Nocturnal Poïesis

Of clicks and snaps

2010-03-15T04:43:00.001+05:30

A bird of prey in Goa

Another year has gone by and left so many things changed in my life that it is almost uncanny to think of what life was like this time last year. But it was real, painfully so. And so is this, real, painfully so.

Life has been beautiful to me, brutally painful but bathed beauty nonetheless. As many of you know by now, I have had a major change in my personal life. It is something that I wouldn't talk about in very many great details here but it will suffice to say that it has not been easy. For either of us.

As more time rolls on and points of contact form and dissipate between us, there's still a lot left to let go of. And then comes certain professional things.

As you all possibly know by now, I blog about technology. It's what I do full time, with all my heart. Yes, I'm that weirdo who actually gets goosebumps about fantastic new product announcements. He who when he sees something remarkable and ground-breaking, tries to clamp down his excitement just so that he can cover all points for and against it in an unbiased manner.

True, sometimes I overlook things, I forget to mention things. But then some helpful (or angry) reader reminds me and I go back and write an update. There's something about being part of this magical industry. This dynamics industry, where everything's changing every minute. Giants grow and they grow old and fade away. They are replaced by new giants and I am just too green compared to the people I admire — like Mr. Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times or Mr. Leo Gordon Laporte of the TWiT network. And then there are the more far away people like David Pogue and Walt Mossberg (Uncle Mossy, as some affectionately call him).

Funny thing is that all of them live almost equally far away from me. They are very far away. But some of them somehow bring themselves closer than the others. Or may be it is just me listening to the TWiT network way too much. Oh sue me, I like the people there!

So anyway, the point that I am trying make here is that the world I love so much and the people I so admire are so far away. It sometimes feels a bit hopeless but hey, that's just me taking my job seriously and aspiring to be as good as the best in the business. That's the only way I like doing the things I love doing. And it doesn't matter how much I suck sometimes because at the end of the day, it's always a learning experience. Besides, wallowing in your suckiness is never a good idea. One has to keep moving forward.

Moving forward, I bought this DSLR camera with some of the savings from my blogging. It is the Canon 1000D/Rebel XS — highly recommended by a lot of people, including Lisa Bettany of Mostly Lisa. She's another person I really like (and she's such a beautiful geek! :D ).

So after buying it, I went on a well-deserved vacation to escape the strangeness of regular life that is mine. And there's one thing I learned — you should never leave home without your camera. Also, clicking is addictive. Massively so. So much so that I almost gave myself Carpal Tunnel Syndrome by continuously shooting out the window of a speeding train for about 10 hours on our way to Goa from Mumbai.

The fun I had did compensate nicely for the physical drain that happened. I'm not usually that active for that long and never that cramped up in a small place trying to get a good shot for that many hours! And I do think that some of the photos I took are beautiful. But nothing could prepare me for Goa.

Being a complete amateur, not knowing anything about something as important as Depth of Field and aperture, I went on a clicking spree. And once for all proved to myself that subjects can actually be so beautiful that no matter what you do, you can't ruin it. And if you put in some effort, you can get inspiring results.

I still don't know how I managed to shoot what I did but I did learn a lot about shutter speeds and changing light. But the photos, they still inspire me. To keep on clicking, to keep on learning and to go back to Goa. Actually the photos don't do it, Goa does. And since these photos are Goa with all the slightly bad parts/memories cut out — they are always inspiring.

So am I being narcissistic? Why yes, a bit so, I am. But it does help me recoup from a slightly shaken self-image and also, it helps my social phobia when people say they like what I am doing instead of trying to threaten me or put me down.

I have realized that all my school life, my self-image and self-confidence has been repeatedly put into a blender and juiced and I have repeatedly tried to piece all back together. Of course, formative years can leave behind very deep and unsettling scars. It shows how much better it feels to just put some of it out here, on this blog which all of 2 or 3 people probably read. But hey, as long as I am putting out here, I am doing a goof things for myself.

But tell me something — how much of it is narcissism and how much of it is just me trying to convince myself that I am not completely useless and I can do something worthwhile. Something that will may be last, whilst I won't. I am not sure that I want to know the true answer to that question. Because sometimes, being narcissistic is far better than being unsure of one self. But I also see that most often they are so related that it seems like cause and effect to me. Of course, I know at least two people who will speak much more authoritatively on this matter. Only, I can't talk to one about these things, not anymore and the other ... well I just don't know why I don't but I just don't. Feels a bit awkward and like taking advantage. I will have to deal with these things anyway.

So there was this party on friday and my friends totally forced me to go because they were doing the visuals and the decor and I really needed to get out of my house more. So I went there with my camera and other than a slight problem at the gate, I really enjoyed the night. My camera was with me and well, everyone liked my snaps a lot.

Okay, so I do get why people would love a guy who can help them freeze a moment of enjoyment in a halfway decent manner. It doesn't have much to do with me but it felt nice that people came forward, paid compliments and were generally nice to me. And hey, After being laughed at, ridiculed, put down, bullied and almost beaten up multiple times, all of the younger years — it is nice to meet at least people who range from neutral to warm. I am happy to be just left alone and not stick out like a sore thumb.

Of course, I know I (un/consciously) make it so that I am noticed. So I shouldn't complain when I get attention and it is not of the kind I like. In the end, it begins and ends with me.

I am falling in and out of love with life and my camera and my music and my blogs (which are not even mine, I just write for them). Life is good for now and hopefully, it will continue on this strange and dynamic path. I really want each year to be this different from the last one. To keep me on my toes. To keep heart warmed/broken, to keep me inspired and to keep my sane with its own strangeness.

A n00b-ish silhouette of my friend on small Vagator beach

Revisiting

2010-03-06T01:08:00.000+05:30

"When I look into your eyes
there's nothing there to see
nothing but my old mistakes
staring back at me

Asking why..."

Been listening to tracks I used to listen to some years back and only those lines stuck. Figures.
Some of you already know that my life has gone through a major change. The rest of you will get to know about it, by and by, through the various ways that news spreads. For now, do know that I am doing well and even though my (professional) blogging has taken a slight hit because of it, I am doing quite well and will be getting back on track soon.

I am trying to get my social back into order, so if you see my sudden burst of online social activity, you will know what is going. Don't worry, I am not stalking you. I am striking up a lot of conversations online in general. Working online has its (dis)advantages. Anyway, back to work and hopefully some music before the night is through. That's another thing that has changed statuses in my life but that has to come later.

Take care all.

And the days go by

2010-01-31T01:17:00.002+05:30

"Days go by and still I think of you,
days when I couldn't live my life without you."
---
Funny how memories are triggered. A smell, a taste, a word, a sight... a song. Anyway, so I was thinking back tonight for a while while I was getting over the mountain of work that has piled up. (When else would I be blogging if not on a night when should be working non-stop)

So the last few years have been pretty rocky. The years before that have been pretty... ummm... meh. Nothing much actually. Not very exciting at all. Yeah, there's some negativity that is usually associated with some childhood memories but overall it was boring.

Nothing extraordinary happened to me. I was brighter than some but that is not always a good thing these days. Then there was also the fact that being social was never my strong point. So all combined, I went through the usual phases of isolation followed by pretence followed oh-fuck-it-all-i'm-outta-here.

And even through that I was getting ready to be where I am now. Everything was preparing me. I was learning, taking notes, understanding the society that, at that moment seemed like, did not want to understand me. Well, I am wiser than that now. There was a period of angst too but that was shortlived because I have never managed to be very angsty.

So over all, there I was -- not very well-adjusted but doing alright with my average life. But hey, I met a lot of people. Got in to trouble sometimes. Made big things out of morsels and finally started growing into my own skin. So I guess that was time well spent. Profit.

And things are happening so fast that I am not entirely sure if will be able to hold on to the reins of this thing. But so far, I feel pretty in control although slightly overwhelmed.
The freedom to do the things I want to do can only be described as a heady, dizzy feeling right now like when you have had too much coffee or sugar or both. Or may be done some pleasure inducing thing for very, very long. Some of you will know that feeling, I hope.

But of course, like all highs, this thing comes down too and you begin to accept it as a natural part of your life. Nothing permanent but a part nonetheless.

The point? Nothing really. Nothing turns out the way you planned but it can be really good sometimes if you can makes it that way. Can you make it that way all the time? I don't know but I like having the reins in my own hands. I'd rather drive the car myself and crash than die out of no fault of my own. Also, never drink and drive. Losing yourself to stupidity is just... stupid!

PS- blogger has a beak thing now. Like WordPress. Just noticed.
Update: doesn't work well with my template.

While I procrastinate

2009-11-10T02:42:00.000+05:30

Here I am, in the middle of the night. I say I am procrastinating but what I am really doing is
A) Trying to decide what camera to buy within my budget (around 20k)
B) Looking at WP plugins for a site that I am planning to launch
C) Wondering about the many things that are changing extremely fast in my life and how I am coping with them.

In my (sort of) hectic schedule of maintaining tech blogs I get paid to write for, I sometimes feel like I am procrastinating when I am doing something that is not getting work done. This is a strange thing between me taking time out for myself and trying to stay on schedule so that I have time for myself at the end of the week.

I think the paradox in that statement is clear enough without me explaining it further. In my eyes, this is a tussle between taking time out for myself in fragments and taking time out in large chunks like entire days of half days. There is also the thing about starting my own website to start making a sizable passive income. I know I am sitting on a hot niche that nobody is doing but I wonder how long it will last before somebody does it.

Once I set my mind to it, the site should not take more than one week to finish but I feel as if it is impossible for me to take that much time off.

In any case, I am a lot more solvent than I was when I wrote last time. That has unlocked quite a few new features in my life. I am more confident and am actively trying to be socially active. It helps that I am no longer ashamed to go out because I have no money to spare for the little things like a cab and a drink or two that others in that milieu take for granted.

It has also unlocked the ability to explore my creative potentials. Buy equipment that I have always wanted to work on and be generally free to do whatever I choose to do. So if this income does continue (and really should), I will finally be moving to a place of my own and start a new life -- my way.

Now that I have gotten this sudden impulse to blog out of my way, I will get back to my work, which is also blogging. I am going to the Shpongle gig in Mumbai this December and then I plan to take a short vacation somwhere close by. All the while maintaining my arsenal of tech blogs through Reliance Net-connect. I really hope nothing goes with this plan because it will seriously jeopardize my work. However, I do hope that I have built enough of a reputation for being reliable for it to matter too much if it does happen.

So what I was saying is this – attending this gig and taking this vacation with my significant other (no, not wife yet) is going to be the most expensive thing that I have ever done for myself, on my own and with my or anyone else's money. And yes, it does have this feeling of liberation being able to fund it all on my own without flinching much.

Bottom line? I feel a great change happening and the tide is so strong that I am having trouble navigating. It has great things in store for me but I want force my way into choosing the next stop myself rather than washing up somewhere I did not intend. With my stubbornness in these cases though, it is not all that likely to happen.

So I guess I will just post again when I feel like it. Thanks for listening, whoever you are.

The Da Vinci Code Continues To Puzzle Researchers

2009-10-30T20:59:00.001+05:30

It has been said that the hallmark of a masterpiece is that it will surprise each and every time. There's always something new that you haven't noticed before.

This priceless Da Vinci is considered to be even more complex than that. Centuries after it was painted by the the master painter, treasure hunters, researchers and scholars are all baffled by the many rumors and mysteries that surround this piece.

Legend has it that the picture has hidden elements that only a subtle eye can pick out. Rumored to be hidden in the picture are ancient candy treats and the twin symbols of powerful sound that made the ancients intoxicated with forbidden pleasure. Thousands have speculated but none have found the true meaning of the many unexplained nuances. Hence, the mystery continues to baffle us till date.

Can you spot something, dear reader? [click through to original, large image warning]

PS - I know I have not posted since July. Sorry about that. Those of you who are still subscribed to me, you must have incredible patience (or incredibly lazy). Either ways, thank you :P I have been busy building myself a career, so not getting much sleep or free time to myself. Hence no posting. Will post another intermezzo some time soon... In the meantime, catch up with my tech blogs at http://shailpik.com/content.

Searching for my voice

2009-07-25T23:40:00.002+05:30

... the kind that has nothing to with my vocal chords or my words. Okay so it might have something to do with my vocal chords sometime into the future but other than that it does not have much.

I was listening to Manga (they are a Rap/Metal band from Turkey) and was struck by the obvious thing – how the language barrier meant absolutely zilch. Most of those who know me personally know that I was involved with a nu-metal band for a while in the past (late 2007 to early 2009). For those who did not, well now you do. So that was obviously on my mind when I was listening to this.

There is a reason why I join them despite being completely alien to the genre and vice-versa. I, like so many others, am guilty of liking the stage. I like being up there, I like the adrenaline kick and like that feeling. But at the end of the day, instincts took over. Like they always do in me. I could no longer go on with a sound that meant nothing to me. If someone from my ex-band is reading – the reasons I gave you were true but they weren't complete. So no, I did not lie to you.

I am glad I was part of an outfit that is very talented and forward thinking but in the end it was not for me. I turned down the other people who made me an offer. So I was thinking, do I really like the stage all that much.

My heart is mainly after electronic music. I wanted to be a Dj for such a long time. The trajectory I gave people was this – I will dj to the best of my abilities. I will pick up skills along the way and finally make my own music.

Stand here at this point in my life I can tell that I have been able to follow up on that. It just did not agree with me. I was put off. Not by how much everything costs and not by how tough it is to make it even regionally. I was put off by the fact that I would playing to a jaded audience. I was put off by the fact that the electronica that is played in the clubs is still mainstream even though it is an alternative culture here. It is only a matter of time before projects like Submerge take on the mainstream. Blessed are people like Nikhil Chinapa and Pearl and my favorite – DJ Tuhin. They have dared to do something completely out of the way while sitting here in India.

But much as I tried, I could bring myself to reconcile with that culture. The club culture I suppose. I know it is much more that but the glamour is only the outer layer.

Worst of all, I cannot connect to the music. I simply cannot. The reason I like Tuhin is because he has an amazing variety. The guy is a really talented DJ and he is really versatile in his playing style.

So as I was listening to Manga, all these thoughts were going through my head. Things are of course complicated by my likely relocation sometime late next year. However, it is more likely to open up my opportunities than anything else. A versatile, lively, dynamic and ever-changing music scene is one of the main advantages of an Internationally important city. If I am right, the only place where I would get more action would be NY.

So with that dangling in front of me, I am thinking to myself. Am I ready for it? Am I really ready for the opportunities there?

I like so many different kinds of music and there are so many tracks that move me. They move something deep within me. But as I was writing this post, especially the last few line, I figured something out. I figured out that if I can take the tracks apart, they might tell me something.

But then I have already done it. I have already made it quite clear to myself. It is displayed clearly in all the bits and pieces that sit within the depths of my white Mac. Funnily enough, I realize that I am not a good producer yet or a very lazy one. I cannot put the pieces together.

Thus, I feel like I am still searching around for my voice. It is scattered all over the place and the clues lie in 23am (thank you Sion), in This Binary Universe, in Wait For Me and in Shpongle. Beyond that, I am pretty lost.

Who's afraid?

2009-07-07T02:32:00.000+05:30

Pale Horses by thelittleidiot

I feel like I let things seep too deep in to my unconscious most of the times. Everything is magnified when I am the one experiencing it. Everyone else is (seemingly) unperturbed by these things and only I am rendered slightly incapable, slightly speechless.

This, ummm... facility that I have is not without its useful sides. I can easily adapt to situations and modify my habits accordingly. To point where I might start noticing that I am acting like a completely different person. But then again that comes from my attempt to blend in.

After this part comes where I try to negate that flow in my system. I try not to blend in. Because I don't want to. I don't want to be another somebody. But the tallest tree (or the weirdest one) attracts a lot of attention. That is when I want to blend in. Where does this weird to and fro end? Where do I strike a balance.

I have been bullied for the better part of my school life. Now that I am slowly beginning to build my own world around me, I realize that the fear of confrontation has been ingrained deep within me. It does not incapacitate me anymore like it used to but it does invoke the 'fight or flee' syndrome. And not to mention my reactions to people who used to be my senior and even junior at school. I usually only know them by their faces. They know me by name. There is a strange trepidation every time I see these people. I hide quite well and it only comes across as awkwardness at the sudden meeting, IF we talk at all.

Strange how I still react to people who resemble a certain a few characteristics. I just noticed the difference today was I was traveling in a bus. The way my mind and body reacted when someone closer to my age fitting the description sat down next to me and when a middle-aged nondescript man sat down beside me. Logically, my observations tell me that that man who was 'nondescript' to me was more likely to be a source of danger than those boys.

But my irrational fears still remain and they eat away at my self-confidence and self-image. I often think of how powerless I am. I have always avoided going in to physical confrontations. I have always cleverly maneuvered out of things through strategy, friends, etc. I have only reacted physically when I was pushed over the edge or when I felt there was no way I could lose. Funnily enough, sometimes I have even gotten away just by giving the impression that I am not to be messed with.

Interesting how the human mind works. Completely unknown people are scared of me. Completely unknown people hate me. Completely unknown people think they have me figured out. And it is even weirder when I have to confront these people and their familiarity for the first time.

At least I can talk about these things. I need to observe more. It is something I had stopped doing.

wait for me, in, this binary universe

2009-06-30T17:17:00.000+05:30

Wait For Me by thelittleidiot

That is the new album by Moby. It's been out since the 26th of June. Somehow, it tends to remind me of BT's This Binary Universe. But it has nothing to do with the music directly, both are very different and creative pieces of work by gifted musicians.

It has got more to do with the way they make me feel and the way they were made. Both albums were created by musicians who had gone back to their basics when they were making the music. It is hard to put into words how the music from both these albums make me feel but lately I have been a lot less sure of myself.

I am constantly second guessing myself and my reliable (?) unconscious has been kinda absent. Its like a huge gap somewhere just beneath the surface of my mind. It is a pretty weird feeling when you can constantly feel something but cannot put your finger on it. Everything that you have accumulated eludes you and nothing you do makes sense to you. I feel so very mechanical, typing out mindless words day after day and having no idea whatsoever about what I am heading for.

I was so sure of what was going on just a while ago but suddenly it feels like I have slipped and fallen. Fallen in to something without really realizing it. Am i really that lazy? Why do not feel like doing anything about it. There is precious little time I feel I have in which I must acomplish everything I want to do. Ultimately, what is it that really want to do?

I am no longer sure of things and suddenly things have been spiraling down to this unknown place neither dark nor lit because well, it is n my mind and I can only feel it within my mind. It is hard to be thinking that with a mind like this and a history like mine I want to take over the world.

Taking over the world, a nice ambitious thing to do, except that it has been done to death and no one really wants to hear about it. Funny cartoon characters try to do it all the time and the valiant hero stops them. people and entities in real life have tried to do it. Most have failed and some have succeeded, in their own different ways. Ultimately, nothing lasts. Almost nothing.

Somethings do last, like when they are passed down from generation to generation. They may change their forms entirely through the numerous passing ons but in essence they live on. How worth it is to live like that? Who am I trying to impress here? The rest of the world or just myself?

Drooling over the Nokia E72

2009-06-25T14:08:00.000+05:30

Okay, so I have been in the desperate need of a business phone with the whole alphabet soup of connectivity, including bluetooth and WLAN. So I was kinda eyeing the e71 and then I realized they are going to release an improved e71! Now, the e71 has had great reviews everywhere. Everyone loves it and it has topped on smart phone review lists everywhere and in general, everyone agrees that it is great and the e75 sucks.

Now I really really reeh heeh heally need a business phone so that I can finally stop being desk bound and go out and have some fun. Then again, i'd probably be phone bound then but ah... who cares. So anyway, I take a look at the e72 and it looks great! It has everything that is great about the e71 and it adds cools stuff high speed (10.2mbps) HSDPA support, spacebar activated torchlight and even a digital compass! That last one I really love. Plus the for factor has improved, it is sleeker now.

Best this is the touch sensitive optical d-pad which makes navigation much smoother. So all in all, I am really sold on it.

Now there's only one problem with this which stops me from buying this. Too expensive? nah, it is priced okay. Too bulky? No, it is actually quite slim? Battery life? It inherits the great battery life from e71, far cry from the e75's pathetic battery.

So tell us already!

Well... it hasn't been released yet! And I needed a phone like last week or something! :'( gotta wait a bit more...

Here's the promo video in the mean time

Have you seen the folding plug yet?

2009-06-25T01:03:00.000+05:30

This has got to the be coolest electrical invention of recent times. It folds the typical UK three-pin plug into something that is just 1cm thick and this is a fused plug, mind you. Here's the video but the voice over is pretty bad. The inventor is probably Korean. Will post more details if I come by it.

>

Rant Alert - Strong language, may be unsuitable for some, so fuck you

2009-06-22T18:42:00.000+05:30

Okay, so I just finished yelling at an absolute imbecile of an officer - the DGM of broadband, BSNL. Point one - if you are in such a high position, learn to speak English, know the regional language, and do not say "I don't know" so many times to a customer. Point two - speak clearly and do not be drunk/sloshed at 6pm in the evening on a monday.

The fucktards d/c my line on the 19th of june 2009 for non payment of a bill on the that was paid on the 6th of June 2009, in cash. The fuckers were updated on the situation - yeah, their customer has to go to them tell them "Assholes, I have given you money, now give me my connection back". Then they make you do the merry-go-round on the red tape and before you know it, you have a hand full of system codes, no one knows what's going on and the fucking DGM says he does not know anything that it is in "bengalor". Now where that place is, I do not know, last time I heard we had something called "bangalore" which is now called Bengaluru. Now that my broadband is up and running, I am counting my losses.

4 days of non-connectivity - daily loss of approximately 1000-200, so total loss of about 4000-8000.

Update - while I was posting this, the DGM called me up to ask whether it has been reconnected or not. How nice of him. I thanked him and told him I am shifting to Reliance.

Any way, on top of my daily losses, to keep up my clientele, i had to use my mom's GPRS on an emergency basis, it was pasy as you go scheme, so now I have to pay about 2000 for that. So not only did I lose business but I also lost money to ensure that I do not suffer anymore losses.

In the meantime, I was surfing the net at my friend's place for mobile data plans. GPRS, EDGE, 3G, etc. I looked at Vodafone, Airte and Reliance. After half an hour, I did not find what I was looking for but I was updated on on all their partners and all their ringtones and sms services like astrology. You tech-retards, have you heard of Web-UX? Web user experience? You are turning me off, a potential customer, who sadly has no time to go to three different customer care places just to pick up data plan charts. To show my friend what design should be like, I tried the international websites. Vodafone UK came up first. good enough. Went to it - there was everything any could need, plus entry in to the user account. And after banner ads, there was room to spare on the main page. Very pleasing experience.

On the Indian sites, the whole screen is filled, more or less, with useless shit. And nothing you want is easily accessible. The CalTel website has to be the worst designed site, but at least it is filled with useful links to things you want to know, if you can decipher the departmental code that the charts are written in. They expect normal customers to understand their inter-departmental abbreviations. Superb.

But at least I can find what I am looking for. Which is more than what I can say for the other websites. Listen, Web Devs at Reliance, Airtel and Vodafone India, you are in the communications business, you are fucking meant to communicate. So get a three year old and he/she will have a better data and click flow up and running than you ass holes have. Useless pieces of shit. Hire me, I am a copywriter and I understand a thing or two about UI design. I have to go through enough badly designed customer sites to know what can go wrong. And stop getting paid, you are definitely failing spectacularly at your job.

And to top this of, here's what an useless, brain dead client can do to you - you submit large assignment aropund mid day on friday. You get no response of whether he got it or not, nothing about whether his brain blew up at the pressure of writing one line in email. On saturday, after you've sent him a mail, he says his proofreaders don't work on weekends. Oh, and friday is a weekend on which calendar?

So you wait way past midday on monday comes his reponse, all passed except one. Why? Oh because the topic was wrong. Damn, how did you go wrong so badly? well, your client thinks it is 'partially' his side's fault. Heave forbid! Why? Oh... nothing serious... he did not clarify the topic on the list he gave you... nothing major. The topic was a dead president and the city where he was killed. Just two words. What is the actual topic? A 'MEMORIAL' to the dead president IN the city. Oh damn, you are so supposed to understand that from that topic. Mind reading, via a digital document on the internet. and what does he call this? "Could you please revise it?" Fucker, do you even know what the word "revision" means? You are asking me to write an entirely new article!

So yeah, perfect weekend and start of the week. To top of it off, private life has also gone for a salad tossing competition. Hooray for life. Oh, if you feel like venting, please feel free to comment. If you feel like you know of a reliable broadband connection in Kolkata (relaly?!), do comment. If you want to advice, ask annoying questions, get prepared to be published and trolled back. Especially if you choose to do it within the next 6 hours or so.

Error Messages - Haiku Style

2009-05-27T17:03:00.001+05:30

Being the confirmed and confessed tech geek that I am, I could not help posting this when Suki forwarded it to me. I am so glad to have some people who don't forward mindless stuff.

Anyway, so here it is and I know most of you have seen this before, but still, for those geeks who haven't - this is a treat! :D

In Japan, they have apparently replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with Haiku poetry.

With their strict construction rules (each poem has only 17 syllables: 5 syllables in the first, 7 in the second, 5 in the third), Haikus are used to communicate timeless messages, often achieving a wistful, yearning and powerful insight through extreme brevity.

The Web site you seek Cannot be located, but Countless more exist.
Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return.
Program aborting: Close all that you have worked on. You ask far too much.
Windows NT crashed. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears your screams.
Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that.
Your file was so big. It might be very useful. But now it is gone.
Stay the patient course. Of little worth is your ire. The network is down.
A crash reduces Your expensive computer To a simple stone.
Three things are certain: Death, taxes and lost data. Guess which has occurred.
You step in the stream, But the water has moved on. This page is not here.
Out of memory. We wish to hold the whole sky, But we never will.
Having been erased, The document you're seeking Must now be retyped.
Serious error. All shortcuts have disappeared. Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

Summons - A work In progress

2009-05-25T00:16:00.002+05:30

... that's because I am currently saving up to buy some crucial equipment for my soon-to-be home studio. Yes, it is an ambitious plan but I am hard enough for it to earn the money. In the mean time, I had the day off today (almost) and so after spending a lovely evening out with the dimpled girl and her friends, I decided to bring out the keyboard and play around. Out came this tune and this feel.

It has been raining here, the weathermen say that monsoon is early this year and hence we will see the showers hitting us soon enough. I guess it has already started. More reason to stay home, work and make music. Need to treat my room, but it won't be my room for too long (we will probably move by the end of this year or the beginning of the next). So I am thinking up ways to make some temporary arrangements.

But before all that happens, here's the tune I made tonight. It is a work progress and probably everyone will be able to tell why. If you hate, love it or think it needs something, drop me a line. I am always looking around for ideas.

Summons by Shailpik

The lost_poet's guide to writing an exam

2009-05-23T12:58:00.000+05:30

Writing an exam is serious business. You need to have good concentration, analytical skills, a distraction free environment and have to be ready for anything.

Thus, you must have a bottle of water handy on a hot day. You will get thirsty, so you will take a sip. Then the power will go out (but the exam must go on) so you take another sip and decide it is too hot, so you pour some over your head. Caution: If you are sitting on the first bench, the rest of the class is going to break in to audible sniggers.

Once you sip water one time too many, you are going to need to take a leak. However, with long benches attached to equally long desks and busy exam writers, you do not want to disturb anyone. So what you do is you move your answer script out of the way and vault over desk, land softly on the ground in front and promptly walkout (cue:silent applause).

When with a cold, you must maintain silence. But once the urge comes, you must give vent to the earth shattering sneeze that you have been saving for after the exam. The effects are relative - the windows rattle, pens skid on paper and every head turns in unison. Some snigger while others are rudely awakened from their exam writing trance. Apologize softly.

In case someone else sneezes louder than you after a while, acknowledge their achievement after the general shock and wonder has dissipated. A generous smile and a thumbs up greatly encourages everyone. Post encouragement, you can acknowledge verbally to no one in particular. The lost_poet suggests singing softly "I'm not the only one ". If the pretty girl sitting beside you giggles softly, it's a bonus.

Once you are done with your exam, pack thing up while leaving your answer script on the desk for submission. While packing, watch in wonder as the answer script of the same pretty girl is nowhere to be seen. Then, be amazed as she pulls out the answer script from her packed bag like a skilled magician. Applaud her efforts with a grin.

After getting out, realise that you have no more exams to give, no more classes to attend and money is waiting for you in the email. But first, you must conk and let the stress of not sleeping enough and working too hard takes its toll. Take the pretty girl home with you and let her pamper you while you develop a mild fever and generally feel like a four letter word. On your way out, surprise a few people by saying that you are not applying for the next higher degree (while explaining that you are going to do something else).

Once you have done everything, congratulate yourself. You have successfully written your exam.

The Linguistic Sign and the signs of an exam

2009-05-17T02:22:00.001+05:30

Don't be scared or fooled in to believing that I am actually going to post about Ferdinand de Saussure's the sign, although, that is part of the intent why I am making this post. I had an exam today (and that instantly explains why the frequency of posts has suddenly increased) and the paper was called Criticism. So well, it was unexpectedly easy and it looks like I will graduate with dignity after all.

So now that this paper is over, I really have to vent my thoughts on the purpose of the entire exercise of criticism. So there's prosody, rhetoric, practical criticism, proof reading and general outlines of various literary genres (novel, tragedy, comedy). Also mimesis and the linguistic sign. I love the linguistic sign because well, SB taught it and it was hence brilliantly taught.

So here's what I think about prosody - a person suddenly realizes that there are common rhyming patterns and rhythms, so by man's primal desire to classify, he conceives a naming scheme instead of giving in to the primal urge to conceive and then proceeding to naming his offsprings. He clearly wasn't getting any. So now we have a way to classify poetry and every poem can have... oh... any number of these patterns. So what do we get out of it? Those who cannot appreciate the beauty of a poem finally have something to talk about. No matter that a line can be have multiple different interpretations.

Rhetoric - oh yeah, here's a brilliant one. So we use certain figures of speech. So what's the big use of identifying them? Does it help us like the parts of speech do? Not really. It just teaches us that the fancy way we talk sometimes can be broken down and analysed. So the next time some one talks about tall tales, you can say "oh, so he was using too many hyperboles was he?" Gets the coversation going especially if the other person is a science student ("A hyperbola? Not really, although he was wearing a hat...")

Practical criticism - this I love the best (and hence wasn't even in the class when this was taught). It teaches people who cannot write to write about things that have already been written. So if you somehow got in to an elite place like JUDE and you can't create to save your life, you can always aim high and be a literary critic. And it is an ego massage too - you will be telling creative people how to create when you absolutely suck at it. What fun! Of course if you are successful at both, I bow to you and say "ah the rules and the glorious exceptions".

So anyway, now coming to sign, no I do not want to rant about sign. De Saussure at least tried to make some sense out meaning. And he got far too but in the end the unknowable remained unknowable and the meaning is still endlessly deferred under de Saussure's system. But I found this brililant cartoon that I wanted to share :P so here it is!

And here's the link to the absolutely intellectual place where I found it ;)

compulsion

2009-05-15T12:30:00.000+05:30

You know you really have to blog when you: -

Should really be doing something else more important (like working for which you are paid)
Have a very important exam coming in on you (like the last exam of your graduation)
You don't care anyway and would like to see some traffic from search engine
and you are going to optimize it for keywords in some distant future when you figure out which keywords can be related to a random-ish personal blog
and you should stop bulleting your points because they are not really point any more but whhaddaheck i'm going to bullet them anyway because I am lazy... so I am just going to hit enter now
and get another bullet and might I mention that this is quite fun so anyway where was I oh yeah i was talking about the things i should be doing but instead I am blogging so yeah i am juts going on without any punctuation whatsoever but i thought i would try a stream and so I am doing so .. soo ... sooo ... okay time to end this.

Ah the vagueness

2009-05-12T21:17:00.000+05:30

Via Suki

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Twitter!

Abraham Lincoln, who invented twitter, was the only US president ever granted a patent.
There are 336 dimples on twitter.
During the reign of Peter the Great, any Russian nobleman who chose to wear twitter had to pay a special twitter tax!
The most dangerous form of twitter is the bicycle!
68 percent of all UFO sightings are by twitter!
Bananas don't grow on trees - they grow on twitter.
According to the story, Pinocchio was made of twitter.
The horns of twitter are made entirely from hair.
The patron saint of twitter is Saint Eugenie!
If you toss twitter 10000 times, it will not land heads 5000 times, but more like 4950, because its head weighs more and thus ends up on the bottom.

Inclined plane

2009-05-10T02:07:00.000+05:30

you know when you are trying to run up an inclined plane, you look up and see that you have a long way to go? You also look down and realise that you have come a long way. The internet is changing the way we live and now it is changing the way I thought i would earn my money.

The internet is viral, is actually an understatement and I am understanding it quite slowly but surely. To begin to imagine the scale of the internet is almost impossible for me. And they all run on content. Some for content or the other. The internet essentially sells information on most part and online accessible services is just a part of it. The major idea is information.

Well, yeah, duh! That has been really the bleeding obvious with people calling it the age of information and with booms (and bubbles) in an area called Information Technology. But sometimes when you stop taking it for granted and start thinking about it, it is really, really, ree hee hee heally big. And that is just the start of it.

Anyway, once you are up on that inclined plane, it is kinda interesting when you look forward and look back, you see a lot of people but when you look around, do not see to many people. May be because the top levels and lower levels are common to a lot of people but people climb their own inclined planes. So we do not communicate much.

But when you look really really hard, you see endless such inclined planes around you and you see people climbing them. They all lead to them same places up and down. But then you look at these people, you focus in on them, you realise that they are people of all ages. Some in their teens, some in close to their death beds, but they are al climbing. I wonder, does it start looking like a mirage when you are that age?

When do people really start? When do we grow up? When do we really die?

Latest Technologies: Laptops

2009-05-08T14:53:00.000+05:30

Mobile computing has been stepping it up since the last few quarters. Leading the long race are top names like Apple, Alienware, Sony etc. The latest in laptops are lessons in power and speed, which are with you even when you are away from your desk.

The latest in gaming laptops are getting more sophisticated as days go by and the term ‘desktop replacement’ is being used more often lately. It isn’t easy to distinguish between the many different options available apart from the obvious choice of high-end ones like the ones mentioned at the beginning of this article. The latest offerings from Asus, HP, Acer and Toshiba all include multi-core processors, large amounts of high-end RAM and spacious storage options. The usual screen size is either 15 inches or 17 inches.

With such options in mind, it ends up being a war of smaller details that ultimately wins over the customers. One of the main area of interest for gamers is the graphics card option; where there is a huge divide between the ATI camp and the nVidia camp. So sometimes the maker of the graphics solution ends up being the deciding factor. Although ATI seems to be a more common sight in laptops than its rival nVidia.

After the major features there are the varied connectivity options. Almost every laptop over a specific budget and below a specific age offers features like Bluetooth, wi-fi, USB2.0, LAN, FireWire etc. So here the choice is between more USB ports, built in multi-card readers etc.

Design wise, it is hard to beat the likes of Alienware, Apple and Sony. But the budget laptops from HP, Dell and Toshiba are all getting cosmetic facelifts. Take the Samsung Q-45, the Acer Ferrari or Lamborghini laptops. They are all more or less the commonplace laptop with the average set of features. But they have unique styling that makes them more appealing than other laptops in the same performance category and price bracket.

A recent trend in laptop storage is the use of SSDs or solid state drives. Solid-state drives have speeds that leave the current hard disk drives far behind. These drives have no moving parts inside them and hence, the time needed for reading and writing data is decreased to fractions of the time taken by the spinning platter type hard drives.

But laptops having these are quite expensive and low on storage because the technology is still very expensive. It is somewhat like the BluRay situation but here at least the prices are falling very fast and bigger SSD storage options are becoming more affordable.

While the developments continue to happen, companies like Lenovo, Acer etc. are fighting it out by providing extra features like biometric security (face, finger print recognition security), bundled offers etc. Advances in mobile computing by chipmaker Intel have also given a major performance boost to the laptop market.

So far, 2009 is set to bring about more innovations in the market, but do not expect too many new product launches because of the depression.

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Google indexing FTW! And no, my blog has not been hacked or anything. It is me, the lost_poet posting mindless web-content as part of an SEO experiment. Normal convolution will resume soon.

Do prospective SEO clients rip you off?

2009-05-08T14:41:00.001+05:30

Of the many motives I have for writing this column, one is aimed at helping the common person understand the intricacies of SEO. It is an art and once they understand that, they would be willing to set proper SEO budgets.

SEO as a process is far too complex to understand easily but if you don’t understand it at all, you will not know what you are paying for.

Getting a pay per click ad campaign running is easy enough in comparison, simply anyone can go online, create an account, choose keywords and type out an ad. Even though a proper PPC campaign takes understanding, experience and training, the basic concept is easy for anyone of any experience level to understand.

But SEO is not that simple, it has far too many factors and areas involved to grasp quickly in a short time. SEO experts struggle and learn through years of trial and error, countless projects and endless hours of studying the techniques involved. So a lot of hard work goes into the knowledge that has been gained by the expert.

In that perspective, it is understandable that that knowledge comes at a premium to the expert and hence he would not part with it that easily.

Even then, I often ask my readers to submit their websites to me for doing a brief SEO analysis and then offering some advice, free of cost of course. This I do to in order to find out some common areas amongst the variety of websites that are online. It gives my readers some valuable SEO tips and I get an opportunity to learn a bit more.

But as a result of this offer, more and more requests are pouring in because everyone wants a free analysis. And they are not meant for this column either; they are just looking for a free meal.

This is still a smaller problem. The bigger SEO companies have a bigger problem with ‘freeloaders’. These are people who have no intention of paying for the information. But they pretend to be clients and offer the project to the company.

Now my practice has always been clarity. I frankly tell them what I think is wrong and ask them if their own employees (if any) would able to support the initiative. Do note that this is just the initial stage where no agreement has been signed or anything.

What these ‘freeloaders’ do is that they take that advice and implement it themselves, without paying a penny to the SEO company or expert they had consulted. But thankfully not many such clients exist, but that does not change the fact that quite a few do exist.

So the question here is what can SEO companies/experts do in this situation? The initial proposal is always drafted with the problem areas mentioned. The proposal will contain the keyword/s that the client is aiming at and the areas where they need to be implemented. But that is at the risk of giving away information that is meant to be paid for.

I would like my readers to comment on this specific problem, what do you do in such a situation? How much information to divulge and how much to retain till the project agreement has been signed?

It is more problematic because I think it is better to prepare my prospects in advance for the work that needs to go into the project.

Of course, it is not like those who steal the information can implement it correctly, it is very likely that they will do a dodgy job. But it is still my loss.

Let me cite a brilliant example here. It’s a joke that goes – Once a man’s car broke down in the middle of a highway and it was the middle of the night. He remembered leaving a garage behind, so he pushed the car all the way back. After reaching the garage, he woke up the mechanic. The mechanic popped the hood, took one look at the engine and then hit something with this wrench. Then he asked the man to turn the key and the engine came alive.

Very thankful, the man asked how much he needed to pay. The mechanic charged him $700. Shocked, the man asked him why it was so high. The mechanic calmly replied, “$50 is the basic charge, plus 50 because it is the middle of the night. The rest” he said “is for the fact that I knew exactly what to hit to get it running.”

The point that I am trying to make here is that SEO experts share their knowledge. It is their understanding and the consequent information that you are paying for. So even if he works for just an hour, it would probably take a commoner quite few years to learn what he knows.

Thus, when you hear that an expert charges $1000 per hour, how would you react? Would you think it is was outrageously high or would you think that it was nothing compared to what you will be getting in return.

Let’s put it into perspective. The $1000 that you spend each hour will make sure that your site gets traffic that is worth thousands of dollars or more to you, per month.

Here’s a real life example.

One or two week back, an agency called me up with an urgent project. It so happened that that agency had built a website for a very high profile client. I cannot take names here for obvious reasons let’s call them ‘XYZ’.

Now this agency had built the website in flash and had handed over the site to XYZ. The site wasn’t ranking very well so XYZ called up the agency and asked why it wasn’t ranking as it should.

It was an absolute SEO emergency for the agency, at which point they contacted me. They assured me that they wanted a long term relationship with me. The agency of course had to get the XYZ website fixed immediately and XYZ being a high profile client, I had a good feeling about working with some high up people.

So I prepared a report and pointed out the steps that both sides would take together to get the work done. They had told me that the long-term agreement was just waiting for some nitty-gritty to get smoothened out.

After that, they stopped responding to all my emails and voicemails. Then after a while I got an email from my contact at the agency saying that they were currently implementing the steps and they would let me know as soon as they were done. The email ended with a “thanks” but I was none the richer after having given them my advice. Now that I think about it, I simply should’ve sent them an agreement and started charging hourly rates for consultation.

As you can understand, it has left a bad taste in my mouth. So, what I would like to know is what other SEO companies/experts do in such situations. It is obvious that the areas have to be discussed before the agreement is made. But what if the client just takes the information for free and uses it without paying you a cent?

Of course, it takes an expert to do the work properly, so like I said before, clients will probably not get it right. But still, how to know where to stop? If you have ideas, relevant experience, etc, I would love to hear them.

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Yeah another piece of web content and this happens in content writing too. Like I rewrote this article and did not get paid for it. So I am putting it up here because well, this is a PR2 blog and it gets indexed quite fast!!! Mu ha ha ha ha

Got some nice paying clients. A really happy writer now!

On the music front, been getting better at getting the tunes out of my head and on to a real track. Expect new stuff in June July rounds. :)

Ah, the touchscreen craze

2009-05-05T01:28:00.001+05:30

It is anybody’s guess what the mobile phone handset makers are up to nowadays. These companies are all launching their own touch phones. That’s right, each and every mobile handset manufacturing company worth its title is making touchscreen phones these days.

Ever since Apple unleashed the iPhone upon the world, the mobile handset game has changed completely. Every company felt pangs of insecurity when they saw it and now there are touchscreens everywhere.

The two big companies of the industry Nokia and Sony Ericsson have both come up with phones that are either fully or partly touchscreen. Amongst them, Sony’s Xperia X1 had been much hyped before its release. But it failed to leave a mark after all the hype and expectations. Nokia’s Xpress Music 5800 received good reviews but it isn’t something spectacular either.

Then comes the LG Cookie or KP500, which seems to be a fun to use mobile phone and it is a cheaper option compared to the other touchscreen phones. Samsung also joins into the game by launching the Omnia. The Omnia so far has gotten good reviews and it is not as limited as the iPhone, as some people are pointing out. It has all the demanded features of a high-end phone. Well, it has to be said that so do most of the other phones that were mentioned earlier.

HTC, O2, Blackberry have all come out with their own touchscreen based phones. Blackberry especially upped the ante by marketing their new Storm cleverly with F1 start driver Lewis Hamilton.

Of course, none of these phones have been able to top the crazed buying frenzy that ensued right after the Apple iPhone was launched. But that had several complex reasons behind it.

Talking about the future, there’s an interesting concept from Dell and their newly bought company Alienware. They have envisioned a new phone that will have Alienware’s good looks, while running Google’s Android under the hood. A small Google search should let you in on it.

The Mobile OS wars are still on with Apple’s OS eating away market shares right and left. Of course, the center of a lot of attention – Google's Android is slowly making its presence felt in the market. LG has been showing off its latest interface for its S-Class phones. The Blackberry OS has reached 5.0 and it has been praised for its speed.

So far the mobile market has seen a good growth, before the recession hit of course. The latest thing to look forward to in the mobile industry seems to be mobile broadband. The news of its growing better and faster is everywhere, especially with the UK’s ‘Digital Britain’ plan of action.

As a whole the phones are geared at becoming faster and the convergence initiatives are taking the features to the next level. Phones that do almost everything you can do with your gadgets are becoming commonplace now, so we can probably look towards the future for the one super-gadget that will replace everything else. And in all likelihood it will fit inside your palm.

alright, alright, i cannot fool you. This is another piece of web content that I wrote. Actually I am working with a few techniques and seeing how quickly my blog is indexed by google and how different topics affect my blog. Just a passing phase of amateur SEO.

In the mean time, I am rejoicing now that college is over. Yes, I am actually happy. It might come across as a surprise to a lot of people (and it has surprised a lot of people) but if you really get me, you won't be that surprised.

The general thing now is to work hard and earn some money and get better at music making in the mean time. I tried my hand at composing some one month back. It was for a college project on Shakespeare's Mid Summer Night's Dream. I would've loved to record it but it was nothing epic or something close.

So i will just say that it wasn't too kiddish but it could've been so much more layered and better composed. Well, you can't really get that in a few days' work so I guess you reap what you sow. I was satisfied that the performance went as expected - nothing spectacular but exactly as it was supposed to go, no glitches.

other that that, life has been interesting of late, bit more than usual. Will post on that when time comes.

Busting the free merchant account myth

2009-04-30T14:04:00.001+05:30

And here's another article continuing in my experiment with my blog. It should be over soon, thank you for your patience.

Note: all these articles are original and unique articles that I wrote as a content writer. The data has been gathered from places on the web.

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Alright folks you know what this is about, you want free merchant account right? Well see here, the fact is that there are no such things as free merchant accounts.

Think about the reasons for a while, why would any merchant account provider you their services for free? Merchant account providers spend a lot of money getting the service running with all the paperwork that needs to be done, dealing with the credit card companies, staying afloat through bad things like frauds etc. It is a very risky and expensive business to conduct.

With that in mind, why would any such business allow you to access their service for free? So what are all these talks of free merchant accounts? Well they are mainly free set ups and NOT free accounts forever, meaning you won’t be using their services to get paid by customer’s paying through credit card and get to keep the full amount.

Merchant account providers need to have a very strict policy regarding whom they accept as their customers. So when someone applies for an account, there is a lot of paperwork that needs to be done. A lot of verifications and things are done to ensure that the business is stable; it won’t be acting fraudulently, etc. In short, they have to make sure that the applicant is of no risk to them and their reputation.

No merchant account provider on earth will exempt you from all charges. There are actually two ways they can charge you. One way is to charge you a very set up cost (remember the lengthy set up that they go through) and then they will charge you very low charges per transaction.

Another way is to charge you very little or nothing during setup. This is where the myth kicks in because there may be providers who are giving you free of cost setup. But remember that they are also a business and need to turn a profit just like you. So, they will charge you in another way – they will charge very high percentages on each transaction. It may go up to 20% per transaction with some providers, so be careful about what you are signing on to.

So as you can understand by now, just like a free meal, a free merchant account does not exist. You can only get something by paying for it in someway or the other. The thing about merchant accounts is that that it will charge on way or the other. There is no escape from paying for the account.

But what kind payment plan suits you is up to you really. If you are just a startup and do not have much capital left to spare, you can go for setup that are low cost or free at the cost of making less profit on each transaction. Or you can quit being a cheap stake and pay a large setup fee and make more money on each transaction. Whatever decision you make will somehow alter your business, so decide wisely.

Father of Slumdog outraged at staged media lure

2009-04-28T15:50:00.001+05:30

Here's a sensational piece of news. Data collected from various internet places.

Mr. Rafiq Qureshi, father of Slumdog child actor, Rubina Qureshi, was accused of trying to sell his child by a UK newspaper. Mr. Qureshi has denied such accusations and said that they were tricked by the media in a “dirty” undercover operation.

The News of the World reported that Qureshi had apparently asked for a sum of £200,000 for selling Rubina to their reporters, who were posing to be a wealthy couple from Dubai, interested in adopting Rubina.

Qureshi told BBC that the media had made a mockery out of their poverty. Rafiq, who is a carpenter in Mumbai, said that the reporters tried to trick them but they escaped.

Rubina’s part was the youngest version of the lead female character called Latika, in the multi-Oscar movie “Slumdog Millionaire”.

According to The News of the World, one of their staff members had contacted Qureshi, posing as the go between. He told Qureshi that a wealthy family from Dubai was interested in adopting Rubina and to take her to Dubai with them.

As per them, Rafiq’s brother who spoke better English had initially asked for a sum of about £50,000 in exchange for Rubina. The UK paper also mentions that Qureshi later tried to increase that amount to £200,00 (which is about $292,000). Apparently, Rubina’s father was not happy with the sum he had received from the filmmakers.

Mr. Qureshi then agreed to meet with the BBC for an interview. In the long interview, Qureshi said that he was told that the couple from Dubai had heard of Rubina from the Al-Jazeera channel. Apparently they were eager to help out Rubina and that is why Qureshi had decided to meet with them.

He said that he had met with two men and a ‘memsaab’, a term that is used in India to refer to white women.

They apparently had three meetings, the first and the last one in a hotel in Mumbai and one where one of the reporters (still posing) visited the hut of the Qureshi family in a slum in the Bandra area of Mumbai.

According to Mr. Qureshi, the last meeting was where he realized they were trying to give him money in exchange for letting Rubina be adopted and taken to Dubai.

He said that he was talking to these people where one of the reporters asked him to talk to someone on the phone. Over the phone, a person apparently thanked him in broken Hindi for letting Rubina be adopted.

It was then when he realized what was going on and kept the phone down and declared that he and Rubina were leaving the hotel. Still, the family had insisted and Qureshi said that the reporters went to the ‘memsaab’ and brought back an offer of 500,000 Indian rupees as an advance amount. He told BBC that even though he kept refusing, they kept on insisting and said that if he accepted, the money could be arranged in a matter of minutes.

He then left the place for his home and the next morning, he saw himself and the incident all over the media with the wrong accusation hurled at him, said Qureshi. He then switched off his mobile knowing that the media would be calling in and by now he had lost his faith in the media, after the shocking revelation that those men were reporters.

He said that even though he was tempted with so much money, he did not take any of it and the dirty ploy to trick him had failed. He reasserted that his daughter is not for sale.

The middleman who was present in the meetings to make up for Qureshi’s poor English said that no such deal was made. This man, called Dinesh, also said that at no point had he tried to convince Qureshi to accept the offer. He said he was afraid that such a story would show Rubina’s family in a bad light.

One of the neighbors, Mohammed Shakeel was completely indignant at such an accusation and that they all knew hoe much Rafiq loved his daughter and that he would never do such a thing. He reiterated that no matter how poor they were, they had a lot of self-respect and would never think of selling their children.

Priti Patkar, of Prerna NGO, said that the media had made an unethical move in talking to Rubina. She said the local welfare committee and police should immediately look into convicting whoever was responsible for making this happen.

Shireen Miller, official of Delhi based Save the Children, said that issues such as child abuse and exploitation were major problems in the country and they should be curbed with very strict laws. The families and the children should be protected against such people involved in trafficking.

Conficker: The Most Advanced Virus Ever?

2009-04-28T13:46:00.002+05:30

Hey folks, been testing out a few things on my blog hence the articles. I am trying to post the most interesting ones here, hope at least some of you find it useful. The research has as usual been done on the internet.

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Conficker is being touted as one of the biggest security threats to PCs in the history of computers. No one is quite sure what the worm will do once it decides to activate itself. The Conficker virus has baffled computer security experts all over the globe.

The sheer scale of the infection itself is a worrying sign. It has in all probabilities infected over 2 million PCs worldwide. Some say over 10 million but that is hard to prove. Due to the sheer volume, the Conficker botnet (network of computers under the control of a malware) could be used for almost anything. It may launch denial of service attacks or send spam or steal personal information.

The worst part is the fact that no one has been able to find out what Conficker is meant to do. Now that the anticipated 1^st April date has passed without any major news, it may be waiting for the attention to die out. The sad part is that the security experts cannot look at the internal code because the authors have encrypted it.

Even the data that the worm would download has a strong 4096-bit RSA encryption. It in fact protects itself by not allowing access to the security sites and by killing the security processes in the background. So windows defender, BITS, error reporting and automatic updates are not able to run.

The worm even checks and kills pre-determined anti-virus and anti-malware tool processes. It also kills diagnostic tools and patching tools. So in a way, the author has taken pains to make it as immune to attack as possible.

Thankfully, ways have been found to counter the problem and Microsoft has released a guide for prevention and removal of worm-Conficker. But it still remains a large infection and something that might strike in the near future.

The top 25 misconceptions related to SEO.

2009-04-28T13:10:00.003+05:30

A piece of web content written by me.

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There are a whole lot of techniques out there that people believe will help them with SEO for their websites. But the fact is that many of these techniques are either obsolete or completely useless. Here I will show you 25 very common mistakes regarding SEO.

1. SEO is directly boosted by including H1 tags.

H1 tags do have a relationship with SEO but individually they have no impact. So they won’t be able to give a direct boost.

2. SERPs always display your specified text as the Meta description.

Not true. Google has started matching search queries to your site’s content and it will display a selected text from your content based on its own matching. This is the result of a new algorithm update and it works especially for longer search queries.

3. Setting the crawling frequency on the webmasters’ console makes sure that crawling will happen at the given frequency.

It seems like Google sets its own appropriate crawl frequency. It does this by watching your site for frequency of updates and posts and hence it will probably not follow your manual setting.

4. Plugins like AllinOneSEO take care of everything when put on Auto SEO Mode.

The bad news is that it is never that simple. Even though these plugins do work on the important areas, at times putting them on Auto mode will be generally disruptive to your SEO efforts. For example, if you choose to auto generate the Meta description using AllInOneSEO, it might end up making duplicate entries in some of the themes. So use the plugins for some of the key areas but try to do most of it by hand.

5. There is a 4% keyword density rule that ensures optimization.

No, there isn’t any such rule. That is because search engine algorithms are complex enough to locate patterns in your content. Keyword density is obsolete and it does not affect the rankings anymore. The smarter option is to use the keywords strategically and focusing on relevancy rather than density.

6. You reputation will improve if you link to authority websites.

See, if something like that were true, every Webmaster would do it and hence there would be no way to differentiate between sites. So this has nothing to do with your reputation. It is a good thing to link to these sites but do not hope to gain anything extra from it.

7. Page Ranks are directly related to rankings.

This is a very common belief and it is absolutely false. Page Ranks have absolutely no direct connection with your SERP rankings. But you need a lot of good quality content and authority for a high page rank.

8. Search engines won’t crawl pages that have a Robots.txt file.

In reality, it won’t be able to stop the page from being crawled. That is because Google might end up crawling it during the follow through of an incoming external link. The only way to make sure that a page cannot be crawled is to lock it up. Making it a password-protected area will stop the bots every time.

9. Search engines will only index those sites that have been submitted.

Absolutely not. In fact a better way to get indexed would be to get relevant external links.

10. Only high PR websites get to have Sitelinks.

Google has itself clarified that Sitelinks are completely automated and hence you do not have any control over it, except may be blocking some of them from appearing by using Webmaster tools.

11. Your site’s SEO can be easily fixed with a WordPress blog.

There will be no difference in your site’s SEO if you just add or replace something with a WordPress blog. It is a very good tool and like any other tool, you need to use it properly to get good results.

12. More internal links give better SEO.

This is theoretically true but you can mess it up with poor execution. To get good results you will need proper placement of links and the correct anchoring texts. Keeping them relevant and strategic will help you the most.

13. Dynamic URLs harm a site.

Well, it is no longer a problem, especially if your content is optimized and plays well with SEs. Even though it is better and time efficient to use a shorter and more understandable format, it is not necessary. That is because Google is ‘aware’ of all the possible parameters that can be avoided and takes them into account.

14. Flash pages are SEO unfit.

It may look like that but flash pages can be optimized. Yes you will have less opportunity for SEO compared to content filled pages but with proper focus on other SEO factors, flash pages can be optimized.

15. It is good SEO to add more keywords to your titles.

It is actually very bad SEO because you are spamming your own site. It might work for a while under lower competition but do not expect it to last too long.

16. The Meta ‘nofollow’ tag effectively blocks SE bots from crawling the page.

It only works when the bots are working directly on your site. But they will crawl/index the page if they are following an external link to it.

17. Bots won’t scan pages with Canonical URL tags.

As usual, SE bots will scan pages that that they first land on but of course in this case all subsequent queries would be sent to the original URL. Still it is possible that Google will later view the page the bots first landed on.

18. SEO is disturbed by deep directory structures.

Only if they are badly structured. If the directories are well structured and properly connected they should not pose a problem. But do avoid unending loops in deep directories.

19. Adding ‘nofollow’ to all external links protects your PR.

PR is determined by how many sites link to you and not necessarily by how many or which sites you link to. So don’t worry about ‘protection’.

20. Having Meta tags with keywords result in good SERP ranking.

You have to remember that Meta keywords actually work like ad copy on SERPs. You have to make them relevant, short, crisp, attractive and may be even catchy to make sure that they attract more clicks on SERPs. So stuffing keywords won’t help you at all.

21. After performing the top ten SEO actions, no one can take away your top position from you.

It is never that simple because if your other nine competitors on page 1 perform as good as you, you will probably lose your position. So you must never stop fighting for the top spot.

22. SEO is a short-term thing, so just get it over with!

There is no short term for a good job. Proper SEO requires an initial effort, followed up with regular updates and maintenance.

23. If incoming links are ‘nofollow’, they are useless.

Well even though they are technically ‘not followed’, they are not always useless. Even if links from high authority sites are ‘nofollow’, Google has its own ways of finding out the relevance of those links. So that way, ‘nofollow’ links aren’t that useless when they come from high authority sites.

24. Positions on Search Engines are assured.

I am sure that most of you already have realized that such a thing is not possible with search engines. But with proper SEO you can always hope for good positions.

25. Keyword emboldening helps SEO.

Using the strong tag to highlight keywords and phrases by making them bold might be helpful as long as you do not overdo it. Using it too many times would be spamming and the search engine in any case wont pick them up each time you use them, so no use trying.

So those were the major misconceptions that I have so far come across. Feel free to add your own experiences to the list.