Sabarish

I haven’t blogged much lately. I must say that I kept coming back to try and revive this blog but it hasn’t worked until now. The only thing I did regularly was update my wordpress installation every time they released a new version.

WordPress 3.2 was released recently and as I read posts and tweets on the web about it and how it has improved (I love the new writing space) I had to come back to upgrade this blog to v3.2 and check it out.

Going through the upgrade process, got me thinking. I was trying to analyse why I am not blogging as often as I used to (according to the Word Stats plugin, it has been 259 days since my last post – which in itself was just a re-shared photo from flickr.)

I realised that earlier I needed the forum and space this blog provided to express myself and to hear from others through their comments and to interact with friends and strangers from around the world.

Nowadays I still seem to be expressing myself, infact several times a day.

I do this through
my tweets on twitter;
through facebook status updates;
by sharing
articles that interest me,
videos that amused me,
songs that enchanted me;
through facebook places and foursquare check-in updates, which tells the world the kind of places I hang out at and the different people I hang out with;
through flickr and instagram by showing the world the world around me through the lens;
and then there is linkedin
and chatter (at work)
and now google+ is here offering  opportunities +1 of expressing myself.

One has to admit it is not very difficult to express oneself through the above mentioned avenues and more importantly it is not difficult to get almost instant feedback through a like or a +1 or a comment. The world responds to incentives and these sites offer the all important incentives of easy exposure and feedback! I too got sucked into that world, but luckily didn’t let this space die or lose my domain.

One of the main problems with blogging is the effort it takes.

It takes a lot of effort by the blogger to compose a new blog-post. Firstly one needs to come up with something interesting to write about. Even if it is an idea that pops up suddenly (like this post,) there is some effort involved. Write, revise, check, rewrite, spell-check, add links and images and finally publish.

It also takes quite a bit of effort by the readers. There are tools that make it simpler to aggregate content from multiple blogs, but even then one needs to subscribe to different blogs; read posts that are generally on the longer side (which, in these days of short attention span, is a challenge); pass through some authentication system and captchas in order to be able to post a comment and follow up on the comments regularly. Definitely not as simple as clicking the ‘Like’ button.

Nonetheless, even in this age of Twenty-20, the ODI’s and Test Matches are still watched and loved.

Likewise, there still are a lot of bloggers out there writing and publishing some great stuff – many old timers and several new ones. A lot of blogs that I once followed have become inactive or 404s. It is time I update this list with some new blogs and subscribe and follow them regularly.

I found that as I stopped blogging, I also stopped reading other blogs. Although I don’t promise anything, I am hoping this will get me back on the blogging track and will not be the end of blogging for me!

I’d love to hear from you -

What are your thoughts on blogging and micro-blogging?

Know any blogs that I should check out?

Got a blog yourself?

- please post it all in the comments section!

2008 was a sad year in India with all these terror attacks and bomb blasts and the recent Mumbai attacks. It pains all of us to see such mindless death and destruction, but is there anything we can do about it? Well one of the first things we can do is check piracy. Some articles that I read in the papers and online about how buying that cheap CD/DVD from the streets or renting movies from the neighbourhood movie library (who buys the pirated movies) actually might be funding these terrorist organisations.

Below are some articles I could find online -

Piracy funds terrorism | http://www.window2india.com/cms/admin/article.jsp?aid=3810

Check piracy to defeat terrorism | http://www.samaylive.com/news/check-piracy-to-defeat-terrorism-says-nasheed/602463.html

Interpol Links Piracy To Terrorism Funding | http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-retail-stores-not/4368051-1.html

This is seriously shocking stuff and I think we need to raise awareness of this and have enough self discipline to avoid going the cheap way, which could prove costly later.

After reading these articles I thought of doing a little myself and avoid buying or renting out pirated movies and got myself registered at seventymm.com – a one stop hangout for renting movies online. 

They carry this disclaimer about the legality of renting movies from them -

We carry all the movies which are legally released in India with a certification from the Censor Board of India. If a movie is not released by the studio or distributor for rental purposes, we won’t be able to provide it for rent to you. So if a movie is not legally available in India, we will also not have it.

I now rent out all my movies from seventymm and I must say the service is great. I’ve been a member for under a month now and have rented out 4 movies so far. I got some membership offer of Rs. 750 valid for 4 months and 24 movies (DVD or VCD). This roughly works out to around Rs. 31 per movie, which is great! My package lets me borrow one movie at a time, which is home delivered and picked up. They have other plans with different rates, where you can borrow unlimited movies at a time and keep them for as long as you wish.

Once you register on their site you can set up a movie queue. They have tons of movies to select from and you can add them and change the order around in your personal movie queue. You can request for a delivery, upon which the first available movie from your list is delivered to you and any previous movie that you might have borrowed is picked up (depending on your plan); you can also request for a pickup only, wherein the movie queue is not processed and only the previous movies are picked up.

The DVDs so far have all been of great quality and I haven’t faced any issues with the entire service. I’ve built up quite a nice movie list with lots of Tamil and some Malayalam movies as well to watch with the family. So now we even have regular movie sessions! :)

Delivery time wise I haven’t had an issue so far and usually within a day or maximum two after requesting for delivery the movie is delivered. One can even provide an alternate address (such as the office address) and request for them to come to the alternate address if unavailable at the home address.

The only drawback as such with Seventymm and my one-dvd-at-a-time rate plan is that if I don’t rent out 24 movies in 3 months, then I’d still end up paying Rs. 750/-, although they do have an option of ‘pausing’ your subscription, which can be done by calling the help-desk.

Some other alternates to Seventymm

- Big Flix | http://rental.bigflix.com/bigflix/Home

- CatchFlix | http://catchflix.com/index.php

Here’s hoping more people stop buying and renting out pirated movies.

Got back to Bangalore last Saturday night. Landed at the new Bengaluru International Airport. Was impressed with the place, considering how the old HAL airport was. The new airport is clean and nice, although I feel it could have been much better. Lets see how it copes up with increased traffic.

Anyway my Noida trip was really awesome on the whole. I managed to learn so much at work a lot of new things and processes and also managed to see so many new places in and around Noida and Delhi!

Noida was an ok place. Nothing really in it to see, apart from the Atta market and Sector 18 areas (which I did frequent a lot!).

I really fell in love with Delhi as a city and I managed to explore quite a lot of this ancient city. Its got so much history and culture in it and I had an amazing time trying to learn more about the city and checking out different places in the city. I reckon I still have a lot more to explore and it will take many more visits to see everything!

Highlights of the trip -

1. The many markets of Delhi and Noida: Connaught Place / Chandni Chowk / Khan Market / Dilli Haat / GK 1 M block / GK 1 N block / New Friends Colony / Saket / Atta Market / etc. etc. went to many such places and loved the atmosphere and mood at these places.

2. Nizamuddin Auliya’s Dargah, Delhi:Went there for the Qawwali performance that happens every Thursday evening. Imagine listening to Qawalli’s sitting in an open courtyard, right there inbetween the tombs of Nizamuddin Auliya and Amir Khusrao (considered to be the Father of Qawalli)!! Pure Nirvana!

3. All the monuments in Delhi: Humayun’s Tomb / Qutub Minar / Akshardham Temple / India Gate / Red Fort / etc. etc. In Delhi there have been so many empires and so much of history, that no matter where you go, you will end up running into some tomb or monument or some place of historical significance!

4. Taj Mahal, Agra: Finally managed to see one out of the 7 wonders of the World!

5. Fatehpur Sikhri: Amazing place, with great architecture and monuments from the Mughal era all around.

6. Golden Temple, Amritsar: Never even thought that I’d be visiting Amritsar on this trip! Thanks to some friends from Bangalore who insisted I join them, I got to go on one helluva a trip to Amritsar!

7. Wagah Border: The visit to the India-Pakistan border to see the colourful and patriotism inspiring ceremony in the evening was simple amazing. The whole atmosphere and display of patriotism by everyone was very touching and the ceremony itself was very interesting to watch, with an exaggerated march past display and well dressed, very vocal army personnell. It felt great to be so close to the border, that we could see the Pakistanis on the other side of the gate in their stands! All of it concluded with the lowering of the flag on both sides of the border.

8. Haridwar and Rishikesh: This was a religious plus adventure trip. I’ve been wanting to go to Haridwar and take a dip in the Holy Ganga and finally managed to do this in this trip. The trip to Rishikesh was more for the adventure of Water Rafting, and what an adventure we had!!

9. Delhi Metro: I had the opportunity to travel on the swanky clean Metro and I was simply blown away! The whole experience was really great and I was very proud to see the Metro. It was like stepping into another world. Considering I got into the metro after going around parts of old Delhi and the markets of Chandni Chowk!

10. Meeting friends: Most of the above happened largely thanks to me meeting some old friends and making new ones on the trip! Although I would have ended up travelling alone, I doubt if I would have covered so many places and/or had this much fun if it weren’t for them. Thanks to Animesh / Nethra / Sayor / Disha / Shobit and even Leelu and gang (who coincidentally also came to Delhi while I was there).

A very eventful trip on the whole and I return very satisfied, although disappointed as I missed out on one place that I also wanted to visit – Jaipur in Rajasthan. First the very sad incident of the bomb blasts occurred and later the Gujjar strikes removed all chances of me going there this time.

I have a whole lot of photos to process and upload and a lot of blog posts to write about the above places and more in detail. God knows when I will get around to doing it all! But keep watching this space!