Open feedback

Hey Readers!

Thanks a ton for reading this blog.

A silent friday night like this when I'm running a fever, a friend of mine rings me. She gave me open feedback about the things that have changed with respect to this blog (http://hsejiv.blogspot.com/). What she used to like on my blog and what has changed. What made her read it once and what's missing now. What's good about this blog etc etc.

It's a good wake up call, So here is this 360 feedback. Let me know what you think.

Thanks all, I'm done collecting them. Now it's time for some data analysis.

Pay it Forward

The Rules

1. Be one of the first Three (3) bloggers to leave a comment on this post, which then entitles you to a handmade item from me.

2. Winners, you must post this challenge on your blog, meaning that you will Pay It Forward, creating a handmade gift for the first 3 bloggers who leave a comment on YOUR post about this giveaway!

3. The gift that you send to your three Friends can be from any price range and you have 365 days to make/ship your item. This means you should be willing to maintain your blog at least until you receive your gift and have shipped your gifts. And, remember: It’s the Spirit and the Thought That Count!

4. When you receive your gift, please feel free to blog about it, sharing appropriate Linky Love! If you are not one of the Top Three Commenters on this post, you can still play along. Post it on your blog; start your own 'Pay It Forward' chain, and encourage your blogging friends to do the same! I will leave a list of names who were the first 3 on my blog as soon as I receive them! I have no clue what it is I will make you.

I got this from (not worth linking..) and in fact waiting for my gift. Now that I have started reading my Origami lessons, I should be able get something interesting out of it. Cheers and have a nice March ahead. :)

::Updated::

Winner is...

Ok, Now that I have some time in hand. I will say, who gets to fill their belly for what does "V stands for". First Thanks to everyone of the entry. I'm glad. Also to take a neutral stand, I asked my friend to judge this. Thanks to her. Amudhan was lucky with this "Varutha padatha Vaalibar Sangam". :) Amudhan is a friend and a fellow blogger who writes here here and here. 

Well, I read lot of good posts around me. Apart from some of them I share in my reader, here are few in the month of January..

Poem: A Quick love by Neha

On a Bored Evening... by Sankar

Can’t girls talk about beards? by Revathi

He,Ne,Ar,Kr and Xe. by Abirami

The biggest secret of Photography from DPS

Flickr stream of Arun

Flickr pool from BWS

I got lot more, but I need to refactor some code. :) Take care...

hsejiv

That's my blog url's unique name. Two years back, when blogger asked me a unique name for my blog I tried numerous number of times for a nice name that matches me. Unfortunately I was late. But finally I decided to stick on to 'hsejiv', If you have ever wondered where I got this. Its nothing but the reverse of my name. In short strrev("vijesh"); Now finally I have got the same printed in my t-shirt. Thanks to those guys who carried it all the way from Goa. :)

Restart Blogging

Off lately I was banging my head reading ASCII chart and gdb. But Its fun you know. Also was trying out pair programming for two days and seems to work out of the given problem. Tried venting out in a coffee break conversation all about Blogging with a friend.

I started blogging almost 2.5 years back. Made around 200 post. I don categorise on what I write, I just write all the junk I feel like. I write when I feel liking. Also got to confess that adherent follower of Blogger platform. During this whole journey, had formed small sets of blogger around me reading and exchanging comments and reviews. But today I was reminded of all the old bloggers I knew. I thought of saying them a "hi" and give them a nice whip on the butt to re-start blogging. Oh yeah! I know everyone is either busy at work or married. Still give it a thought. Here are some of them... If someone is really think to rethink. Let me know. :)

kim - antony - arula - rashmi - tom - harish - vivek - JK - Karthikeyni - Yeskay - Lakshmi - Rohith - Reghu - Karthi - Gopal - Ramya - Rajeev - Ramki - Bairavi - Anitha - Smitha - Haarish - Madhu

This laptop is running of charge, I need to rush. Happy Birthday Rohit. Wishing you all the glamour and get ................ :-)

My Experiments with WordPress

I had never dreamt of working with WordPress. But yeah, you should know not all dreams happen. Humm, I had been working with WP for now more than a months. I was surprised myself when it ranked as one of the popular sites that I visit. Well, this is not a post to compare WordPress with a superior blogging platform like blogger. Just an review in my terms. There were different kinds of users whom I have observed during this experiment (Experienced to Rookie).

Home Page: Why do I need so many things squeezed into one front page. Hot VIP posts, Hot community post, Recommended page and universal tag. I was for a second confused if it was my home page. Cross verified when I saw a small text saying "Welcome back Vijesh".

WordPress is against the policy of "One Click", you at least need two clicks to do any action in WordPress. Only thing that works on one click is to view your blog. That's interesting.

The WYSWYG editor is neat and comprehensive. Few things that stand out are Full screen editing mode (One can always disguise his manager like typing on a editor.), Insert Custom Symbol with a Character map and easy upload of Media varying from image, audio and video. Also an 3GB storage limit is impressive to start with.

Stats: That's a good thing to have inside one's blogger portal. An automatic stats collector is good for beginners to know about it. Also the stats are cheap and simple. Not even near to other powerful stats engine. Anything for free is welcomed.

Privacy and comment moderation: Its usual stuff here were you can hide the blog from search engine and invite users to your blog. But roles like Contributor, Editor and Author are confusing. I wish they define each role in a tool tip. Since I don have time for twenty questions or patience to read the help. Comment moderation has become an important setting with most bloggers. The interface to moderate comment was cool in WordPress. (I loved clicking those 13 moderated comments, It was fun.)

Pages and Category: I got to accept this, Pages is one big feature I miss in Blogger. Its easy to add pages in WordPress. Did not experiment much on them. Category is good to organise the tags. But any real time purpose of it. I can't think of many.

Themes and Custom Header: Too many Thames to select from. When choices increase trouble increase. Custom Header was easy to make and change. It was specifically said the dimension the header has to be so that no cropping or re size is done. Good word there.

But over all on any good day or network, WordPress is heavy and slow. Its not a piece of cake for my Dad or Mom. I wont recommend it for beginners. Either you live in Ireland or India try hard its still not like my love. Now its all said and done, I can sit back and relax...

Here are some of the user testimonials,

- aree whats happening, why is it reacting like this?

- hey wait, be patient and why do you want to click on that so many times.

- Now, what to do?

- Where is it?

- Sorry, I was not able to create a login!

Update: I did not try feature of password protected post. :P Ah! How did I miss that, or rather what will I do doing that.

After My Death

I remember reading this somewhere. Now that I'm too young to think about it. :) Say, I get married and have kids. I become old and one day will say good bye. After that the beautiful villa I had will be inherited by my daughter. I had thought well and written those papers with those graphics of Ashoka Chakra at the top with clear state of mind & sense. But did I miss something?

What will happen to one's blog after h(is|er) death? Wondering what will happen to this blog after ...? Who will know the key to open the gates of this Secret Garden? Who will maintain it? Who will be my heir for this online mess I have? Is there a law that says someone can? Or will it be shutdown after some dormant period and allow someone to take hsejiv as their blog name. I don't want to. :(

Just in case some one does heir, all I would want you to write a post with one of the photograph's I have taken. Post them on those special days that I would love to remember. One promise I would give is, already I have an archive that would last 2 generations. :)

Tell me: What would you like to do?

Why I should not go to TFN and Why you should go?

Me: Tring Tring... Tring Tring..

She: hi.. hru & whats up..

Me: Well, there is a bicycle ride that's happening in Bangalore, I thought I will go there..

She: Oh! Ok.. But you don have a bicycle there..

Me: (grin...) I will buy a new one! :)

She: When is it?

Me: Starting Dec 25 for 7 days.

She: What 7days? and 25. You said you will be home for your Birthday! No way Vijay!

Me: No maa, not interested in celebrating one this year, I had been doing this all thro' 20+ years.

She: I'm twice the age of you and I still celebrate it. You better talk to dad...... (Enaga...)

This is where my tour started and ended. Also I got one reunion and two special people birthday's to celebrate on this time frame. But I will tell why you should go for TFN.

TFN - Tour oF Nilgiris. Its a special interest group of people who wanted to take an adventurous ride through the flora and fauna of the gorgeous Nilgiris with their bikes. (These guys address bicycles as bikes.) It would be a 910 919kms ride in 7 days, at an average 140kms per day! Its a spectacular route these people have come up with. In brief, Bangalore-Mysore-Madikeri-Sultan Bathery-Ooty-Mysore-Bangalore. If you had missed to see any of these places you just missing something beautiful. Mysore is known for its cultural heritage. Sultan Bathery would be breath taking with its greenery on God's own country. Twisting roads through the tea estates would be an amazing site to watch. Ooty! She is the Queen. A favourite destination during my college days. Imagine drinking a hot chaai (tea) standing on a mist covered road after a nice pedal. (I simply call it heaven!) Oh boy! My camera would be loving it, will I stop clicking?...

Well, that said about TFN. How can you be there in TFN? First register, lets do the talking later. Cool. Pal, I did the home work for you... You have to have your own bike, helmet, clothing, toolkit for a mechanical bug like puncture and break wire failure (its hill regions you know). Most importantly need to pay the participation fee for the organiser(s) to take of your food and accommodation for the 7 days. Its 10K for full event and 1500/900 for a stage (1 day) with/without accommodation. Also read the do's/don and T&C before signing in.

(Mom, this one for your question on safety...) Manipal Hospital will be the official medical assistance partner. They have a fully equipped Ambulance coming along with you during the ride, with sport medicine doctors for any emergency. You know TFN is crazy! Making is more crazier is Radio Indigo, the official radio partners. Yeah, I will be missing those food from Nilgiris

What makes this event more beautiful is the people who are associated with it. Its one unique gang! You should read it for yourself about these maniacs. They include tech geeks, doctors, photographers and even a 6th grade student. Now for the final bad news, the registration is closed. :) But, Still you can register and be part of TFN if someone drops out. So now all you need is passion (mixed with a pinch of craziness), love of nature and a bit of preparation.

You know why I made this post? You can also be a lucky blogger to cover this record making milestone event. :) You can also do it, just publish about it and send your entries to contest [ at ] tourofnilgiris [dot] com. Write & Click and enjoy nature.

Happy Birthday 'ScribblinG'

Its a long journey... 3 long years, 12000+ hits, 155 posts, 424 comments, 22 drafts and 1 author. Yeah, my blog is three years old. September 16th 2005 marked the beginning of this journey. This has become my love for now.

Thank you all for stopping by, taking time, laughing, cribbing and your comments. I love you readers too.

P.S: If you see me today, don forget to collect those chocolates.

Blogger Love

What would it make your mom write a blog?
She always thought that was a Pandora box for which myself and my Dad hold the key. She never believed that she could do it herself. I then introduced her to blogger and she did make her first post by herself. Though she was stumped with the Unicode mismatch in her second post. :) (I can see her desperation in comments). How as this possible?, did my mom become a geek over night. Maybe! But the true credit goes to Blogger team to make the interface so simple that anybody can write. Wooo! Thanks guys.

I had been using blogger now for almost 2.11 years. Its my best blogging portal I have ever used. Simple steps to create a blog, make a new post and enough number of layouts to satisfy any starter. Any advanced user actions like tweaking the whole template (Like I have done my dual floating bar), following the comments for a post, scheduled post and cool gadgets.

Whats more to make this fairy tale journey more interesting?
I had been following blogger in draft and things are pretty interesting for us in the future. Follow blogs, this is a feature that's mimicked from twitter. The followers can be shows as a widget. Next cool feature is "Reaction" Immediately after reading the post, one can react on the post. Say I propose a way to reduce the traffic in Bangalore in a post, I can ask "Do you Agree" or "You don Agree", based on the clicks each option will get a vote. You can import and export your blogs. Even embedded comments and private posts. :-)

Migrate from wordpress to blogger?
Oh yeah! This is possible too. Here is a nice tool hosted in google-code to make the transition smoother. (Abirami: I'm just a shout away for any assistance! Or holding peace with wordpress?) Steps are simple:
1) Download the latest version (now its 0.3)
2) Make sure your java path is set. (test: java -version)
3) Run run.sh/run.bat
Tip: At the first time, after saving your account credentials it would say "Cannot connect to server". Now just close and reopen and try the same. I tested them and it works like a charm. Also would recommend to change email password to some random string and after the change back to your original once done. Many thanks to yichao. I promise that I would fix some bugs when I get time as a token of love. :-)

P.S: I have started tweeking a template for my photoblog. I needed some help on CSS and JS. If someone can volunteer teach and help me, I can make them happy with good perks. [kvijesh[at]gmail]

My first post

I should make some justice after posting one such post like the previous. So this should my first post on a restart. It was interesting to note the kind of feedback that got for that post.

• one reader called my immediately on reading and asked is that true? Why?
• one said, "appada" (sign of relief) finally good news. (I know.. I know..)
  
• one even threatened for my life.
• one asked me, hey is this a marketing gimmick for your blog?
  
• someone asked is it because you are making so many posts now a days. (Oh yeah! that's a good excuse I can ask for. Last month was the record highest month with 16 posts)
  
• many ignored it. :)
  

So how the future is going to be?
Amen...

I will stop blogging

humm, this is yet another thread that takes some of my processing now a days. There are many reasons for it. Primary reason would be that I give equal (I meant more) importance to read some of the blogs I follow. As on date there is a whooping 815 unread items in my reader. Shit! That's bad. Next reason is that there are 6 posts in my drafts that is half cooked. Some of them would really make it online and some of them will be poor drafts for ever :-).

Next reason would be that I started falling in love with something else, yeah something smaller. To be specific, Micro blogging. Yeah its twitter. This 140 character longs posts are easy and does not strain my head or I don't need to review my own nonsense before hitting the publish button. Its easy, fast and I can do it from any where. Also following some interesting people is fun. Only thing that slightly hurts is the fact that it kills my sleep when a MSG beeps at unearthly hours. Now that I can drain some battery power. :)

Not last but the least to spare some of few good hearted people like you who managed to read till here.

Super Sunday

A Sunday for India, Indians & Indian Cricket. Will it be the Lions or will it be Lion cubs or both! Where will it happen, in Australia or Malayasia. Yes its lined up as one of the biggest day for Indian cricket where the Big boys take on the World champions for the final showdown of the 'down under' tour. On the other side its the under 19'eens taking on South Africa for becoming the world campions.

I just will keep up with the live blogging happening. I'm counting srihari on this.

Barcampbangalore

I should be a dumb missing the last Bangalore bloggers meet. Thanks to Events Bangalore to give me a wakeup call as that I'm missing my appointments. A group of Bangalore bloggers gathered last Saturday at a nice location BrewHaHa in Koramangala. I needn't write more, since other bloggers got plenty more to say. They brain stormed on various topics on blogging. One of the outcome was Barcampbangalore on Jul 28th and 29th at IIM Bangalore. Interested people can register and pass a word to others. Here is the schedule of the sessions!

Meet you there!
Happy Blogging!

I walk alone I walk alone

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But its home to me and I walk alone

The number that I have been recently hearing. Or I start realizing that its really happening. Yes indeed its happening right here. Everyone are opening their next chapters of life. The new chapter is not the same for all, everyone having them differently. Finally all are left alone with different things. Now there are more people who move out of Bangalore than they come inside to bangalore. Its only a hand full of we guys who had stuck together for a long time! would continue too...


Listen to the beautiful song!


I walk a lonely road... This song recently played in Novell Annual Day, by few of my friends here. Best of the music performance given for that evening. Yes, it was fun all through the 20 days to Novell Annual Day preparation. I staged 2 dances one was from "Don", the other was "Where's the party tonight". It was great feeling for me, now that because of this I came to know more people in and around me. Also, I have a long awaited company during the journey in office cab in the slogging hosur road traffic. I got a MP3 players as an annual day goodie!


P.S: Finally I embedded music also to my blog. Song source here
Update: Just be careful, Don be over involved in this song. It can break friendship! Or you might really walk alone! :)

In Love of NUMB3RS

This post will definitely help fellow Bloggers to enhance their blogging experience and might motivate new bloggers!

Long since I have kept track of many Google's beta. Once such was this "Google Analytics". Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. Its main highlight is that a webmaster can optimize their AdWords advertisement and marketing campaigns through the use of Google Analytics's analysis of where the visitors came from, how long they stayed on the website and their geographical position. Today my older interface was automatically migrated to new Ajax rich interface. That I fell in love with immediately.

You get what you need. Thought I don host a commercial website, the figures that are displayed make me understand about the visitor who visit my blog. Some new features that caught my eye was Ajax rich User experience. The graphs and dimensional summary I get regarding my blog. My favorite of the all is the export as pdf option. For the report I give a perfect 10. Of late I was googling of how to upload files in blogger. The first link said bloggers disallow uploading files for security reason. But I din want to use third party servers to host my file. Finally with a little scratch of my head I found a method and uploaded my pdf report here.


Quick Glances:

• I found this post on Universal search interesting.
• Here is my Feed Reader. All news & blogs are read using it.

New Year Gift :)

B'day / Christmas gifts (t-shirt, shirt) are still glittering in my eyes! Before that New Year neared the calender. Its almost 2007 in the far east. Few min to go for us. How about getting a gift now! That too from Google. Yes I did get one!

I always wanted to update by blogger and wanted to experience the new Blogger. Week earlier it informed only selected participants are allowed to migrate. But today when I logged in I was in for a surprise. I was allowed to migrate to the new blogger. My favorite stretch view is one I always liked to have. I tried tweaking the old blogger template, but the static images was hindering my trials. Now all in one plate. It has lot other cool features. Yet to explore all.

Thanks to Google, for making this available so soon.