Forgetting the basics

My makeshift desk which roomed almost everything that I thought as essentials for life and including my pet "a baby house lizard" and my feet, collapsed on me. Amazingly the only thing that died was my keyboard.

My plan of completing all my tasks that were due for the last 2 months on just one night seemed to be at risk. I remembered that I had a spare keyboard, but was not able to find it. Messaged and called whoever lived in my house to find out if they had done any thing with the spare, but had no luck. The futile search attempt did give me greater joy by revealing greater amount of money which I had forgotten about for years.

After having spent 1 hour on search and skipping my dinner, I put my engineering hat on, unscrewed opened the keyboard for a surgery. The thing just did not give me any hope of life at all. The locking lights would not want to go on. All I knew was everything looked alright to me. While doing so, I damaged some of it. Next morning, I went to the shop in the hot sun to buy a replacement after declaring the keyboard dead.

I reached behind the computer to fix it, and then it struck me. Yes you guessed it all along right; I had not checked if the cable was loose. It indeed was loose and the lights came on after pushing it in.

Oh great, now I can give the new keyboard back, I thought. Opened MS Word, tried all the keys, but few of them didn't work. I opened the keyboard again and carefully assembled it all back and tested it. More keys stopped working. Enough said, forgetting the basic is what we all do. It does not feel so good, after me spending time and money.

Now I know why they only want the sharpest of the sharpest brains to take up the medical science courses in our country.

(Typed in using my new keyboard)

I think my friend loves the fact that his mails to me are getting featured here.

Things I always wondered about

Solving the enigmas of everyday design - a photo blog by International Herald Tribune explains some simple design enigmas that always bugged me. Check it out.

Barcamp Bangalore 4

Ever wondered why no one visits your blog and even if they did why they dont come back? Ever wondered why your readers didnt comment on your posts however good your write up was?

I have been into blogging for quite some time now; 4 years to be specific. From my experiences so far I have gathered quite a lot of techniques which can be used to make interested readers come into your blog, read and comment on your posts.

I have also helped some of my friends to revamp their blogs to make it more popular just like the way they wanted it to be. And I'm more than happy to share those tips and tricks of how to make your blog more popular with you at Barcamp Bangalore 4 - Bloggers Collective. I will be talking about some real simple ways by which you can increase the traffic to your blog, make it more interesting for your readers to stay back and make them comment on your blog posts. You can share some of your ideas with me too and together we can make it a fun session.

Barcamp Bangalore 4 (BCB4) will be on July 28 and 29, 2007 at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. The same venue as last time. Barcamps are fun and a very nice place to listen to some great talks about technology and meet some cool geeks. You can just like that start off a conversation with the people you meet at the hallways or register to a collective of your interest. The collective idea is being tested for the first time in Barcamp Bangalore so one will have to see how exactly it works. I have registered to both Bloggers Collective and Internet Collective, even though I'm not sure if I can be a part of both the groups. I did it just to make sure that if at all I get bored in one group I can switch to the other. But I'm planning to hang around with the Bloggers group for most of the time.

Let me know if anyone of you reading this is also going to be there, will be glad to catch up. See you there.

Connected, so what?

In those days, when I had completed my 10th grade, and there was this one house that had telephone in my whole neighbourhood. I constantly bothered them to know if my uncle had called with my scores.

I once went to the other end of the city to meet a friend; but he was not back from work then. I asked if I can make use of his neighbour's phone, but I was not allowed access. I could not help myself cursing family's son whom they were all waiting for an hour to call from America as the nearest phone booth being 2 miles away.

When I started to work, nobody could reach me even if I overslept and turn up 2 hours late to work. We did not have a telephone at home then. My dad used to call my work when he is out of station and my boss admired how short I kept those calls to cut my dad's long distance phone bill. But all my local relatives that want to pass message to my mom were annoyed that I had only mono-syllabic response without knowing my habit.

When I moved out to a far place to work, I used to call my parents and watch the meter and I usually get disappointed if it had run over the budget for the month. The proliferation of technology made it a history where special phone calls that we waited for.

Zip forward today; I personally have 4 numbers which are two landlines and two mobiles. In fact I have five, the fifth one being the virtual number in totally a different country where I do not live anymore, which I can answer from here. There are more ways of connecting to me today. I am within reach to many even to those on the other side of the world, as my next door neighbour has. But, I have a need to call no one. No body has anything to say to me, and I am left with 5 telephone numbers.

I feel that I am constantly connected to no one.

My friend continues to mail me