Sridhar Machani | My World

WordPress 3.3

2011-12-20T21:15:00.000+05:30

Just upgraded my sites to WordPress 3.3. I know, I'm a little late to join in on the excitement, er, is there any such thing going with this release? I'll find out soon enough, but, the welcome message brought out a pleasant smile :)

Is that what we call a nice user experience?

The Kolaveri Post

2011-12-13T14:08:00.001+05:30

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled into this “Why this kolaveri di” video, now famous all over the place. Until then, I had heard about it, but wasn’t sure why people were crazy about it.

After the first watch, I just fell in love with the music and the unashamed use of silly lyrics. Of course, it will touch anyone who has ever fallen in love, which is almost everyone!

Soon after, there were TV shows trying to make sense of “how” this kolaveri di, and a few parodies as well.

Though the online world is filled with many remixes, I really liked this one by Nevaan, son of Sonu Nigam:

Blogger Now Connects to Google+

2011-12-13T12:11:00.000+05:30

If you've been posting to your blogger.com blog and then manually posting the link to your Google+ stream, I bet you were waiting for this feature.

Now, you can connect your blog to Google+, and after you publish your post, you'll will be presented with an option to post a snippet to your Google+ stream. Read more at:

http://buzz.blogger.com/2011/12/connect-to-google.html

However, I don't think this will be useful if you use a blogging client, such as Windows Live Writer.

Xperia Ray – a Phone or a PC?

2011-12-12T21:59:00.001+05:30

Thanks to my 15-month old son, Swaraj, three mobile phones went broke. I bought a cheap dual SIM phone and am still using it for one of my numbers. After mulling over my first Android phone for a long time, and bugging a few friends, I finally bought a Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray.

The deal makers for me were Gingerbird (Android 2.3.4), 8MP camera, HD video recording, and of course, the promised Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) update due in March-2012. As soon as I connected the phone to my PC, it flashed a message that Android 2.3.4 update was available and I went ahead with it. The whole process took less than 20 minutes.

The first 2-3 days were spent exploring the apps on the phone and on Android Market, installing/uninstalling many apps. Of course, a good Wi-Fi connection helped. I then enabled 3G with the starter package of INR 100 a month for 200MB data transfer limit. Oh, there’s an app to monitor the data transfer, and set alarms that trigger after a certain amount of data transfer.

Those Days and Now

I remember at the end of my first year in engineering, in Sep 1998. I was getting my first PC and was thrilled with Windows 95, 233MHz CPU speed and 256MB RAM. It had 4.3GB of hard disk space and the PC dealer was questioning several times, “why would you ever need 4.3GB of space?” I remember having fought for it, and had asked him to load mp3s, games, and software.

Today, I see the same scrambling over the which phone has 1GHz CPU and how much of RAM it has. My phone, Ray, is powered by a 1GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, and 4GB storage (external, micro SD). It cost me 20k less than my first PC, almost 15 years later. My official laptop has 8GB RAM

Clearly, the phones today are what our PCs used to be in yester years. This trend would be blurred, with ubiquous data (on cloud services like Dropbox), Internet connectivity, and apps.

What do you think is the next big thing?

Psst: Sony has bought Ericsson, so I wonder what they make of their phones. Am game for a better camera

Swaraj Pix

2011-09-08T20:32:00.000+05:30

This picture was taken on 29th of May, 2011. He was completing 9 months at that time.

Rights and Wrongs

2011-09-07T22:10:00.001+05:30

Before you continue reading, I need to warn you that this post is cryptic and may not make any sense in many cases. But, I cannot answer any of your questions that may come up. I hope you understand the fact that I don’t know how to explain the perspectives behind a lot of things I did and continue to do.

What do you do when you don’t know what is right and what is not? The thing is, no matter what you do and how much you try to explain, you’re going to hurt one person or the other, including yourself and your loved ones. I guess there is no dearth of such situations in anyone’s life. Certainly not in mine!

How did I and how do I continue to deal with these most difficult choices? Like for a while now, I’ve tried to do what I think is the right thing to do given a set of situations, no matter how much I screw up other things and no matter how selfish I seem to be. I only pray to God that those who get hurt in the process would eventually understand and appreciate my decisions and deeds. I also seek forgiveness from all the affected folks. I think that’s a long shot, though.

As a fallout of one such difficult decision, me, my wife, and my son, Swaraj, have moved to a new residence in Bangalore, far away from the dust and the din of the city limits. That was last weekend and we’re still settling down. But things will never be the same again. A lot of things have changed and have gone beyond the points of no return.

Ah, just before I forget, today (7-Sep-2011) is my son Swaraj’s first birthday. Yeah, he turned one today and we hardly noticed how time flew past us. Right now, he is just about the only awesome thing going on in me and my wife’s lives. For that reason and for all the million smiles he manages to bring on our faces everyday – even in the middle of all the dilemmas, personal mishaps, and unmentionable crisis situations - we’re eternally grateful to the Almighty and to our son, of course.

Happy first birthday, son! You’ve been absolutely awesome. Please stay that way!

WGO 31-Dec-2010: Ends, Startups, 2011

2010-12-31T07:40:00.001+05:30

Welcome to a weekly series called What’s Going On. I’ll feature a summary of what’s going on in my world.

2010 and 2011

It’s the last day of 2010 and the last decade, 2001-2010. Wishing you all a great new year!

What a year! Personally, the most important thing was my son. The other things are just that – I keep fiddling with such a lot of things, I need to cut down on them.

What a decade! Wait till you see the next decade. It’s gonna rock.

2011 is the year I’ll be brave and stupid at the same time. My risk-taking appetite seems to be peaking.

What can you do in 2011 and beyond?

Dream. Aspire. Think. Plan. Unplan. Start. Do. Create. Read. Write. Travel. Listen. Change. Turn around. Have fun.

What not to do in 2011 and beyond?

Don't wait. Don't give up. Don't fear. Don't stop. Don't be disappointed.

Startups

Hooked on to a lot startup gyan, like Y Combinator: Startup Library and Pmarchive; mostly obsessed with picking a co-founder.

WGO 23-Dec-2010: SM.com, Startups, Reva…

2010-12-23T16:57:00.001+05:30

Welcome to a weekly series called What’s Going On. I’ll feature a summary of what’s going on in my world and in the external world.

My World

http://SridharMachani.com has a new look with a new set of offerings and solutions for businesses, professionals and individuals.
My son is now 3.5 months and gets as naughty and playful as ever. His naming ceremony has been planned on 6-Feb-2010. When I’m in Bangalore, video chat is the next best thing to being with him (he stays in my in-laws place in AP).
Learnt that there are infinite ways to create startups with equally infinite ideas flooding my head all the time. I guess either I don’t care and live in the current state, or go after them full throttle. A mantra I’m clinging on to these days is, “Fail fast. Fail cheap. Apply relentless focus.”
Implemented my own simplistic version of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I’m fairly happy with it and now want to spread the word, maybe in the format of workshops.
Installed Android 2.2 OS on a thumb drive and made it bootable (occupied about 60MB). Made my laptop boot into Android and was a nice OS hack to do after a long time. I had trouble connecting to the Internet because it won’t recognize the USB modem. Must try with Wi-Fi and Ethernet connection.

External World

The price of the onions is the front page news these days. Last week came the increase in the fuel prices. They give me my next startup idea.
Today’s DNA newspaper has an ad for Reva, called “Petrol free.” It claims a government subsidy of Rs.75,000! It’s very tempting to pick it up and drive around the town for “negligible monthly cost”.

2010 Football WorldCup Matches and Paul

2010-07-12T11:05:00.003+05:30

The final match is over and Spain is celebrating their marginal win over Netherlands. If you've followed the predictions of the psychic octopus named Paul, the result would not be surprising for you. It has 100% record, having predicted the results right 8 out of 8 times. No wonder, TIME calls it the octopus of the year.

Google doodle on the WorldCup Final Match Day

The worldcup final match was dull and silly, with most of the players on either sides getting a yellow card for foul play. I watched most of my matches with my wife and we could barely keep ourselves awake last night. In India, the match analysis starts from 11PM, the match starts at 11.50PM and stretches upto 2AM. With extra time and penalties, it could easily stretch upto 3AM. Thank God, there was no penalty shootouts in the final match, with Spain scoring the only goal of the match with about 2 minutes to spare at the end of the 30-minute extra time.

To tell you the truth, the worldcup was over when Germany thrashed my favorite team Argentina 4-0 in the quarter finals a week ago, with the first goal coming in less than 3 minutes. Argentina had no clue what defending meant and no game plan for the aggressive and the know-no-fear young Germans. My wife had actually predicted, including Paul, that Argentina would lose right after she was disappointed with her favorite team, Brazil, which lost 2-1 to Uruguay the previous day. After the disaster, both of us lost interest in the semi-final matches, having witnessed the exit of our respective favorite teams.

Up until its exit, Argentina played like they were going to go all the way and win the worldcup this time. My all-time favorite football player since my school days, Diego Maradona (now coach) and my current favorite player, Messi, were both associated with Argentina and that clearly explains my interest in the team. Maradona and Messi are like the mentor and the pupil, the past and the future. Both wear number 10 T-shirt on the field and are said to have exceptional skills with the football.

The match of the tournament for me was the knockout clash between Germany and England where the winner would qualify for the quarter-finals. Germany scored in the first few minutes and the intensity that followed until the end of the 45-minute first half was electrifying. Both the teams were amazing in their defence and were in full strike force trying to score goals. Every minute of that first half was tense with several breath-taking attacks and counter attacks, in lightening speed and pin-point passing accuracy. England failed to keep up the momentum in the second half and were eventually knocked out of the match. But they can live with it in the knowledge that they gave their best shot, if only in the first half. What a match!

It has been a great 1 month of exciting football and I'll miss all the action. The next worldcup in due in 2014, but in the meanwhile, I'm looking forward to the next season of the European league matches, where most of the best players appear for their clubs (similar to the IPL clubs). I'll be specifically following Messi when he tries to score for his club, Barcelona.

Checking Posterous Autopost

2010-07-07T11:39:00.001+05:30

...to all my sites with this one email.

Quote for the day:

"Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you have not planted."

~ by David Bly

Posted via email from I'm Sridhar Machani

[30-day-challenge] Gym

2010-07-02T08:46:00.004+05:30

Welcome to my next challenge - well, this will be the second for this month, though I'm hoping to continue with the gym for a long time.

From the next week, I'm going to enroll to the gym at office. Though it was on my mind for a long time, the long working hours had made it inconvenient so far.

What has changed now is the need for fitness, which is fast deterioting. In the last 2 weeks, my body indicated as much by way of headaches, ear pains, and upper back pain.

Moreover, I've getting too lazy with no physical activities and low energy levels that it was beginning to have an impact on my tons of goals and ideas incubating in my mind.

The final factor that convinced me was my wife - she almost threatened me! She is carrying now, which makes it obligatory on my part to fulfill all (or most of) her wishes (that's a traditional duty of the father-to-be). Her cravings/wishes have been very little in number and that makes it harder to say no. Hopefully, I'll carry on with gym for more than just 30 days!

[30-day-challenge] Reconnecting with Friends

2010-06-30T08:20:00.009+05:30

Welcome to my next 30-day challenge. I've felt a strong desire to reconnect with my past and it has been really good so far.

One thing I've been doing, albeit unwittingly, is to call up old friends and colleagues. There is no objective or agenda, but just a desire to say hello, talk to them and see how they're going on. I've not been doing it for the sake of 30-day challenge, so I'm not feeling guilty but really good about it.

So far, I spoke to the following folks:

Bhavesh - my lead when I started my tenure at HP, the only guy to call me "Mac". Luckily, he hasn't changed his cell number, so we connected on the call after over 5 years. We later met near my office and spent about 40 minutes. He now has a 5-month old daughter, Dwitha (not sure if I got the spelling right). Delighted with the meeting!
Sudhir Raykar - ex-colleague at HP. I've been in touch with him on and off, but it was still good to speak to him on the phone.
Mahendran and Karthik CS - we studied engineering together and worked on multiple projects. Both are expecting their first child in November this year, sweet isn't it? Karthik is in to professional photography and I make it a point to follow his amazing work.
Jayaprasad - another engineering classmate. We connected briefly on GTalk.
Fred - my ex-manager at Siemens PLM. I consider him one of my mentors, so it was wrong on my part to have stayed disconnected so far. Hopefully, we'll engage in a collaborative project sooner than later.
Atanu and Moumita - my ex-colleagues at Siemens PLM. We used to have tea at about 2.40PM everyday and I recall the discussions we used to have in those times of recession, lay-offs and swine-flu in Pune (2009).
Manohar and Srinidhi Koushik - my ex-colleagues at HPshopping.com. Manohar is my colleague currently as well, so we bump into each other sometimes. Srinidhi got engaged recently (23-May-2010), so made it a point to attend his engagement and meet his fiancee and family.
Christ School friends - Deepak Artal, Biju, Vinod B, K Deepak, Hemanth, Umesh Kumar, Niraj, Jayaprakash, Manjunath, Dr. Nagaraj, Lohith, Nagendra - met them at V Girish's wedding (6-Jun-2010) and had a great time talking to all. The interesting part is that they came in the same groups that they used to hang out with in school. I guess somethings don't change and for good reason in this case!
Kashi - my buddy who got married in Jan this year. After that, we've hardly met, but I did recently, only for a few minutes. I'm sure we'll catch up big time when we do catch up.

Tried calling, but couldn't speak to them:

Vinay Prabhu - my ex-lead at HP and a close friend, but we're hardly in touch.
Randhir Hebbar - my engineering classmate and entrepreneur. I'm sure we'll collaborate on something, sooner or later.

Will keep you posted on this list. I highly recommend that you give it a try and I'll bet you'll not regret it at all. I'm even thinking of building a small network so we can all hangout and make our journey ahead a little less stressful and enriching. What do you think?

[30-day-challenge] Less Tea Now

2010-06-28T11:17:00.000+05:30

Ever since I started my 30-day challenges, every single task that I was procrastinating came alive. For example, I was trying to learn guitar and stopped it like most folks, but '30 days of learning guitar' is tempting.

Less Tea

I mentioned that I had started 30 days of 1-cup of tea at office. It was common for me to sip 3 or 4 cups of tea or coffee at office so far. For over a month now, instead of having tea post lunch, I've been picking up a fresh fruit juice or fruit salad when hunger strikes at around 4PM. I somehow feel good about it. Now, with the dipping temperature and raining days, it has been tough not to have a cup of hot tea at around 4PM. In fact, that is when the rains usually start, leaving me thinking about the challenge.

What I'm up to now is that, instead of 1 cup in the morning, I've broken it down to half a cup each in the morning and in the evening. On most occasions, I'm not picking up anything to eat in the evenings, because I realized, I was adding calories while trying to avoid tea.

Bottom line, I think I'll stick to less tea rather than no tea in the evenings.

For my next challenge, I'm thinking of either going to gym or reconnecting with old friends. What would be your choice?

Kicking-off My 30-day Challenges

2010-06-04T13:49:00.002+05:30

How about doing the same set of things at about the same times and almost every day? They call it routine and monotonous life. We've been there and we all want to break free from our routines. Starting today, I'm setting 30-day challenges to figure out if I can continue to do a particular thing over a period of 30 days and then analyze how I went about it.

Disclaimer: The 30-day challenge idea actually came from a Googler's blog that I read. Actually, I read a lot of blogs and get inspired by some of them. Very few thoughts and ideas actually translate into actions or decisions. But the 30-day challenge always seemed interesting and now I want to set it in motion.

Upcoming Challenges

Here are some of the 30-day challenges I've in mind. I plan to pick two or three from the list because I've to and because they've a common goal. Apart from a different perspective, every challenge gives me (hopefully) interesting topics to blog about (which is yet another challenge I face and hope to accomplish). So, you get the plot there.

30 days of waking up at 5AM for my projects
30 days of learning guitar
30 days of reading a book to my unborn child
30 days of writing non-stop blog posts
30 days of writing for my book
30 days of no TV
30 days of twitter and facebook status updates
30 days SEO optimization
30 days of writing articles for external publications
30 days of designing new websites (WordPress themes)
30 days of connecting with friends
30 days of connecting with family
and may more. Maybe I'll list them on the sidebar.

Completed Challenges

Here are some of the things I've been doing in recent times and I'm tempted to mark them as 'Done'!

30 days of practicing Sahaja Yoga - I've been doing it since 8-Feb-2010 and I'm happy I made a spontaneous decision to enroll into the learning session at office. The benefits are wonderful and I've involved my family as well. I plan to involve my friends next because it is too valuable and simple to not share it with everyone.
30 days of 1-cup of tea at office - It was common for me to sip 3 or 4 cups of tea or coffee at office so far. From the past three weeks or so, instead of having tea post lunch, I'm picking up a fresh fruit juice or fruit salad when hunger strikes at around 4PM everyday. I somehow feel good about it.

What would your list look like? Tell me about it in the comments below.

Unborn Moments

2010-04-19T11:41:00.000+05:30

There are some moments that are hard to describe and I'm in the middle of many such moments. But, I still want to capture a few details and add some stuff that could of value later.

I've started sharing those moments at a blog. Visit http://unborn.sridharmachani.com/about/ to know more about it. All my friends out there - here's your chance to share your bits of wisdom and advice with my unborn child on this blog. Send your messages to guest [at] sridharmachani [dot] com. Be the best uncles and aunts!

A Father's Advice To A New Couple About Saving Money

2010-02-01T13:33:00.000+05:30

My friend got married a few days back and his father gave this excellent, simple piece of advice to the young couple about saving money and to plan to buy whatever they want.

Without any doubt, every earning person should know about it very early in one's life:

http://terrorkashi.blogspot.com/2010/02/my-fathers-life-what-he-practised.html

Why I Came Back to Blogger From WordPress

2010-01-26T12:56:00.000+05:30

For all my rants about WordPress, it seems odd and unexpected that I would revert to my blogger blog from WordPress. However, it makes sense for many reasons, because of which I've been able to overcome my affection for WordPress (just for this blog!).

It's been around for a long time: I first started blogging in 2004 and blogger was the natural choice. It was from Google and blogging was fashionable. There was hardly any talk of SEO. My friends expect me to blog about my life and feelings on this blog.
Good for SEO: Google, Microsoft Bing, Yahoo and other search engines know my blog. Whenever someone searches for keywords that match with my blog, my blogger blog comes up in the search results. If I tried moving the content to a new blog, I'd be stupid to lose out on the SEO 'juice' that I've acquired all through the years.
Custom Domain: Blogger announced custom domains (better than the FTP publishing). Blogger redirects the blogger blog to a domain or sub-domain, as in my case (http://blog.sridharmachani.com). Blogger still hosts all the files and the old URLs/feeds still work, no problem!
Avoid the hard work: Using the custom domain feature on the blogger has been as simple as creating a CNAME record with my domain and specifying the custom domain in the blogger settings. Moving a blog is not easy and can screw up all the posts, comments, images and other attachments. It gets complicated when moving from blogger to WordPress, but being the adventurous freak that I am, I did try and it worked well.
Personal branding: My WordPress blog worked well, but there was always a nagging feeling that my blog had to be moved to my personal domain and add to my brand value (whatever that is!).

The point is to blog, so why make a big deal about it? After working with WordPress for the last few years, it was refreshing to compose a post on the blogger (simple and fast). I agree that the design falters on the blogger when compared to awesome WordPress themes and plugins, but this time, I'll stick to the content. For a change, I don't have to get squeezed between SEO and design constraints.

This is my blog and I'll just write!

Moving to SridharMachani.com Blog

2010-01-25T11:46:00.007+05:30

I'm having a change in plans and we're in for the consolidation of my personal brand at http://sridharmachani.com/. My previous announcement will no longer be valid.

This blog will be soon hosted at http://blog.sridharmachani.com/ based on blogger custom domains and using custom domain for blogger. So, if you were using the blogspot links, they'd still work going forward.

Watch this space for more details!

Tuning the Guitar

2009-11-19T14:18:00.001+05:30

In yesterday’s class, Michael (the instructor) provided some of the students with guitars for Rs.3,500 (GB&A brand) and electronic tuners (FT-009 model) for Rs.650. He had checked my guitar last week and said there was no need buy another one. I had to change the rusty strings, though. I had ordered for just the tuner.

Today, after dinner, I started with lesson one and the first/critical step is to tune the guitar. The basic idea is to have each of the 6 strings play the exact musical note, which if not done, screws up whatever you play. Michael is going to teach about tuning the guitar in the next class, but I couldn’t wait so long. I browsed through different sites but didn’t find any relevant instructions for using the electronic tuner. The manufacturer’s link for downloading the User Manual did not work. I even found this popular youtube video, but I didn’t have the patience to watch the full length of 10 minutes.

I knew that the strings had to be tuned to notes E,A,D,G,B,E (thickest string to the thinnest string; from top to bottom when you’re holding the guitar in the right hand). So, I clipped the tuner on the headstock (the top edge of the guitar, see guitar anatomy here). The funda is that you play each string and check the note displayed on the tuner. If the note displayed is higher, you’ve got to loosen the string, until the tuner flashes green and pointer in the middle (which means, the frequency matches with the note played on the string).

Voila, after a few minutes, I got the tuning right (I now realized the difference between music coming out of tuned and un-tuned guitars) – the sound is so much better to listen!

What next…I’m too sleepy now, so will write about how to read musical notes in tablature form and how I’m learning to play the happy birth day song. Stay tuned!

Appreciating beauty

2009-11-19T14:16:00.001+05:30

I know I’m talking about something a married man is not supposed to do. Let’s keep moral judgments aside for a moment.

When you’re walking around and see a person with a beautiful smile adding to the charm of her simple outlook, you may want to walk up to her and compliment her about it. And then, you wonder if it’s a right thing to do, especially if you’re in office premises. Or, is it worse if you’re in a public place?

I think we should be civilized enough to not feel awkward to compliment someone’s special qualities, such as beauty or intellect. The person receiving the compliment should also accept it with dignity and not worry too much or make a fuss about it. I also think it doesn’t matter if you’re married or not, it’s a matter of appreciating beauty honestly.

Have you felt this way anytime? I feel it all the time. Or, do you think I’m just feeling good that the sun is out after weeks of cold, dull rainy days?

Finally, I Pulled Some Strings

2009-11-19T14:12:00.002+05:30

My brother, Raghu and friend, Kashi gifted me a beautiful guitar for my birthday in 2006 (I think so). I’ve tried to learn it several times, from Internet pages, ebooks and from friends (Deepak and his brother, Nitin). Sadly, it didn’t go far enough to even play a single decent piece of music. And for this, I felt guilty whenever I thought of the guitar.

Well, now I’m giving it another shot. I’ve started going to Guitar beginner’s class conducted by a guy called Michael every Wednesdays in office. That’s the day I take my car to office, I don’t want to damage the lovely guitar by any means.

What could be different this time is that I’ve paid for the classes and at least for the next 3 months, I’ll be sure to practice it a few times a week at home. That should give me some time to learn a few tunes, and if the listeners like them, I may be inspired to learn a few more stuff. I’m hoping this cycle never ends throughout my life. If I learn to play it well, I’d definitely pass on the art to others.

Another way I’m planning to keep myself motivated is by blogging about my progress, frustrations, and share tips/resources. Maybe, some of you would be inspired from this stuff to take up guitar learning yourself. For starters, I’m going through stuff at http://www.zentao.com/guitar/.

The by-product of blogging about my lessons is to give my personal blog a new push – it has been neglected for a long time. I cleaned off some of the old dust!

Do keep track of my guitar learning sessions by visiting this site often. The easier way is to subscribe to RSS feeds. You’ll get notified whenever I post something over here. It’s a promise that I won’t give up this time.

Wish me luck!

5 Years of Gmail

2009-09-02T14:11:00.001+05:30

I woke up this morning to restart a morning routine and try to accomplish a few things. To optimize the time I spend checking emails, I installed Thunder bird email client and configuring Gmail POP account was a breeze (I had trouble sending messages on Outlook 2007 and Outlook Express).

When messages started pulling in, I was in for a pleasant surprise – it has been 5 years on Gmail!

Swastik group is 9 years and going strong!

2009-07-22T14:07:00.002+05:30

Swastik is a yahoo group, started off with this agenda: “UVCE students sharing info on matters – everything and anything!!!”

Over the last 9 years, it has been a binding force for us. From a handful of UVCE classmates, we have come a long way – some of us are proud fathers! It has been a great forum to keep in touch no matter where we live on earth – and I’m sure Swastik will go strong for many years to come.

Group info – founded on 30th June 2000, from the UVCE computer lab, in the 3rd year of our engineering college:

Message history:

Announcement: This blog has moved to http://coffeebreaklabs.com/sri/me/

2009-07-21T21:24:00.002+05:30

Update: We're moving to SridharMachani.com Blog.

Yep, I’ve moved this blog to http://coffeebreaklabs.com/sri/me/. Please add or subscribe to the new RSS feeds at http://coffeebreaklabs.com/sri/me/index.php/feed/

The move is still not perfect (all internal links in the posts on this new blog still point to the old blog posts), but that is something I’m not fixing right away. I’m more keen on cleaning up the categories which are tags from this blog.

Why move?

It was simple, I like WordPress (WP) and I think it is way better than blogger. Another reason was that I didn’t want to leave my stuff on a 3rd party host, even if it is Google. There is a website I’m working on, and I’ve paid to host it. I might as well use a sub-domain to host my blog as well. I’ll have complete control of the look and feel, not worry about losing my content, and finally, leverage the ease and power of WP.

And yes, this was long overdue. I must admit, it’s been a great pleasure all these years, giving me a window to peek into the outside world and to invite friends over.

Signing off!

PS: A related announcement on the new blog is here.

Announcement: Just moved from my blog, concept inc!

2009-07-21T14:00:00.002+05:30

Update: This was a post on my WordPress blog and has been retained here for historic purposes. So you'll find some content and URLs are no longer relevant.

I’ve just moved from my 4-year old blog http://sridharmachani.blogspot.com/. Please add or subscribe to the new RSS feeds at http://coffeebreaklabs.com/sri/me/index.php/feed/.

The move is still not perfect (all internal links in the posts on this new blog still point to the old blog posts), but that is something I’m not fixing right away. I’m more keen on cleaning up the categories which were tags.

Why move?

It was simple, I like WordPress (WP) and I think it is way better than blogger. Another reason was that I didn’t want to leave my stuff on a 3rd party host, even if it is Google. There is a website I’m working on, and I’ve paid to host it. I might as well use a sub-domain to host my blog as well. I’ll have complete control of the look and feel, not worry about losing my content, and finally, leverage the ease and power of WP. And yes, this was long overdue.

I must admit, it’s been a great pleasure all these years, giving me a window to peek into the outside world and to invite friends over.

How did I move?

I’d been thinking about it and the best way to do it. I created a new database and installed WordPress 2.8.2. I tried to use the Tools –> Import –> Blogger feature in the WP dashboard, but it gave me the blank screen of death. I couldn’t access any page of the new blog. After a lot of trial and googling, I realized a configuration file (wp-config.php) was missing characters (?>) at the end of the file. That fixed it!

However, I tried a safer option – I created a dummy blog on WordPress.com and imported content from my old blog. I then exported the dummy blog’s content to an XML file, which I later used to easily import into this new blog.

PS: A related announcement on the old blog is here.