Facelift to my blog.

Oh dammit I’m growing old. I removed all the fancy things from my blog. Even the smiley images. Now I start to act like a matured bastard. Oh damn this is not cool ;).

On the other hand I’m happy that I manage to grow up. Somehow.

Cutting the crap, here are some more details about the topic.

The need to reduce extra fat and sugar in my blog was in my todo list for a long time now. But there’s no ideal time other than the exam days :P. So I took time for the long awaited change. I loved my old theme garland. I still do. But I equally love dark themes. Black is new green you know?. And a change is always good. If you are not sure, ask Obama.

It was not really difficult to find a black theme out of the 11 dark themes wordpress has :P. Seriously ONLY ELEVEN dark themes?. That’s not acceptable. Anyway I chose the current theme ChaosTheory because it was the best suiting to my taste, even though it eats up left hand side with post info. I wish the text was on left side. Then it would be easy to read. But anyway, “contentment is bliss”. A wise man once said.

I have added carefully picked items to the bottom of the site. Hope it will help someone who is interested in my blog and well… myself ;). Earlier I was forcing those stuff + many other crap on reader. But that’s not the way I like it anymore. I want to kiss. Oh hold.. hold on a second… I mean Keep It Simple, Stupid. More readers, more pageviews, more clicks are in the vocabulary of money whores anyway.

By the way I want you to know why I say “You should follow me on Twitter” somewhere in the bottom. No I’m not a twitter follower whore either :) .

OK you are done reading this post! Maybe you’d like to check my Tumblelog, right now.

Join me in MJ ass kissers club.

OK, There’s one now. wait.. wait… it was not me. That sage girl defined the club. First of all let’s see who are already in.

The Way you make me feel | How I see it
Michael Jackson and Me | Landon Lanka and Drums
A Legend | A heart on a sleeve
The way you make me feel | delilah says
There will never be another you, MJ | Jus Chillin’
MJ’s gone :( | A glimpse of lady devine
What’s your fav MJ? | Chaar~Max 2.0
Singer Michael Jackson dies at 50 | Gossip Lanka
‘King of Pop’ Michael Jackson dies at age 50 | City Hits
The Six List – Tribute to “The King of Pop…” | Untitled
So, about MJ | The Abyss

Update: Here is a comprehensive list of blog posts on MJ’s death on achcharu.org. (thanx drac for the link) Most of the writers should include the club. Now I really love to be in this club :P .

Dropped in happily:

Doesn’t matter if you are black or white. | Bumble for PM

So this is all I found on a kottu search (query:MJ Michael). If I’ve missed any of you please let me know. And if you think you don’t match the club since you are not upset of MJ’s death, ping me I’ll remove you from the list.

11 posts (edit : at the beginning it was), written by people who are shocked by the death of MJ. I just feel like that’s not enough. I too join the club.

Yesterday I woke up to the news ‘MJ died’ on Fox news or something. First thing I did was switching on my laptop & rushing to the interwebz. My twitter feed didn’t have much info but Twitter search kinda confirmed that I should start to feel upset. Not that I’m a big fan. But I dunno why the hell I feel so bad that MJ is not any more. I can remember I grew up listening to him. Heard those strange stories about him. My uncle had few albums of MJ which I still can remember the cover art of.

I was upset when people call him a child molester. But I just didn’t give a shit. Yeah that’s my kind, “Just don’t give a shit”. But I can’t stop feeling upset of MJ. Maybe that’s because he was a legend, an icon & still he went away that way. Maybe I’m not upset about MJ but the universal truth, “it all comes to an end”. MJ’s death just make it a bit clear I guess. well… I dunno.

So I hope I’m in the club, *drumroll* “MJ ass kissers club”.

Damn it feels so cool here. But I wonder why the “sage girl” is upset about our feelings. We putting on feelings on our blogs which are public, which unfortunately are on kottu, which is sage girl’s personal feed reader. Indi… hey buddy please kick me off. Please do that. Sage girl is upset about what we write. And hope others in the club will also get their blogs out of kottu, just to make sage girls reading experience a bit better.

And by the way guys, sage girl also says like this.

“My blog is mine. I never invited you to read it.” (source. And it’s not the first one)

Now tell me why you put your blog on Kottu? isn’t it kind of an innocent invitation to other kottu readers to read this? Well.. I like when people read my posts, kottu people too. But unlike sage girl *I don’t write for Kottu*. So just think why we should get labeled as ‘ass kissers’ for being on Kottu? (and stuffing sage girls good read heaven a hell).

Anyway sage girl always manages to eclipse her own thoughts by her own thoughts. Sounds freaky but that’s the way it is. Defending her own false facts with another bunch of false facts. What got pissed me off of is aiming bloggers who are free to write & free to be on any social aggregator as long as they don’t harm the community or any terms set by the aggregator so badly. And this not the fucking first time.

I know I’m trying to put too much light on a small bug. But I don’t want to see this happened again & again.

PS: I was trying very hard to not use any offensive words (ex: fuck, fucking, shit) coz I’m practicung to reduce the usage :-S.

Matt forgot to tell about ads on WordPress?

Now I can see Google Ads on this blog. The day before yesterday, Seejay, amazed and showed me Google Ads on my blog. It was not a huge surprise for me as Matt once said that they have plans doing such a thing and I put my opinion here.

However surprising thing was that I didn’t see any notices from Matt for any other WP guys saying “Google Ads are ready for WP”. Or maybe I’ve missed all the news (I have Matt’s personal blog [previously photomatt.net] and WP.com blog on my RSS reader though).

Once I saw the ad on my blog I scanned through some of my WP admin pages to find if I have any control over those ads. However I failed. Maybe I missed that too. The not-so-cool thing is that I had an “Ads Free Blog” banner on my blog. Probably few of my readers have been laughing at me for this. If you come in this category please note that it’s not my fault. By the way I erased that banner yesterday.

I believe that Matt had to put a note about this. If he has done its ok but if it isn’t… Maybe it was a kind of testing or something but still WP guys have responsibility to post a note.

If it’s gone, let it be gone. This little bug is not enough to break my love on sweet WordPress. Still I love you dear WordPress :) .

PS- I am waiting for Matt’s reply for my email on this issue.

What’s your Avatar?

Once the internet culture bloomed (or boomed actually) gradually it became another space; called cyberspace. People started civilization on cyberspace. Once they settled in and started their day to day life they wanted to show up themselves. Then came avatars.

Avatar has different meanings, but when in cyber culture it’s the little picture you use to represent yourself on blogs, forums, email, social networks & lot of other internet services. It’s chosen to your hearts desires. Some use a snap of themselves, some use animes(like me), some use hand drawn, digitally manipulated images, some use their personal heroes picture, some use pictures of famous people, some use pictures of cartoon characters, some use animations, some use those cute pictures of porn stars & list goes on and on, .

I’ve heard several chit chats trying to convince that some one should use their real picture as the Avatar if he/she wants to be a professional blogger. Well this goes in to blogging. But however I want to know whether it really matters?

In my case I use an anime as my Avatar as I love animes. I don’t use my own picture because my mind is badly polluted by the hacker culture which I was badly exposed to, in my child hood. The reason behind the anime is being anonymous. I know I’m not anonymous anymore, but I still don’t wanna show my ugly face to you. I don’t think my avatar disturbs you when you read me & you’ve ever wanted to see who’s the fool writing these crap. But someday if I make up my mind I’ll show the beast to you guys.

People who use porn pictures, or a pic of a sexy lady (which isn’t her own pic) tries to attract hits to their sites. This is a total dumbness. Those people don’t know that others click on a porn pic to get more. Once the clicker goes to the site & breaks up mind he/she will never return. You got just a bounced hit with your nice porn Avatar.

However having somekind of an Avatar is good for a blogger or any one. If you’re a good blogger, you read others,you commnet others & interact well with the rest of the bloggosphere (unlike me).When others see your Avatar with your nice, early & often comments it helps you to stay in their hearts. A picture is worth thousand words, don’t forget.

Here is my opinion to choose a memory friendly Avatar.
-A nice, simple & clear pic of you is GREAT.(Little bit of Photoshop or Gimp is ok)
-A unique pic as far as you can.
-Apply some creativity on your Avatar.
-No porn pics or sexy ladies or guys (unless it’s you ;) ).
-No famous characters (unless it’s you ;) ) nor film stars.
-No very complicated animations.
-No personal hero pics.
-Never the Google Logo or statue of liberty.
-Use the same avatar everywhere if it’s ok.
-Last but not least “You must love your avatar”.

Additionally, for bloggers…
-Have a wordpress account with your avatar (coz there are lots of WP blogs & it supports your avatar)
-Have a Mybloglog account with your avatar.
-Gravatar would help too.

So this is what I think of Avatars. If you like to share your opinion, comments are wide open for you.

I’m on IMified

Hey this is cool. I’m posting from inside my Gmail Account [Gtalk] . IMified gives me the power of IM. try it your self. www.imified.com

It has a wordpress widget. I’m using my rememberthemilk.com todo list in my gmail account thanx to IMified.