The previous blogpost on Aamir Khan dropping his smoking, had some clarity issues, mostly on my part and the rest, also on me. It has happened here numerous times on this blog and thats partly the fun of blogging.

Blogging ? Seven years ago, if you had asked me the question, I would have blinked and walked past you. But not anymore. Ever since I read that small piece of article on rediff about 60 people reading Mahesh Shantharam's personal site, my life changed, quite a bit. I was actually on my way of becoming a writer, perhaps a blogger.

If you want the nerve-wracking, nail-bitting, edge-of-you-seats, tour de force story about this blog, scribbles of a lazy geek, here you go.

Seven years of living with an avatar(in words of World of Warcraft), that really didn't mean anything to me at the time of its creation, wasn't very tough as I thought it would be. The nom de guerre, lazy geek, was too cofusing for many to assosiate with kollywood film reviews, music and some fine arts crap. Once they found it was some one named Guru Subramanian, their interest levels dropped. And that was funny !!

Folks have called me by names, the ones that you wouldn't like to be addressed on a private email. Some have called me names here in the comment space, warned me for harsh criticisms of their super heroes and their films. Some even called as it as the Worst Popular Indian Blog. Neverthless the nicer things have outscored the handful of critics.

Readers have always thanked for interesting content(?!) on this blog, commented ferociously to fight the comment trolls, ringed me to wish birthdays, anniversaries & milestones, become lifelong friends and also voted this blog thrice in a row, at the Indibloggies.

And above all, what I have learnt by running a blog, six long years(yeah yeah, I hear you. It's only five. I was out for a year on sabbatical) couldn't be achieved in anyway shorter than this. Thank You !!

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Install Akismet and you are on your way to glory.

I unplugged the frustating re-Captcha thingy and installed the Akismet Plugin for Movable Type and the spam is all gone. While reCaptcha was good enough to keep the spammers away, it also kept the commenters away, specially me. Because I was so bored to comment on this blog myself.

Akismet hasn't let even a single spam comment as legitimate in the last 2 weeks or so. So far so good. And it did catch 300+ spam comments. I've been cribbing about spam for more than 3 years now and atleast I'm getting some peace.

I love you spammers and please get me more spam !!

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I wasn't even motivated to comment here due to reCaptcha service requesting to enter two wierd words to ensure it wasn't a bot trying to sumit a comment. Instead, I've enabled the Akismet Anti-Spam Plugin to check if its a better solution.

I did read on Akismet's site that nearly 90% of comments are spam. And that's quite a number considering the growing awareness about spam and it's control.

Now keeping fingers crossed.

One day later - Its working !! Akismet has identified atleast 50 spam comments since yesterday but one of thos 50 was a legitimate one. Akismet (MT-Plugin) works, as of now. The usual number of spam comments on this blog runs into couple of hundreds for a day. I am still waiting for more evidence of spam catching.

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Can't stand the comment spammers. Closing all the comments and synching the stylesheet with kirukkal.com.

Spammers get the hell out of this place. Shoo !!

P.S - Hee Hee.. !! The comments are enabled again. A dear friend vows that a captcha will prevent all the spambots. I am skeptical if a captcha will eradicate all of them, given the fact there are 100s of comment spams here everyday.

Have plugged in a captcha provider. Take more pain and type in two more extra words when you make a comment. Let's see how this thingy works.

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on a sabbatical.

p.s - commenting system disabled to tackle spammers, while being away.

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[Bunch of regulars to a blog, beating the blog author for stopping it. I don't believe I dreamt that.]

The better idea to read this blog, going forward would be to subscribe to the site feed using a feed reader. Reason, this blog may not be updated as regularly as it was for the last few years. And whenever it's updated your feed reader will remind you to read this blog. Even then you may or may not care to read the post. Atleast it would save you the time from typing the URL and waiting for the blog to load.

I've been thinking out loud, over the last few months, on the things missed while maintaining this blog. The path to this decision, I think, has been well registered here and hence it wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. If this bantam decision would have been made in 2002, I may not be answerable to anyone. Not even to myself. Now, averaging around 2000 unique visitors a day[Ok, this is not a brag], I understand that there has to be some form on inkling to those who bother about this blog, even if they are just a handful.

By any chance, if you mistake this as a full stop to this blog, care for a cuppa coffee. It's not. As always a good flick, a splendid book or a funny anecdote would certainly inspire to scribble something here. By doing such sporadic scribbles, I tend to live the idea, this blog was created for, fun. Be delighted, after all I just minimized a bit of information overload on you.

P.S - Who knows, tomorrow you might find a scribble post on Dishyum, Sudesi and Pattiyal here.

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That's the ratio of a valid comment to a spam comment, this blog receives. I think the spammers are just nuts. Despite the 'no follow' parameter set on every blog comment, I've have no clue why spammers are still busting this blog. Nothing happens to their comments. I simply delete them. Are they sadistic enough to waste time in churning comments and be happy that I'm wasting time in deleting comments? I don't think so. Would be great if some mainstream media does an underground story on them.

They say Word Press has excellent spam control stuff. Prabhu suggested this long time back. Now I'm not interested to move to Word Press because I don't want to do the same mistake I did a couple of years back in moving from Blogger to Movable Type. Though MT offers more than excellent blogging features, their spam control hasn't met the needs completely.

Also, I'm tad upset with Google for not being aggressive with Blogger. Even the blogger blog, Buzz, sucks big time. Couple of years back, they used to have wonderful editorials on Blogger. Now they have come to a near stop. Did Google do a mistake of buying Blogger? Would Blogger be better-off without Google? Instead of being bothered by these stuff, I only wish they buck up and finish the known issues & feature requests. At least let the world know what they are up to.

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I know it was me who jumped in at first to sign-up for Google Adsense, when it was introduced. Two reasons. To earn money from the blog and to also try out how Google Adsense works. Well, I haven't earned more than what I spend on this blog. More than the hosting charges, its the time that I invest writing which is more precious. I do enjoy the experience of writing. Add to that joy the lots of typos and grammatically perfect sentences that would Wren and Martin, a run for life.

Just that I don't want to earn money from the targetted ads. Hence I unplugged the Ad scripts from the templates. Adsene has been just outstanding as expected. Maybe I'll plug back the Ad scripts after a few months. As of not this blog is Ad-Free. Talk about signing up for the Ads myself and taking it out with a dramatic post like this.

To keep the templates trim, the Go Seattle Photoblog is also not plugged out of the templates. I did notice that the flickr script has been running more than the expected time and sometime it's frustating to see the blog getting loaded after a long time.

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I would love to stay with my current hoster, Total Choice Hosting. Two things that make me look for alternatives. One, they adviced the blog is growing and needs to setup a re-seller account worth $20/ mo. Two, No Fantastico option here. Hence, looking out for a domain hoster. Any suggestions ?

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The annoying pop-ups in the recent days was due to the statscounter @ webstats4u. From the day, it was plugged here back in 2002, it has clocked 7,21,624 visits until today.

Those days[I'm talking like an oldie here], webstats4u was the only stat counter around just like the yaacs commenting system. Surprisingly Kiruba still hasn't switched from Yaacs to Blogger's commenting system. With hardly a bunch of bloggers in Feb 2002, who knew each other well, if one subscribed to a service, the other followed him/her and thats how I subscribed to the nedstatbasic's stats counter which was recently re-named as webstats4u.

Though the hosters are providing with awstats, this webstats was providing a lot of information, I would like to see from time to time. I'm sorry to see it de-commissioned but then the pop-ups are annoying any time.

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Over the weekend, I quietly upgraded the Movable Type 2.6 to it's newest version, Movable Type 3.2. The idea of moving to blogger is on hold due to the great blogger paradox. The blogger paradox is that it allows posts to be exported out of it's site but doesn't have an option to import blog posts from other services. Why wouldn't google grab a coder from movable type and see if he can code their system to get this import thingy working.

Anyway, the new MT 3.2 has a nice professional interface with lots of useful features and impressive plugins. I am sure this would safeguard my blog from the attacks/abuses like the one happened last week. The only thing missing here is a new template. I am offlate falling in love with the minimalist stylesheet and am customizing it for my own liking. As a test, I tried to customize the minimalist into a good template at the guestblog. This is same as what I did to the blogger template at lazygeekdotblogspotdotcom . Have created few banners with Kamal, Super Star, Surya, Maddy and Aayitha Ezhuthu. Do tell me if you hated it.

P.S - Need a good suggestion to tweak the PHP for getting random banners on the blog everytime its refreshed. I tried to use the mt_rand() of PHP and it never worked for me.

Update [05th Oct] - Updated the Guest Blog with the random images script. Thanks a ton to Saravanan for writing the entire script of random images. Works like a cutie. Keep refreshing and see the images change randomly. Do tell me if it looks cool.

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So if you thought the suspension of account was because I stopped paying the hosting bills, I wasn't. The account was suspended without my knowledge. Yesterday morning, when I clicked laygeek.com bookmark even before brushing my teeth, I saw the account suspended message. So what did I do? Went over and brushed my teeth. Very funny.

I logged a ticket and the friends at TCH replied that the abuse department is looking into it as they suspected some Movable Type & comments abuse. I had no clue of the abuse so I was assuming all the 'junk' that was written is long gone. Much to the wrath of the abuser, the blog content a.k.a junk is all back. Anyway, its not worth blowing into a big issue. But if only the data was also gone, I would have been angered.

The reply from the TCH friends is soothing and they kind of say that the blog is being fetched more than enough times a day that it deserves a dedicated server. FYi, A dedicated server costs $79 a month !! I am not sure if dedicated server would be an immediate solution but I know that I lodge the blog content on blogger and Google would take care of it. So I'm looking to go back to Blogger and this is the probably the fourth time that I'm ranting on the moveback to Blogger. Until such day, there is a choice to upgrade Movable Type 2.61 to the free version of Movable Type 3.

Though it took the hosting company some time, I'm happy that they got things back in shape. Thanks. I am still pursuing to get more details on the 'abuse'. But then things are back and so cool. Here's the reply that I got from the hosters.

Your account is back online.

At some point in the near future you may need to consider a fully dedicated server. As your account grows more and more, it consumes more and more resources. As in the case of your site, your blog is growing fast and this is great. However, with success sometimes comes costs.

For now we will do our best to continue to serve your site.

I am very sorry for the way this ticket was handled. Several of our technicians are off this week with vacation time and sick leave, so we are a tad short staffed.

If there is anything I can do to help you transition into a dedicated server, please let me know.

Romba Nandri guys for writing-in, sending snapshots of suspended blog page, commenting on someone else's blog about this blog's status and g-talking with me on the death of a blog. Prabhu even offered space to write until the blog is back. Didn't want to do show that philim. I am sure no one would be starving if the blog was down for a day. And ofcourse, it was like a compulsory vacation.

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If an infinite number of monkeys are given typewriters for an infinite amount of time, they will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare.

More from the interesting Infinite Monkey Theorem and ofcourse The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator. Any interesting analogies to blogs, appreciated.

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As soon as blogger announces the import of posts from other blogging tools option, I'm moving the blog here or back to it's own place. Whatever be it, the templates are now changed and ready to take over.

I've sent a couple of mails to blogger team asking for the release dates. No answers as of yet. Seems like it is their feature request No.1.

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I only wish, I can get back to my early blogging days. Raw, naive and unfettered.

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The flow of spam comments keep increasing even I keep a blacklist and also make sure the ones that escape blacklist filter gets deleted. This takes a good half hour during weekends. To cut this maintenance time, I finally decided to cut the HTML in comments which would discourage spammers from leaving a comment. I've done that and am happy the last few days spam comments have reduced by half.

The recent fad is to move to WordPress and many known bloggers have moved out of MT and Blogger. I am contemplating to do this but the only thing that stops me from doing are these spammers. The spam issues that I'm facing with MT wouldn't be resolved with WP too and hence moving out would re-energise me psychologically but would leave me doing the same blog maintenance during weekends. As rambled before, one thing that I want to do is to switch back to blogger. I've even written emails to the blogger team asking them to include the import entries option in blogger. They seem to be doing everything else except this. They even have AJAX technology for their commenting system but an import from other blogging tool is yet to be fixed. Huh !!

My instinct says that google in the coming year, might hugely invest in Blogger and would probably come-up with a tool like Picasa which can be downloaded to the client machine and run blogs from there. If they could pad a host of other utilities by studying the competing blogging products, blogger will continue to be the most successful blogging tool.

P.S - I've also tweaked my commenting system in the blog. The comments which were appearing old-to-new for the last few weeks, will continue to appear new-to-old in descending order as such.

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It's deepavali morning. The night is still chasing the dawn. The sound, the smell and the smoke all underlining the quintessential character of Deepavali.

This site was down for past couple of days and it's just up today, as a deepavali gift. Thanks to the guys at bloghosts who got this up.

Anyway, if you are looking for blogger meet info, look at the previous post.

Happy Festival of Lights !!

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First title-less post after all hack to change URLs to be usable/hierarchical/understandable. Mark Pilgrim's post on Cruft-free URLs in Movable Type was of biggest help. And the most lovable MTIfEmpty plugin of Brad Chaote (as mark mentions it, himself) did the job for me.

For all those who think, why am I bragging about so much for a title-less post, Movable Type loves titles for every blog posts. I don't buy that argument, sometimes. I would love to title each of the posts but a title-less post at times, helps to start-off without disclosing what the post is all about.

Have a great weekend anyway.

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Writer Sujatha's blog(thanks to desikan for that trivia), Katrathum Petrathum, in Ananda Vikatan is up for it's third serving, two weeks back.

For those who have read Sujatha's previous two series of Katrathum Petrathum, would know what to expect. So expectedly in the current issue, he blogs about the concept of blogging and compares it to the handwritten magazines, which was a concept in yester years. He say it is for that fifteen minute fame, bloggers all over, write and wait.

While talking about writing for the web, he says it is the frozen permanency that makes web an amazing medium for writing. So whatever written now, can also be searched and read by any single man even after 50 years and it's that longevity of writing that makes the web a viable medium for writing to prosper.

That's from the horse's mouth. Read more of Katrathum Petrathum.

On another note, Google's Gmail is giving out it's next set of invites. This time it's just 4 invites for a set unlike the 6 invites last time. I have a couple of them and also a couple of reservations done for them too. But if you need one, leave a note and I will give it as I get it.

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Yahoo search launches it's own Yahoo Search Blog like the Google blog. The most visible difference between the both search blogs being, that yahoo has opened up the comments feature and the author of blog signs below unlike the anonymous 'The Googler' signed google blog.

The first post written by Jeff Weiner, SVP Yahoo! Search & Marketplace writes "this blog is designed to provide a window into what our team is thinking and doing, in their own words (and maybe some guest bloggers as well)".

Aye !! It also has a blogroll and one of the blogs to be listed is Google Blog. Should i say the blog race is heating up ?

lazy geek | # | Comments (1)

Two niche blogs on Olympics. One from the living room and another from Scripps Howard News Service that takes you behind the scenes of Athens Olympics. But if only what boing boing states is true, it's a pity that the blogging recognition hasn't come yet.

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There have been very few times when Bloggers have been noticed very closely. To be specific it's only twice. The Salaam Pax was once. The second is during the recent Democratic convention held in Boston where 30 bloggers were acknowledged to blog about the convention. Even as the convention is over, the reports on blogger and their quiet vishwarup are rocking the net all over and this might be the breaking point. Bloggers from now may not be treated as a foster child of the mainstream media but as cutting edge cousins whom the mainstream biggies cannot fore go.

J.D.Lasica's tech column in Online Journalism Review, lists why increasingly bloggers are preferred than the mainstream journalists, it is pretty clear that bloggers are getting their piece of the cake. Only thing, their share keeps increasing, exponentially. She also writes how this important graph called Inbound links: Who has the ear of the blogosphere? , show that even as more inbound links are towards the big brothers like NY Times and CNN, climbing down a few more, we can see how Boing Boing and Insta Pundit are evolving as believable news sources and how they have more inbound links than even Slate, Fox and others. Check the column for more on bloggers, blogging and other blah blah blah.

As Technorati CEO David Sifry says "The Web is not chiefly about a library or a news stand. You have to start thinking about the Web as this humongous event stream. The Web is a set of ongoing conversations that weave together into this new kind of omnipresent social fabric, . Thats the essential reason why the main stream media cannot make any more lectures, they have to start the dialogue between their readers. No more monologues, please !!.

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On a mazhai 'like' kaalam in chennai, a saturday evening, the crowded, polluted and ofcourse lazy chennai was getting on with it's business when we met. We includes Mdeii Anand, Ravages and myself. With blue skies above us and just the horizon streched across us in the romantic thiruvanmiyur beach, we met. For nothing. Ok Ok, I'm not hyping it anymore. It was really awesome. It was too small to be called a blog meet, 'cause as you know, Chennai Blog Meets are as crowded as chennai restaurants.

From Cinema to padams, bit padams, short padams and NEW padams, everything about cinema was commented upon. Serious bloggers to burnouts, to bloggers who blog for the fad saying I Blog Too, Do You ? came between our conversations. Some really interesting views that were shooted includes Apporva Saghodarargal, Naam Iruvar, Iruvar, Monty Python, The raging bull, The Last Temptation of Christ etcetra. This Thing That Thing, This Thing That Thing music composing technique also came inbetween and split us(me especially) by laughs. Thanks to the funny blog magister who started this funda of T.T.T.T. Some more on this sometime.

How many tamil movies have you watched that shows a fan actually rotating, meaning functioning ?. Seriously. Mail all three of us or just me with your answer. We are planning a movie with a fan switched on. An artistic film. Oru Fan Finally Suthuthu. Enna Anand and CC, Am I right ?

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Blogs are going to change the world. Example:

OLD, TIRED MEDIA: "The Associated Press reported that Saddam Hussein was captured yesterday by American forces."

NEW, EXCITING MEDIA: "omg like kos reported that he saw on chris's blog that john trackbacked to mike's journal where he read about bob's girlfriend's brother's cousin who was like watching Fox News (fair and balanced my ass! lol) and they said something about saddam i dunno current music: brittney cleary - im me current mood: corpulent"

Notice the synergy of information and the ease by which information propagates throughout the blogosphere.

The above para was from slashdot but was taken from an article here which talk about the fourth estate ragging the new found bloggies during the democratic convention in Boston.

Read more about Blogging 'cruelty' allegations. The world goes on. So does blogging.

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The more I run from it, the more I'm tempted. Yeah, I'm referring to the TCS IPO. When the whole corporate crowd and the media is around that, why would I be looking around without nothing. But stocks are certainly not my area of my interest/passion. A colleague, through email, keeps sending a running commentary of the TCS stock prices every half hour. I could do nothing but delete it, after reading. Tempted.

In the evening, as I neared my bike in the parking lot, the clouds gathered together to rain. Its Chennai dudes, it wouldn't rain. Wait, thats not the point. The point is, my splendor's handlebar had a dozen papers inserted onto it. TCS IPO Applications. So now, in the night, after spending a couple of sweet hours reading through the tiny letters in the apps from end to end, I'm still puzzled whether to buy or not to buy. Please don't help me. I don't want to be tempted in.

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Follwing the note on Kribs blog, I am also experimenting with Google Ads. Check out Google's Adsense for more idea on these content based ads that they deliver dynamically to the web pages. Give it a shot if you have a domained blog/website.

I've adjusted the color of the ad content so that it isn't obtrusive to the readers. Pass on any suggestions if you have.

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A group of people will be tapping their keyboards, while the democrats hold their convention in Boston. This group of people represent a movement that is slowly, steadily picking up as an alternative source of news. They are bloggers.

Now that the world of blogging has accepted blogging as a new protocol of information on the net, a handful of bloggers are being acknowledged and given credentials for blogging the Democratic Convention in Boston.

These accredited bloggers with blog along with other 15,000 journalists from the conventional news sources, who will report news on the convention.

Meet the Bloggers who are making news with blogging. Also, here is the full list of bloggers who will be blogging the convention. This would be an important milestone for bloggers. We can be sure that such other conventions also will appreciate the blogging network. Way to go, bloggies !!

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What started as a close shot of the bronze-god Achilles ended up in a detailed write-up of in medias res.

Mdeii Anand who's interesting review of Troy started a comment mela which led to his explanation of a storytelling method called 'in medias res'. From his words, in medias res often refers to the narration of a story that starts off in the middle of an action wherein standard things such as character introduction, setting introduction are dispensed with. The characters/ setting are apparent from the actions or if they need to be explicitly stated are done so through the course of the narrative.

If you interested how Homer's Iliad and Kalki's Ponniyin Selvan were connected finally through the same blog post, read in medias res. Very neat and informative, especially for movie buffs.

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I have created a new blog, seperate for guest blogging. Here is where you can find it Lazy Geek Guest Blog.

I've asked a few of my friends who share the same interests alongwith me to contribute to the guest blog. And I wish they keep the guest blog content fresh and exciting. The guest blog like this personal blog will celebrate literary interests, movies, music and other finer aspects of life. The guest blog will be unedited by me and I disclaim of any bouquets / brickbats that it recieves.

The old posts by Anand and others are archived to the guest blog. Over to LGGB.

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What was Ganguly of trying to achieve by allowing the kid (Partheev Patel) bat first while he was having a tiger like Shewaq sitting there praying for his turn to come? This decision didn't pay off at all.

Ganguly's wicket was such an easy one and he did nothing but to pose so badly that the ball found the way to the bat and back to the short mid-on fielder's hands.

Dravid is a darling. Truly. Though we refer to him as the Wall Of India, he proves time and again that he is capable despite his slow start. But, why does he look so sober look in the Hutch Ad. It looks to me as though he is forced to do that Ad. Becoming the MTV youth icon of the year, this year will be a hallmark for him. I am soon looking forward to Captain Dravid.

We know Vaas is one hell of a pacer. Now Sri Lanka has managed to manufacture one more. Zoysa, with the number on his shirt as 00, did a great job in keeping Indians from runs. And Sangakarra, the wicket-keeper of Sri Lanka, is classy. Great Find.

But for the bad breeze that blew Balaji and his T-Shirt, we would have managed to win by scoring a few more in the early overs.

Tendulkar may be 31 by age, but he still rules the cricket kingdom. And those who demand or even think that he should retire watch the straight drive boundary of yesterday's match are take a pilgrimage to Badrinath immediately. This guy has been in form for most of his career.

And finally, I found the reason why India might even loose the Asia Cup. The man of the series gets a car. A Car. Yes, Maruthi Esteem. Huh! When these players think of paying taxes for Ferrari cars where the tax itself could cost more than 15-20 esteem, who would aspire for a Man of Series title. Doesn't that explain that bad stroke of Ganguly yesterday? It does to me.

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There can be no adjective to qualify the fire accident that happened yesterday. The Mahaamaham temple town Kumbakonam's worst fire accident took away close to 90 lives. All of small kids. If you were watch the tamil television yesterday and the whole of today this kumbakonam disaster has occupied the space.

Being associated to kumbakonam through my relatives, I personally feel the pinch. But it isn't necessary to be associated to mourn for such an incident.

Except for The Hindu daily, nobody from the media have even warned of the graphic scenes that were displayed from this accident. The Hindu did put up a box news that photographs displayed could cause distress to the readers but the enormity of the accident makes such visual news presentation unavoidable. Three Cheers guys, for their professionalism.

Although, we need to pat the media for the importance that they have given for this news. Jennifer Arul on NDTV was on tears when she reported and walked through the debris in th accident spot. Even the news reader who was watching the video was on the edge of tears. Not to ask the people in the house, who were all upset and in tears witnessing the horrible happening in the television.

People's prayers from all over the world for this incident will be the only solace for the parents of the kids who died. Nothing else can match the prayers.

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Writer Sujatha, a writer-par-excellence, reiterates about his life, the people, the writers, the books and the incidents that influenced him/his writings in this quintessential interview to Kumudam's Theeranadhi. You need a userid/pwd to login.

He details his writing experience without any pretensions and also accepts that many of his good stories were written in an urgency to publish. He expatiates, 'Stories which I planned to write in leisure were never written. I needed that urgency. It was like how Pudumai Piththan needed an urgency. He probably knew that he would not live for long and hence wrote tons before he died'. Also his distinction between good and popular writing shows the profound writer he is.

For a die-hard Sujatha fan like me, this detailed interview is a piece of rare literature for this interview will become a part of the Writer Sujatha's biography in the future to come.

As he mentions, one of his very detailed interview was to a magazine called Padigal (Steps). Incidentally, I have a copy of that interview which I collected from the famous old book shop in Luz, Mylapore. If anyone is interested to glance it through, send me an email and I can pass it on.

You can also read this interview reproduced in desikan's page here. I met desikan during this year's Chennai Book Fair. Desikan is Writer Sujatha's official biographer and also one of his biggest fans. His drawings on Srirangam decorates the latest publication of Sujatha's Srirangathu Kathaigal. He also blogs here. Check out his Enn Per Aandal blog post for an interesting read.

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I've been an obsessive compulsive coffee lover throughout. I am one among the many south indians tamils who are addicted to the filter coffee culture. So what happens ? Invariably, I spend more time to decide on the coffee mix. So everytime we need to get filter coffee powder from shop, I give more instructions to that shopwala than to my hair dresser or my costume designer(lol..read tailor).

This evening when I gave the Coffee Day shopwala more complex formulas than e=mc² for my filter coffee powder, he was amused by my interest in coffee. Told not many people were interested in coffee powder preparation. With 400 gms of Plantation 'A' and 100 gms of Plantation 'B' supreme(??), the coffee smelled best, only to me. He was apprehensive with that degree of mix and said he would like to know if at all it tasted good. Waved a bye so oddly.

But now as I drink the same coffee, the coffee tastes great and I am forced to give me a pat myself for the coffee lover in me. Very Pompous post this is. Right ?

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Pictures of Madras Blogger Meet 2004 with Thumbnails (Based on Popular Request).

P.S: My domain's bandwidth has doubled since yesterday. From 300+ MB in 7 days, it went on to 650 MB in just one day. With only 6GB bandwidth for a month allowed by bloghosts for my domain, I might probably move the pics to my Lazy Geek Photoblog. Will update this post then.

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Chennai/Madras Blogger meet is happening again. From journalists to movie makers(mdeii), from thinkers(kingsley, nee thaan ma) to forgetters(amnesia anna), from geeks(hee hee...thats me) to spies(that rediff jornalist) all would be present. Be there.

The last meet, called as, Gumbal, Sundal and a lil bit of Bloggal happened just after Pongal during January 2004. This one is a mid-term version.

Alright, Alright, I know you know all this news. This blog post is just a pointer to the meet site if you are looking for. Madras Blogger Meet 2004 -Reloaded.

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If only the elections were held now...at this juncture, we don't need opinion or exit polls. You know who would create a landslide now.

What a stylish way to do it. Are you with me ?

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The fact that the stock markets can react so violently is an ominous reminder that all is not well with them. - quoted from The Hindu's editorial dated 18th May, 2004.

While the media makes hype out of the millions lost due to stock market crash, The Hindu's editorial was mature with a lot of respect to the coming in governement and also without denouncing the outgoing government.

Thats a quality and unbiasedness required in this declining standards of modern day media. With headlines and coverstories discouraging every single prospective investor, the media is racing towards rock-bottom honesty.

It's not the reporting of such news is getting on the nerves but transforming the news as nail-bitting thrillers to grab eyeballs of the viewers is sickening. Sickening. Read The Hindu's editorial named Black Monday, that clearly explains the way of putting things.

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Jace Herring and the guys at Bloghosts are nocturnal humans. They work in the weirdest hours of the day to provide full fledges support to their customers. Thanks a Ton, Guys.

It is because of Jace, my transition of hosting to bloghosts was possible. Appreciate him for also helping me in Movable Type installation.

I am trying to work around the style sheet to clone my previous template here also.

Blogger is a great blogging tool and I hate to go in for another one. But just because MT offers much more features and most important is that, it is installed on your server, it gives you more flexibility than blogger. While evaluating MT, I am planning to update both blogger and also MT for some overlap time. So If someone wants to see my previous pages, it's available via this link.

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Head Over Heels ? What happens in your head, then ?

Just like the entire gamut of Print media, Online media, TV, FM, Greeting Card sites, Greeting Card shops, Icecream Parlours and every molecule in Besant Nagar Beach, I join the stream to praise about love on the love day(!!). Personally, I don't believe in the capitalistic way of celebrating emotions on a fixed day. But for Sujatha's essay in Vikatan, this post wouldn't have been here.

His essay on Aathalinaal Kathal Seithen in Ananda Vikatan talks about the physics, chemistry and biology of love. He writes about the latest findings of The Chemistry of Desire as published by Time. The interesting feature is the Functional Magnetic Resunance Imaging (FMRI). Certainly a different article to read.

Nothing About Valentine's Day, below here :

a) Kamal's next film is to be directed by Singeetham Srinivasa Rao. Named as Krishna Leela, it is expected to be like Kadhala Kadhala types. Singeetham and Kamal have a long standing history of comical hits like MMKR (Michael Madhana Kamaraajan) and also some really good movies like Raaja Paarvai. Lets enjoy some Kamal's Leela.

b) Saw Hyderabad Blues on Star Movies. Couldn't appreciate the acting as much as I did 5 years back. Though, a clear forerunner for Crossover Desi films, it comprises of some bad performances and very bad dialogue deliveries. You could argue that it was shot naturally. Thats also my point. It was looking very natural then, it ceases to exist anymore. But it was a brave effort by Nagesh Kukunoor with his shoestring budget.

c) HBO sucks big time. Especially because of its bad broadcast. It looks like I am watching a pirated version of movie released two days back. As you saw in Boys trailor, the movie gets stuck, like a scratched VCD. It happens every ten seconds and by the few seconds it takes to get proper, Sharon Stone killed someone in bed.

d) Four out of five TV mega serials today(friday) had inauspicious death happening in their stories. Women's associations can conduct a one day strike against the TV producers not to have death scenes on friday. They can postpone the kilings to mondays ;-)

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Hints for a political commentary

Someone in my shoutbox asked if would write political commentaries. I would love to write politics but during the last few years, too many politicians whom I personally believed to be 'nice guys' ditched us too badly. When politics by itself is a very dishonest science(!), I think writing a political commentary is also a very dishonest art. You can never be right / honest / unbiased.

If I were to write a bashing political commentary, here are a few hints. We will build the Ram Temple in Ayodhya reads a recent headline - The elections are fast approaching - India shining is a myth.

What do you say?

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The End of Live Broadcasts - The Nipplegate

First things first. You and me cannot sensationalise the event anymore. Already it is the most argued and commented incident in the media.

It is estimated that eight nine million people saw, the super bowl and before many could have a clue of what they witnessed, the incident ended. It is the biggest search in the internet replacing the 9/11 incident. The worse thing that it has created is that the introduction of five second delay in the broadcast of the grammy awards this sunday in CBS.

Justin Timberlake accidentaly ripped Janet Jackson's top resulting in a controversial incident. You know what. As a result, CBS network has introduced a 5 second delay in the live broadcast of the grammy awards. In no time llive shows might be long gone history. This 5 second delay might be legitimised in the coming days and the 5 seconds would give enough time for the TV producers to censor if anything unexpected happens, like this.

I am not sure what would be the case of Cricket telecasts. If the 5 second delay is implemented then only when Sachin returns back to the pavilion, we would see Sachin facing the outside off-stump ball from Brett Lee. Poor us.

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Sulekha Saarang Blog Fest 2004

Sulekha, one of the best online resources for NRI literature and Indian news is joining hands with Saarang team of IIT, Chennai for a Blogathan contest.

The idea being as simple as blogging on daily given topics for more than 400 words. One main condition is that you must be a collegiate of any institution or an alumnae member of any of the IITs. A good reason for you guys to open blogger and start typing is that you might end up as the best blogger at the end of Saarang festival.

Check out Sulekha Saarang Blog Fest 2004 site for more.

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Gumbal, Sundal and a lil bit of Bloggal during Pongal !!

The Madras Blogger's meet code named Gumbal, Sundal and a lil bit of Bloggal is happening again this year. Organised by Suds and his team it is set to happen tomorrow(18th Jan 2004) starting 5 pm at Planet Yumm in Besant Nagar Youth Beach.

Last two years it was called Chennai Blogger's Meet organised by Kiruba.

There is already a long list of bloggers who have confirmed their presence. Unlike last couple of years, I am at chennai this time and will be dropping in to have fun.

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Just caught him in action.

Hey Ram, Anbe Sivam and now Virumandi...

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27th Chennai Book Fair - 2004

Chennai is flooding with bookworms or at least there are so much of onlookers for this book fair. I've been a regular to this book fair for more than a decade. I've never seen so many of stalls or even so much of crowd for this book fair. The publishing industry is growing by leaps and bound every year. This year there are around 500 stalls sporting their books.

I peeked in by 11 am and by the time I was out, it was already evening and KaviKo Abdul Rahman was hosting a Kaviarangam. The specialty is this. Every evening a famous author or a poet host special shows. Also you can bump over your fave author during these special shows. You can have a personal chat with them and find out that they are also as normal as us.

Every year you could find a book or two doing well in all the stalls. This year it was tamil transalation of The Life and Times of Che Guevara and also Akira Kurosawa's tamil transalation of his autobiography called Something Like An Autobiography. Also doing well is the Sahitya Academy winner Vairamuthu's Kallikaattu Ithigasam. It has offlate recieved fave reviews and is selling hot cakes even when being prized at a huge 200 bucks. If you would have read it already on Ananda Vikatan, you know why it received the award. The treatment and honest handling of the subject earned vairamuthu this award, which is one of the biggest awards in Indian literature. Ofcourse there are many debates about Sahitya Academy's selection of this book. It goes on forever.

I picked up a bagful of books and am planning to go back to buy the bound edition of Kalki's Ponniyin Selvan. When I was in Kavvya Book stall, I found Sujatha's Vivathangal Vimarsanangal. The book looked dirty and soiled. It was a 1985 edition and wasn't re-printed after that. The cover page has Sujatha's pic in his mid-forties sporting a moustache and a few gray hairs peeking on his head. Kavvya is planning to bring a re-print of this book this year. But I picked it up because it was the last copy and one of the rare books of sujatha books. This old book is what I am currently reading and just can't keep it down.

Uyirmmai Publishers have released some more books of Sujatha which include Sujatha's Thernthedutha Sirukathaigal (best short stories by Sujatha), Aazhvaargal oru Eliya Arimugam and Srirangathu Kathaigal. Another interesting release is Aathavan's Enn Peyar Ramasheshan. This is one of the books that I was amazed to read. Uyirmmai publisher's effort is commendable and their selection of books comes out of their passion for books.

Some of the books that I bought include Jayakanthan's Jaya Jaya Shankara, Indira Parthsarathy's Kuruthi Punal, Sa. Kandasamy's Tholaindhu Ponavargal (remember this was one of the most successful serials in DD), Indha Nutrandin Sirukathaigal - Vol 1(Best Short stories of this century - Vol 1) and some red books. Gnani's Theemtarikitta is back in print from last year and subscriptions are accepted in the stall. Kaalachuvadu publishers are selling fabulous paintings of Bharathiyar as a calendar. As usual, books like 30 days to Kundalini, Samaipathu eppadi, Saapiduvathu Eppadi are also found all over the fair and still selling hotcakes. lol.

Many drop in to book fair just to see what's in store. But the fact that is irritating is that they manage to munch a popcorn bag or cotton candy when they browse thru the books and by which they make the book dirty. Books are one's friends but they can't take such abuses.

Some pics on Photo Blog

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The Chennai Bookfair 2004 is open now and will go on till 19th of this month. Organised by the Booksellers’ and publishers’ Association of South India (BAPASI), it's happening in Quaid E Millet College. If you are expecing some dazzling girls there, don't bother too much. They are all concentrated in Nungambakkam stadium where the Carlos Moya and Srichappan are fighting for the TATA Open Tennis title. The last couple of years have been successful for the organisers and the participants of this book fair. The crowd was enoromous and sales reached it's peak. As Sujatha says, it's a cycle. Book reading habit will come back and people will pull out the heads that are stuck to their televisions. It's happening. I'm planning a peek tomorrow.

Saarang, the mother of all student organized cultural festivals is set to happen from the 21st of January to the 26th at IIT Chennai. The pro-shows which are the source of prime attraction include Udit Narayan's Light music, Classical music show by TM Krishna, the rock show by MOTHERJANE accompanied by Pin Drop Voilence and a special unity concert by Euphoria and a 2 man band from Pakistan band called Strings. As usual lots of musical fever and fun guranteed. Make sure you take a spin for a show or two.

Saw Matrix Revolutions again today in theatre just to get over the Matrix phobia. Couldn't like it as much as I did it the first time. Simbhu's Kovil has released today, taking an initial lead in the pongal releases. Virumandi is ready to hit the screens before which Kamal is doing his pre-release marketing through Vijay TV. From 12 to 16th of this month Virumandi Special show will be up in the air from 10:30 pm - 11:00 pm. And we know why Kamal is happy excited about the movie release. Being his own production, it has been sold out in all the areas for a huge sum. Guess who's the prime sponsor for Virumandi's ads. Reliance. Huge hoardings of Virumandi and Reliance are placed all over Chennai. Especially the one near Guindy reminds me of the grand Aalavandan release.

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CASed Away

I was one among the millions of cricket frency Tom Hanks of Chennai who were castaways by the CAS(Conditional Access System for Cable TV) introduction. No Kumbleys. No Googlies, No Mandira Bedi, No Cover drives, No Late cuts, No Dravids, No Tensed Gangulies, No Cool Steve Waughs, No Hoodibaba and ofcourse No Sachin. Heck! I decided to try out CAS.

Now I am poor victim of CAS who is facing a risk and discouragement from envied friends and neighbours who resist CAS but unable to resist their temptation for cricket. I bought the Set top box along with a big risk that the government is considering removing the CAS system. The first program I watched after buying the Set Top Box was ESPN Cricket Show, hosted by Harsha Bhogle. The guests included Sachin, Saurav and Ravi Shastri. Just after the day of the last test, Sachin and Saurav looked sleepy with a poor over-makeup. It was an one hour program analyzing the entire test series between India and Australia. When Sachin's batting in the last test was discussed, he confirmed that he was nervous for the first 20 minutes of the play and once he started playing the onside deliveries in an unusual manner, he communicated to the aussies that he isn't going for his usual cover drives and misjudged shots. It was good to see Sachin and Saurav complimenting each other not just for the show but in a natural unassuming way. Way to Go !!

This morning it was Forrest Gump in Star Movies. One of my all-time favs. With just these two programmes, I have got back the worth of STBs. No more discouraging me, guys !!. No more !!.

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It's rainy season in Chennai

Kaaka Kaaka fame Gautam's new flick Chennayil Oru Mazhai Kaalam, starring Surya, is in production from today. Gautam has already impressed us with his an amazing screnplay in KK. This time he is coming back with the same crew except for Jyothika.

The ad today in tamil dailies for the film is intriguing. It is an old rusted photo frame. Behind the glass of the frame is a digital outline of the world atlas and water drops sprinkled all over the frame. Also super-imposed is a monologue that is written in tamil slang. It talks the difference between love and liking. What's up Gautam, this time ?.

Get ready for yet another Manmatha Rasa. Dhanush's pongal release Pudukottaiyilirinthu Saravanan sports a song Nattu Sarakku. Sung by Dhanush himself, it is a song that will make you jive(!!). Yuvan Shankar Raja has a simple chennai folk tune for this song. The lyrics very very local and obscenely descriptive. You can just humm the tune. Dare not to sing it. For it's lyrics will make girls go angry on you. Here's a sample :

Naattu Sarakku, Nachunu Thaan Irukku
Kitta Vandu Mutta Vandha Ginnu Nu Thaan Irukku
Thanni Kodamey Thanjavoru Kadamey
Mandirichu Vecha Oru Malayala Padamey...

Angry people, forgive me putting that here, I nay not know who wrote the lyrics. You loved Manmatha Rasa, so kollywood is producing similar songs in wholesale. Take it.

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Sujatha - The Lazier Geek

I wished Writer Sujatha for the new year through the mail. Here is his reply. Catch it.

I am happy that he replied. But here comes my competitor in form my own favourite author. Lazier than me? No way. Here are some examples of how much lazy I am.

Pending Blogposts :
Pithamahan Review - Saw the movie with Anand, Kings and their friends. More than a month back. Long Pending. Also Elango has just warned me for that.

Kollywood Roundup - 2003 Coming...on the way.

Kal Ho Na Ho - Karan Johar isn't waiting for this review. But I would wish him to read this. Also coming. When ?. GOK ( God Only Knows).

Kangalaal Kaithu Sei - An AR Rahman album, I am thoroughly amazed by it. I keep hearing Azhagiya Cindrella...Cindrella, but keep forgetting to write on it.

Movies to see:
Enakku 20 Unakku 18 - My friends stopped me from seeing this. I wanted to see it, just for my friends who stopped me.

Finding Nemo - Missed this movie in US. Still finding a theatre near me. Also some convinient time to see. I you can find all the three (convinent time, theatre and ofcourse NEMO), just email me.

Jism - What the hell is Bipasha doing in a bollywood flick like this. I remember her being a model. Read that the movie's scenes are so erotic that they are listed in top 100 romantic scenes of film industry. Only Indian film to enter in this category. Just like the Oscars.

Whatsoever, Kamal is ready to let loose the Jallikattu Kalai on 15th. I am ready to face it . Yes, Virumandi will be in theatres by 15th of this month and will feature here soon after.

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Mani Ratnam's latest bi-lingual flick called Yuva in Hindi is still under production, just like the website. Thanks Dhanya for the link.

Written in Black and White, the title font looks like handwritten. I am sure it is too early to infer much details from just the font. But given the small pieces of real info and tons of assumptions made by the media, it is very intersting for a film enthusiast like me.

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Wishes for a Cheerful, Joyous and Colorful New Year of 2004 !!

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These honest smiles say a million stories about achievement and hardwork. Don't they ?

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