Perspectives

Google is probably going to tell you a much better answer about that.
But I could not resist putting thoughts about this on paper(blog, in
this case). Blogspot is full of illusion. It is like a “maya”. At the look of it,
it is fanciful and does all that you want it to do. But, you gotta get
out of it. It is not the real world.  As once mentioned, “nothing ever happens” TM . Sure, you can do a lot of things, but what happened to basics ? Blogging is the lifeline of web 2.0. And you dont have a notion of communities,
You can’t tag etc. But, my biggest problem with blogspot is the way
they have written their “Comments” module. It has to be better than
that.

 Like has already pointed out, we are talking about blog and not a website. Nobody really visits a blog ever.  Just as how
“Adsense” does not make sense, all those “Lotsa” things does not make sense either.

Just to say something original, I was talking to a first yearite in IIM
Bangalore about Business, startups ( I am damn interested in all of
these
things) and everything(Seems like my favorite hobby these days is to catch hold of an IIM MBA and talk to him about startups ).
He questioned Google’s ( How comical will it be to give an outgoing
link to “google” ? Will that increase my Page rank ? ) 
business  model.
Though not sure about the exact numbers, having close to 100% of revenues from Advertisement is not such a wise thing. Y! had a
similar stature six years ago and we all know what happened.

I told him “If newspaper(s) industry can survive close to 150 years
just on advertisement, I am sure Internet ( and hence G & Y ) can
too.”
Someone once told me, an issue of the “The Hindu” would cost Rs. 125 , but for the advts it carries.
Do you disagree ?  Leave a comment. I have a big theory behind this one and is probably material enough for another entry.

It was a different experience for me. Never have I been to a concert where I felt so ignorant and bored. Two things here:

Ignorant. I knew a few songs of Jethro Tull and I went to see them primarily to start listening to them. And I dont think they have done that to me. Also, logically, these four or five are probably their most famous of songs. And they(which is mostly Ian Anderson) played about three from them. He didn’t play my favourite song Acres Wild either which was quite a disappointment. So, during most part of the show, I was trying to see if the base pattern was a complex off beat or if the beats dont round of at multiples of 2. I don’t think any such thing happened. I mean, I don’t think they play complex music, or their music is so complex that I don’t understand.

Bored. The entire concert seemed like one big song. Beyond a point, I was actually Yawning and talking to a colleague of mine about how he intends to do “Automatic data QA”. Guess that says it all.

Some interesting stuff did happen. “Locomotive breath” , “Aqualung” for two. Ian’s stage caricatures was another. Also, Ian wanted to celebrate Mozart’s 250th year along with us. He played a medley starting with some kinda symphony, the scale of which I could not make out. He went on to play ( the all famous) 9th symphony with his own stuff. He also played a Bach and somebody else of whom I didn’t know. Now this is stuff that people wont normally do.

His accent was quite heavy and I loved it. He got most of us laughing. I remember this one clearly though it does not sound that hilarious:
“When people ask me what they should do when they hit a lyrical block, I ask them to go to a 12 year old boy to write lyrics for them. Most of the time, he writes better and you dont have to pay the little bastard a penny”. He apparently also hates Rock n Roll.

Oh, something I am forgetting to mention is the Hindusthani Slide Guitarist who joined Thermal and a Quarter, who opened the show ( obviously). He was out of place and so was his music. I believe that each genre has it’s own mood or character and any fusion attempt predominantly ends up spoiling both the genres. I am not talking about Pop or Rock, which is a very broad and loose classification. Hindusthani in a rock song before jethro Tull. C’mon guys, I am sure you can innovate better. Anyways, despite the hype my friend gave bout TAAQ, they were not too impressive.

I did come back with an “Aqualung Live” by Tull and “Plan B” by TAAQ complementary CDs for sparing the time and spending 600 bucks with IIM Bangalore.

To hell with blogspot and all it’s CSS and templates and other fancies. I want to reply when a soul comments and I want them all to be on my blog.

I gave a bit of a try to somehow combine the goodness of both blogspot and LJ ( and I probably will). But, I dont have either the enthuse or the time to do worthless hacks now.

Anyways, LJ, Please welcome me.

Yes, I do. And I have spoken to many about why I do. The freedom you get with it’s templates is amazing. You feel like you are using an open source service. But, I hate blogspot for it’s “comments” Platform. It is really primitive and quite useless.

I have decided to move on, I mean, move to LJ ( and nothing freakier than that ). Blogspot was my window to Web2.0 ( Though, for all practical purposes, it is bloglines ) and I thank her for all that she has taught me.

Now, Just about 2 people seem to be reading this weblog. I could have just sent them an IM to tell them I am going to be on LJ. But I treat my blog as a diary of events rather than a channel for cheap journalism. A long long time later, my entries are going to be nostalgic to me, and possibly to others too. And it is with this intent that I write. It will try to capture all those moments in my life, however trivial they may be.

When you find time, Drop in into shivku at livejournal to find what is happening in my usually boring world.

Adieu blogspot.