefinite hiatus, so I get to appreciate the benefits theoretically rather than practically.

Mukundan was also nice enough to name me "Featured Blog of the Day" yesterday, which meant that there were a little more traffic than usual. Browse the list for someone in your area.

I've been tagged by Mary in a meme, and I am stumped.

I think I am approaching the questions too analytically, but I seem to be unable to come up with answers that I can stick by for more than 20 seconds.

I don't know if this is allowed before I complete the meme myself, but I want to tag Sowmy, Dharmendra and JudyAnne. Perhaps you guys will have more success than I did.

All generalizations are dangerous, including this one.

Some of these included a money-making scam, requiring you to send some cash to the previous five people on the list or whatever, but mostly it was purely and simply about ego: how many people can you get to comply and how far can your letter spread.

Now the Internet has become the medium of choice for these egomaniacs (some even megalomaniacs). Email is the obvious choice, being the direct counterpart of snail mail, and so we have seen a proliferation of true chain mail with the originators keeping score and trading accomplishments with their rivals.

Rather more nastily is the malicious side of this: most of the rationale behind spreading various viruses (viri?), worms and trojan horses is not about the precise damage that is done, but the extent to which they spread.

Since many people are too sceptical to fall for chain letters and email potentially harboring harmful code anymore, a different tack in this race of the egos started, the Forwarding Game.
The strategy is simple: Copy a nice urban legend (c.f. The Neiman-Marcus Cookie Recipe or the 57 cents and the Temple Baptist Church) or compile a packet of slides with wonderful sunsets or sleeping puppies ("cho chweet!"), or paste a few ancient computer cartoons together, and send it to a few hundred people. Sit back and wait while most of them cannot resist forwarding it to their friends, who in turn forward it to .... You get the idea.

"Aah, but," you say. "We are intelligent, internet and information technology savvy people of discerning taste, and we would never fall for those kinds of things. And to prove just how tuned to the web we are, check our blogs."

Enter the Meme. (1) Catchy material, hooking you into doing it. (2) Asking you to get three or five of your friends to do the same, and for them to ask their friends to do the same....

Hey, what do you know? This looks surprisingly much like yet another version of the old chain letter. And what's even better from the manipulators' viewpoint is that here no one has to guess and estimate how many people have been hooked, how wide it has spread; the suckers (including me) are displaying their gullibility plainly on their blogs, a mere search from google away to let the originators tally their spoils, and see who has been the most successful in their quest.

No doubt there are "innocent" memes out there, started by individuals who had an idea, and wanted to see what others thought. But by far the majority are the type that stroke someone's already inflated sense of self-worth, and I for one strongly dislike being manipulated.

In closing, the Ultimate Catch-22.
Getting off my soapbox, I am posting a link to a different soapbox telling you about chain mail. The problem is that it is so funny, so good and so true that you want to forward it to everyone you know. Enjoy!

There is a surprise coming but I can't talk about it; well I can, but I won't just yet.

It has to do with the blog(s) and it will be (hopefully) exciting and wonderful and just the very best thing since sliced bread.

Okay, you've twisted my arm hard enough. I'll reveal a tiny corner: you might have noticed that at times the blog has been unavailable, or you have received some strange error messages. Well, one of my plugins have been causing my system to hang - and unfortunately it was a very necessary plugin, or I would have long sacrificed it. Hopefully some of the changes will address these issues.

But greater availibilty and stability relate only to the behind-the-scenes backend changes of what is coming soon, so keep watching this space. And since I won't be revealing the surprise just yet, here's a picture to help you contemplate the future.

I try not to blog about blogging in general. For one thing, it is somewhat like a circular argument. Also, I don't have any cool technical tips or profound insights on the nature of blogging and its role in society.

So, on the whole I use the blog merely as the medium to convey whatever I want to waffle on about at a given time.

Having said that, a few things have been going on recently.

For one, you might have noticed that it was not always available whenever you might have wanted to look at it.
SixApart, the folks who write Movable Type, the software platform on which my blog is built, has released a major upgrade version.
My precious one has been playing around with various different flavors of Linux, each one supposedly better than the other.
I have been eyeing some cool plugins and gizmos that add functionality to blogs.
And a while ago I change the layout and appearance from the tulip banner (which started to look a bit gaudy and over the top to me) to the smooth mocha latte which it turned out that you all hated (and that bored me to sleep after a couple of weeks). So that had to go.

So, this layout has changed, mainly in terms of color scheme for now.
Movable Type has been upgraded to version 3.2
Right now we are running on Fedora instead of Mandrake (although MPO is mumbling about a more recent Mandrake version that he is testing on another computer right now).
We're working on setting up virtual hosts for easier URLs and new templates for the archives.
And I am scouting around for various plugins and cool little javascripts to do things which you might never notice but I might love to play with.
Oh, and at some stage I want to update the gallery pages.

That's about it, for now.

We left for Denver on Wednesday. The same day there was a major power outage back at home. The broadband internet connection was also knocked out, and when everything came back up, the router was confused and the server suffered issues.

This meant that during the entire period that I was at the conference, there was no blog, because there was either no server or no internet connection; and none possible until we got home and sorted it out. (For "we" read MPO).

I find that there are many, many advantages to hosting one's own web server. This, however, is one definite negative. It is also the reason that, despite strong consideration, I am not hosting others' blogs or websites on our server. When your own service is interrupted by external factors, it is annoying. When someone else's service is interrupted, even when that service is provided free of charge, their annoyance after some time is not with the situation, but with the people involved. They come to rely on the service, and feel its lack acutely.

But, back to the initial point: In the light of the havoc wreaked by our five-day absence, I cannot even imagine what would happen in less than two months when we leave for India for five weeks!

We've certainly learned now, as Murphy's Law states:

If anything can go wrong, it will.

No, this is not a philosphical question in the best "cogito, ergo sum" tradition (although I can go there given half a chance if you really want me to).

I have been getting more and more feedback about the lack of an "About" page or a profile. But what do I put on such a page?

I can phrase the question in either a general or a specific way.
General:
What makes a good "About" or profile page?

or,

Specific:
What would you like to know about me?

or,

Somewhere inbetween:
What would you usually like to know about someone whose blog you are reading?

There are times that you wish to make changes that should be transparent to the user (or reader) of a site. The problem is that, when you succeed, the result is an anticlimactic feeling, because nobody notices a thing.

Yes, oxymoronic, I know.

It took me a while to set up the booklist in the left sidebar. It involved a lot of busywork to create, and then endless additional work to maintain.

Then came MediaManager which promised to remove the drudgery. Except I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted it to as far as the booklists were concerned, although I have been using it to add the images and links to reviews for a while now.

Then came the latest version, along with some support from the magnificent Byrne Reese, the creator of MediaManager, et voila a functioning, automatically updating booklist.

If you're using Movable Type, don't delay - get yourself plugged in!

The blog has been dormant for quite a while - partly because I was not sure what I wanted to say.

And now the past couple of weeks it has been disappearing, and altering - a very disconcerting thing if anyone has been watching. I doubt that, though, given the dormancy.

Behind the scenes we've been scurrying trying to upgrade Movable Type and various plugins, among other things. I won't bore you with the details, beyond saying that this is the sixth installation (or maybe the seventh) on three different operating systems and two different machines.

I'm here now, though, and working slowly at getting everything fully functioning and back up again.
For those of you who are familiar with the other five blogs run from here - they will be back up again soon as well - or at least most of them will.

Until then, there might be a few more service interruptions - keep watching this space.