No Updates

I actually thought that I'll post something after my Quizzes (read cycle tests) got over and I do actually have a lot to post on, but I've got work up to my neck and am really not finding the time. Just got time to say

• Real life rocks!
• Real life sucks
• Had an awesome time at Festember - something that I would love to write about but don't think I will. What an experience!
  
• You just HAVE to see the video for The Zephyr Song
• Don't remember anything else right now
  

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the SEO event is long gone (atleast the original one), because Blogspot and Wordpress decided it was creating too much spam and blocked all the blogs. Now they've decided to set up their own website and host the participants. This has many disadvantages, acoording to one consultant who has a certain amount of expertise in the field. And quoting other sources:
"They have so much money, and look at the way they're spending it!"
I guess there was a bit of pressure on getting the event back on track. So anyone who's interested (definitely not me!) can head to http://seo.iitm.ac.in

Can't really recollect anything, except that third year's been a whole new ball game. All of us seem to have this very different outlook in life and are getting a bit serious and mature (in thought atleast, if not in actions). Have to start reevaluating my position. Till next time.

Shaastra 2006 Search Engine Optimisation event

I'm taking part in this year’s Shaastra 2006 Search Engine Optimisation Contest!

Check out my entry here -
Zeppelin crazy Coecelanth with the Durbatuluk Equivocates at Shaastra

Shaastra 2006 is the annual technical festival of IIT Madras. There are loads of events to take part in, both for the hardcore tech enthusiast as well as for somene who’s just walked in to take a look. Check out the Shaastra website for more info.

Search Engine Optimisation is all about building your website such that it features high among the search results in popular search engines like Google, Yahoo or Altavista when certain keywords are search for.

The search terms that we have to optimise the website for are Coecelanth, Durbatuluk, Equivocate, Shaastra and Zeppelin. I seem have got into the race quite late and there are so many blogs that are already showing up in the search results. Anyway, might as well give it a shot and see what happens.

If anyone doesn't mind helping, I'd be very grateful if you could link to the above website. Copy the following HTML code and past it in the page source:

<a href="http://sadraytracer.wordpress.com/">Zeppelin crazy Coecelanth with the Durbatuluk Equivocates at Shaastra</a>

You can replace the text with anything you want. Even "Sad Raytracer" would be okay, but the above is preferable as Google favours links with the blog title as text.

And if you really don't mind, you can use the following link buttons:

<a href="http://sadraytracer.wordpress.com"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2717/2209/400/sr2.jpg" alt="zeppelin equivocate" /></a>

<a href="http://sadraytracer.wordpress.com"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2717/2209/400/sr3.jpg" alt="shaastra durbatuluk" /></a>

Blog ist Tot

I realised there are far more important things in life than blogging. This blog is dead. (Anything else is just a ghost)

BlogCamp 2006

The blogging community is revving itself up for the biggest blog event ever - BlogCamp 2006. It will be an unconference where anyone can attend and share their ideas and experiences with blogging. A range of topics concerning blogging will be discussed and it promises to deliver. And Chennai, being the blogging capital of India, will play host.

The BlogCamp is currently scheduled to be held on the 9th and 10th of September, but the venue has not yet been confirmed. There's a lot of planning being done by the BlogCamp organisers (or 'volunteers', as mentioned in this site) and kudos to them for the effort they are putting in.

Here's an ad that I created for the BlogCamp. You can find more ads here.



Blogcamp official website
BlogCamp Wiki
BlogCamp Blog

Over the weekend

I realised...

• Fifth semester is probably going to be the worst ever.
  
• It can be really, really irritating when you're using the bathroom and your kid cousin is constantly switching the light on and off.
• You can make koottu, call it kurma, and get away with it.
• Ranged weapons, ranged weapons, ranged weapons!!!
• If at all there is any last.fm group I should join, it's this one.
• N64 graphics pretty much suck big time, though I thought they were good once upon a time.
• That wouldn't stop me from thoroughly enjoying Super Smash Bros.
  
• Don't ever try for realism using Flash.
• I would be playing the last scrabble game of my hols.
  
• The last line from Fake Tales of San Francisco by Arctic Monkeys is actually
  

  Yeah but his bird thinks it's amazing, though
  So all that's left
  Is the proof that love's not only blind but deaf

  and not
  

  Yeah her burping's just amazing, so
  we all just jeft
  It's proof that love's not only blind but deaf

  
  

Guess Who's Back

This started it all, this made one of the worst decisions it could, this gave us salvation and this guy used it as a reason for all us Blogspot users to shift to Wordpress!!! Atleast it's all over. The ban was lifted yesterday and normalcy has returned to bloggers around the nation. But really, blogs only become more popular once they're banned, and who's saying Wordpress isn't going to be next? Finally the worst that happened were of course the blasts themselves, and as we keep seeing more such news, I can't help but feel cynical. I have this terrible attitude of just brushing everything aside and only look at the good things in life, and I'm going to do it again now. I'm surprised I even said so much.

Yesterday saw the end to one of the best battles in the history of Age of Empires II : Age of Kings : Conquerors Expansion. So much so that my opponent (I don't know why I'm giving a link, it's been ages since he posted. I think he abandoned the blog a long time ago), within the grasp of victory, quit the game saying that it was one of the best games that I had played, and that I didn't deserve to lose. I was first enraged at his cruel sarcasm but then he said he meant it. I actually did feel it was one of the best games that I had ever played for the first time was a bit unhappy that I lost. The battle was so equally fought and long drawn - 4 hours 42 minutes, to be precise. Then it was one small event that turned the game around. I was a few seconds late in destroying his new Castle which he built very close to my village, and he began dictating terms from then on. My main problem is that I create army troops slowly, and in the long run, I'm always at a disadvantage.

Last week has been quite rewarding on the music front. There are so many songs that I have discovered thanks to Vh1, Last.fm and friends' recommendations. Some of the good songs that I have started listening to are (be warned, my taste in music is very different from that of the majority):

Blur - Coffee & TV
Keane - Bend & Break
Gorillaz - Fire Coming out of a Monkey's Head
Snoop Dogg - Let's get Blown
Pink Floyd - Time
Lily Allen - Smile
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
Limp Bizkit - Home Sweet Home/Bittersweet Symphony
Goo Goo Dolls - Iris
Thom Yorke - The Eraser

The last song has recently been covered by Ronan Keating and is the lead song for his new album. And it sounds almost exactly like the original! Why would anyone want to do that? It makes sense if you remix or sample a particular song, or even make a cover that adds a new dimension to the original (Cake's cover of I Will Survive is a good example, or Marilyn Manson's Sweet Dreams, Nirvana's Man Who Sold the World et al). This blatant rip-off is terrible - for singers, listeners and for music as a whole!

And I just found out about Wikimapia! It's based on the Google Maps API and is a wonderful concept! It's a totally wiki-based map. You can mark any landmark/building/road/anything at all that you see which may help someone in locating places anywhere on the globe. I've already gone on a place marking spree around my neighbourhood.

Keane, by the way is my current favourite band. They're among the list of bands that are my answer to all those guys who're saying - "Today's music sucks man, we should've been in the 70s". And surprisingly, there's a quote by their lead singer that goes -

"People often say that they wish they'd been around in the 60s, but we're happy just where we are. We love rock's back catalogue, and now we've got a chance to add to it. After all, tunes never go out of fashion."

I was so surprised when I read this because it exactly voiced my own opinion. Keane's first album Hopes and Fears rocks! And I found this site that has mp3s of all the songs from Hopes and Fears available for free download! For all it's critics, modern rock is still very good, just that people are not looking hard enough.

Web 2.0

Wow! That's the phrase I've been looking for! Web 2.0!!! I had this sudden realisation that I was doing things so differently on the net these days. Blogs, Ajax, Flash, Tags, Wikis, Social Networking, Web Syndication, Bookmarks and on and on and on. It really surprises me and everybody else I tell, that I can spend so much time on the internet. My answer used to be, well, it's the information superhighway, and there's so much to see out there! I think the average person's knowledge level (if such a thing can be measured) has tremendously increased compared to the last generation just because you can find out about anything on the net so easily. And there is so much information lying about. There are search engines, online encyclopedias, news sites, bookmarking websites. I heard somewhere that if you had the resources, you could build a nuclear bomb with just the net as reference!

But now all that seems to be secondary. Now everyone wants web applications. Interactive websites. Things need to be faster, easier to use, more productive, efficient and interesting. The very same information needs to be presented in new ways. This has developed over a period of time, since the late 90s and only now people have realised the true potential. Nowadays you'll find very few good websites that hav not incorporated any of the features mentioned in the above tag cloud (which itself is a Web 2.0 feature).

When I first used GMail, I could feel the difference. It was superb to use, one of the best interfaces that I had ever seen. I was wondering what it was, and seeing how it took so long to load initially and then everything seemed like it was happening on my computer rather than with data transferred over the web, I thought it was a Java applet. Only later was I enlightened about Ajax and the wonders it can do to your website.

There is an increasing amount of high bandwidth content like embedded audio, video and whole websites designed using rich media like Flash. This is also a problem as all the low bandwidth users are missing out on a lot of fun stuff. It can be really irritating to wait for that applet or Ajax application to load. But for high bandwidth users, it's a pleasure to use. Nothing like broadband to experience the full power of the net. Even then, you can have all the bandwidth you want, but it still comes down to time. So many websites, but so little time. You can just keep browsing and get lost in cyberspace. Worse, you can get so addicted you don't know what'll happen if a day passes by without the net, something like what's happening to me. I guess I should start cooling off, especially since college is reopening soon.

It's very nice to see the way the internet has evolved and it's exciting to think about what the future may hold.