Updates - or the lack thereof

I know I haven't updated the blog for quite some time now. New posts will come.... eventually... hopefully sometime soon.  There's much to write and rant about. My trip to Shanghai and Hong Kong, my final semester of undergraduate engineering education, the frenetic pace of shopping, packing and finally getting shipped off to Georgia Tech, Atlanta leaving my folks, friends and Cactus behind.... and the awesomeness that is Tech itself!

Just getting settled down and getting past the first week or two of class, so yeah blog updates will come someday.

Regards,

A Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech and a Helluva Engineer ;)

I'm Back

I've been gone quite some time from my blog, I know. This has been one hectic semester at college, not to mention the onerous task of filling in and completing applications to universities for my higher education. Had to pop over to Hong Kong for a bit and to Shanghai for an IEEE conference where I presented a paper of mine. And my most annoying exams played their part in keeping me occupied too.

So now I'm back ... kinda. I still have a few days pending from my Egypt travelogue to complete. Then I'll have the customary College Chronicles post up, to be followed by a detailed description of my days in Hong Kong and Shanghai - what I saw, where I went etc.

All this will start trickling onto the blog one by one after the 11th (that's 4 days away). A little bit busy till then though. I'm happy now that I'm averaging above 1500 unique page visits each month consistently over the last few months too. :)

Apparently, Rorschach has been running around the world - leaking his diary on the net, embarrassing some powerful people and such. Props if you get the reference. ;)

Here's hoping you'll be there for the upcoming posts. Happy holidays!

A New Subscription Option

I've added a new method to get updates on this blog as and when the articles come up. This way you'll get the blog titles VIA SMS MESSAGES, so that you'll know when there's something new on the blog.

Yeah, you read that right, via SMS. You can subscribe using this link here or using the link in the left sidebar of the blog. Please note that subscribing is COMPLETELY FREE, you'll not be charged a single cent/paisa for the service. All you have to do is enter your mobile number on the page that opens up and enter the verification code (that Google will send to your phone) onto the appropriate dialog box on the PC. After that, the PC and Internet connection aren't required to get updates, they'll automatically land up on your mobile phone.

And subscribing to this will in no way make your number prone to receiving ads and stuff, absolutely no ads will be sent, so do subscribe.

A bit busy again.... Exams

I'll get back to posting a lot again in a week or two. I'm reeeeeeeeeaaaalllly busy right now with my semester exams.

Looking forward to getting back to blogging my brains out soon!!!

Note: This just means I won't be making a daily update for the next 9 days. But the updates will still come once in 2-3 days. So keep a watch.

When I return to blogging after this short period, I'll be writing a big article about a little piece of paper that caused me a lot of misery a year or so ago. It'll be a nice read, I assure you.

Overhaulin'

Nothing is permanent but change.... And so, you might observe that the blog has changed a great deal from when you last visited. I tried changing it to a 3-column template, and then my friend Avinash suggested that instead of me messing up my blog, he'd do it for me. So he spent several hours rewriting the template for the blog, and he's done a really wonderful job. If it weren't for him, I'd have gone mad with CSS and XML. Thank God, and a BIG THANK YOU to him. This is the same guy who's blog I'd written about a few posts earlier. Thanks Avinash!!

So after he had his way with it, I've been adding some of the old widgets back while omitting some of the widgets that might be too heavy for users on slower connections, like the Finetune Radio and the Freedom Fighters soundtrack for Star Trek's trailer. And I've added new ones like the RSS feeds for Top Gear's Car News, and the front page from BBC News, a national geographic photo widget, a customised google search option for my page, as well as implemented adSense.

Besides all this there are two major changes when you click on a blog post. Yes, when you click on a blog post it goes to the post's individual page. Once you're there and you've finished reading it, you'll now see a "Related Posts" list at the bottom, so that you can continue reading further with some related topic. Besides this I've also added an embedded comment form on the post's individual page which lets you comment without having to open an all-new page for the purpose.

Oh, and all you lazy people, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE leave a few comments and suggestions, just takes you a minute or two of your time. And do use the options for choosing whether an article is funny or interesting or cool below each post....

And if you want any music running in the background, you can click the blue last.fm radio button in the right sidebar (nothing jarring or headbanging mind you). I've set it such that it no longer starts automatically when the site loads.

Thanks again to anyone who reads this and to Avinash for helping me out big-time.....

Blogs and Tags - Avinash's Blog

All bloggers have one goal in common - to expand their subscriber base. Here are a few ways I have discovered that might benefit fellow bloggers :

One feature that should be abused to the maximum is the tags option in the various blogs. This is because most ...... Continue Reading...

A blog to watch out for...

A very good friend of mine has started down the blogging path.

He's quite a geek when it comes to the internet, tech stuff and computer security. And he's a total nut case like me. So take a look at his blog via this link. He's put up a whole bunch of awesome pictures that he took in San Diego. Ask him for higher resolution versions of the same if you want, he'll oblige. And any programming / network security / web-page building / hosting queries, he's the one to ask.



The blog has started off with the aforementioned pictures and an article on Meta Tags (useful for bloggers mind you). I'll be linking to his articles too as they come up on his site right from my page from now on.