Walk Alone

The author has warned it might not work with WP 2.0; so here goes nothing. This piece of code might be familiar to you.

आपला ब्राउझर युनीकोड वाचू शकतॊ.

Damn tough. Most of the time, I was worried I missed some Unicode entity. WP supports Unicode. If you can read the text above, your browser does too.

I hardly remember the moment or day when I suggested WP to Dave. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I’m using it myself!

The last time I tried WP was almost exactly an year ago. New to hosting (raw hosting - FTP, PHP, MySQL; all I had used before was Tripod and Geocities), I could only gape in wonder at what was going on. This time, I came to the ring better prepared. The transition was painless, if not efficient.

Moved Blogger posts here. Automated mostly. The last time I did it was by hand, for Blosxom. Comments had to be ‘touched’ to get counted. But the posts themselves are out of bounds - if I edit them now, the template breaks. Something to do with the category. Moving the blogroll was easy. Also pinged Technorati. WP allows the user to select the ping service they want - I’ve set it to Technorati.

Varun and Hrishikesh tested the WP engine in the last couple of days when I had uploaded it for testing stuff like loading speed, comments, categories and to register it with Technorati. Others have talked about the template - look and all. Thanks guys!

The link for this blog is http://rvbhute.freelinuxhost.com/wordpress. Please update your links, if any!

guy : Are, shot nako lavus. Dani panchvees madhun tees anayche prayatna kartoy.
Dani : Bus! Ikade chalis anayche vaande hot aahet.

****

Well, the department un-decimated our ranks. Cleared 8-10 people who shouldn’t have been held up in the first place. I got spooked by my friends. They are telling me (and honestly, I’m believing them) I could’ve cleared my paper with grace marks. But hey, seen against the drop I was expecting, this is a Godsend. Another thing is, I’ve come to know through reliable sources that the faculty has been asked to get their skills enhanced. Period. Read that as “Learn the software installed on our machines before the kids kick you out”. Matlab and Tina. And Matlab first and foremost. That has translated into pressure on Thite - who is the “catch-him-for everything” guy for the faculty - for helping the people out. Putting the wagon before the horse? Maybe. Maybe not, in this case.

****

There is a park near my place. It has many paths meandering through wooded areas. Quite peaceful. I visit it since December last year. I would stroll along on any arbitrary path I chose for the day. It was quite enjoyable. Lately, I’ve been forced to avoid some paths. I would have loved to walk on them. But the woods through which they pass are infested with rabid dogs now. They don’t miss any person who walks along the path, even if the person ignores them. Or tries to. For they are upon him in an instant. Snapping. Snarling. Biting. Breaking skin. Drawing blood…

Its a pity. I would have enjoyed the walk.

Lots of things to do and hardly any time to do them… well lots of time actually, but hardly any inclination to do the needful.

Having five days to while away, saw me do just that. While away the time. I finalised the template. Hope to hold it for a few months now. As far as I can tell, it loads in 6 steps.

1. The title block, the long post entries block and the profile block at the top of the sidebar. This loads from Blogger. And it has the operational stuff - the post entries - which is what a reader wants anyway.
2. Next is My Blogroll, it loads from rpc.blogrolling.com. If the server is slow or dead, it will affect the loading of this block. Needless to say, the rest of the page will be held back till this is resolved. Also involved is the Blogroll me link, which loads from vs.blogrolling.com.
3. Next is the Recent Posts and Archives block which again comes from Blogger.
4. Technorati - loads from embed.technorati.com. The same rules as for blogrolling.com apply here.
5. Buttons - from img.photobucket.com. Not much of a trouble since all have ALT texts in case of time-outs.
6. Footer from Blogger.

As for my site template, I’m planning to use the skeleton of this blog template. Details like DIV tags and so on. The point is to make it look like a stripped down version of this template - similar in layout but without all the colour and graphics.

****

If you want to dredge anything from here, I recommend the Technorati Search box on the sidebar. Its better than the one provided on the Navbar above. I signed up with Technorati as a part of whiling away the five days. Also indexed my blog with Blogdex and Google. Just for the heck of it. But I still recommend Technorati. Because it has a better feel for my blog than Google.

****

Beta times ahead! Both Firefox (current stable - 1.0.6) and Thunderbird (current stable - 1.0) have their 1.5 betas out. While I’m not going to try them (courtesy of my washing-machine syndrome afflicted sister) , I’m waiting for the RC - Release Candidate - versions. And of course, the official 1.5 stable releases. OpenOffice.org (current stable - 1.1.4) has also put out their 2.0 beta. OOo finally has a database component - Base. Can’t wait to try its RC and stable release versions.

****

Pacenet is acting up again. Frighteningly frequent “unexpected disconnection” events. Erratic speeds, mostly on the slower side, make that very, very slow. So I’m having trouble downloading my mail, loading sites and in general, carrying out my planned net activities. This post is taking well over thirty minutes. And a disconnection… Damn good Pacenet, setting the Pace for the Internet Race. No wonder, people here still swear by dialup.

Well, it turns out to be delayed by 24 hours!