Amit Agarwal today raised a very important question viz. Should You Drop from School & Make Blogging Your Career?

He says and supports the following statement with two reasons.

Frankly speaking, it may not be a very wise decision to leave studies.

And I agree totally with him.

I started blogging over three years back as an experiment and the experiment continues. Today blogging has turned out be a decent revenue stream besides making me a bit known on the web. (you do know me right?)

However, not once has it crossed my mind to make blogging the first and final profession at the cost of your studies.

Some argue that a degree doesn’t count and knowledge matters.

I’m not sure how things work in other countries, but one thing for sure in India, a degree counts and it counts a lot!

The first thing that is looked at when you apply for a job is your qualification, the degree and the rank you got out there. Your knowledge is only tested on the next stage when you go for the personal interview.

You may say, “But, didn’t we talk about taking blogging as a career. What job are you talking about?”

Blogging in India is still in its infancy. It still is hard to make it a regular income source (though some may have succeeded).

At the risk of sounding gloomy, the future is unpredictable. Blogging may be the best career option in the future or it may just not work out. In the event of the latter, you will need some backup plan and at that time the backup plan will be that college degree that you didn’t complete.

Then… well all the best!

Christmas is a fantastic season for all of us. It gives us that much needed holiday from a long work year. The gifts on the trees, the sharing and the carols all get us into that “X-massy” mood.

But, aren’t we forgetting something?

Three posts on IBN got me thinking about how most of us have forgotten the real essence of Christmas – Christ!

What makes me say this about three random news stories?

The headlines. All use the word “X-mas”.

If you use the word “X-mas” today, without doubt it means that you are referring to Christmas.

But, does everyone know what the meaning of Christmas? Apparently not all the children in Germany. I read a survey a few days back in a newspaper that this is also the case with UK (can’t find the link).

In the first case children were surveyed and in the second teenagers. I would really love to see the survey results when adults are polled.

Do you know the true meaning of Christmas? Leave a comment and tell me.

As for “X-mas”, that is not the word I use. Always use Christmas. That’s the first step to ensuring that the real reason of Christmas still exists.

Around mid-July Mumbai and Maharashtra faced severe riots when a major political party went on the rampage over the desecration of a statue.

This time several Dalit organizations went on a rampage against the vandalism of Dalit leader B R Ambedkar’s statue in Kanpur. (Report by IBNLive)

This is even stranger than the first incident because Kanpur isn’t even in Maharashtra!

I condemn any such vandalism but I really don’t understand what these mobs gained by going on the rampage.

As far as I can see it we have three dead persons and crores of rupees lost (read burnt) due to these riots.

The mobs have inconvenienced hundreds, if not thousands of innocent civilians. Roads were closed, buses and trains burnt.

And later, we will have these same people complaining that the buses are too crowded and trains don’t come on time. How can it, when you just burnt some of them down!

And now, Dalit organizations are calling for a bandh. First damage a good portion, then bring the city to a standstill. Result is even more losses for the “city that never sleeps”!

Maybe I am getting unnecessarily agitated. Or maybe I just wonder understand the sheer mass foolishness of the mob. Do you?

Received this over email today from my Dad. The email is a bit long but well worth the read:

The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the waters close to Japan have not held many fish for decades. So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever. The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring in the fish. If the return trip took more than a few days, the fish were not fresh. The Japanese did not like the taste.

To solve this problem, fishing companies installed freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers allowed the boats to go farther and stay longer. However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen and they did not like frozen fish. The frozen fish brought a lower price.

So fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin. After a little thrashing around, the fish stopped moving. They were tired and dull, but alive. Unfortunately, the Japanese could still taste the difference. Because the fish did not move for days, they lost their fresh-fish taste. The Japanese preferred the lively taste of fresh fish, not sluggish fish.

So how did Japanese fishing companies solve this problem?
How do they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan? If you were consulting the fish industry, what would you recommend?

How Japanese Fish Stay Fresh

To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies still put the fish in the tanks. But now they add a small shark to each tank. The shark eats a few fish, but most of the fish arrive in a very lively state. The fish are challenged.

The Lesson

Have you realized that some of us are also living in a pond but most of the time tired & dull, so we need a Shark in our life to keep us awake and moving?
Basically in our lives Sharks are new challenges to keep us active and taste better…

The more intelligent, persistent and competent you are, the more you enjoy a challenge. If your challenges are the correct size, and if you are steadily conquering those challenges, you are Conqueror. You think of your challenges and get energized. You are excited to try new solutions.

I haven’t been very active in the Indian Blogosphere and so missed the entire discussion over Kiruba being the No. 1 blogger in India (according to Blogstreet).

Patrix has expressed his opinion on Popularity in the Indian Blogosphere. He goes on to list several Indian blogs (including mine) according to their Technorati Ranking.

His post did get me thinking.

Popularity can be defined as the quality of being widely admired or accepted or sought after.

But, how does this translate in the WWW? How do we measure popularity? What are the various methods today? Are they reliable?

Technorati

Today, a lot of methods exist for measuring popularity. One, like Patrix pointed out is, to use Technorati’s Ranking.

Technorati ranks blogs based on the number of incoming links. This rank is updated several times a day and only considers active links from the past six months. As of today, Technorati tracks around 50.9 million blogs!
A point to note is that the incoming links don’t just belong to posts or blogrolls, but also from credit lines (e.g. like that of my Connections Reloaded Theme).

Alexa

Another method of gauging popularity is Alexa Traffic Rank.

Alexa’s ranking system has been online from as far as i can remember! Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users. They have a page detailing the process.

This is a stark difference from that of Technorati. Having a higher traffic rank is a more accurate sign of your sites popularity because it measures the number of users actually visiting your site.
However, Alexa ranks can be slightly inaccurate because it depends on users of their toolbar.

Topsites

Top Sites are often used to compare the popularity of blogs wrt one another. There are way too many top sites run by way too many people. A few well known ones are Blog Top Sites, Top100 Bloggers, RankingBlogs.com and Indian Bloggers.

While Top100 rates people on the number of votes they receive or the number of users visiting Top100 from the blog (which in my opinion is an highly inaccurate method of rating), the other three rate the blogs solely on the basis of unique visitors (i.e. traffic) which is how it should be!

Feed Subscriptions

A good way of ascertaining popularity is by looking at the number of feed subscriptions. e.g. Feedburner gives you buttons that let you display the number of subscribers to your feed.
This, however can’t be a sure-shot method because you may have a lot of subscribers but no readers. Yet again, this doesn’t track the actual traffic that the site receives.
Additionally, it only tracks those who have signed up for the service and put the code on their site.

No. of Comments

Visitor interactivity in terms of number of comments that the posts receive is another way to find out how popular a blog is. This can also be further used to determining visitor loyalty to understand how many repeat commenters are present.

And yet again, this isn’t the best way, because you could have a lot of visitors who love reading your blog but would not want to comment on it.

To conclude there are several ways to determine blog popularity.
However, all of these methods may not give the same results. So which method should we actually adopt?

Give me your opinion.

Which method would you use from the above?
Do you have still another way of measuring blog popularity?
Or have do you believe that since your blog is personal, you don’t really care about how popular it is?

Join the discussion below or blog about your opinion. And do remember to digg it.

And just a note to us Indian Bloggers. Let’s quit the squabble about who is No. 1 in the Indian blogosphere and look beyond. There is a whole world of bloggers out there.

I don’t know if I have to wonder or laugh at many people in college who thought that writing a blog was stupid.

Many of these characters even used to spam the blog, without even realizing that every time they post a comment, they can be tracked!

And today as I look I see a lot of these so called persons turning to blogspot to write tiny little journals, making their entry into the blogging world.

So has blogging got them hooked? What do they think about others blogging?

I have always been way ahead of the pack, having started blogging two and a half years back.

I doubt anyone of them would ever see this post and realize that “hey, maybe we should learn, instead of criticize others”

Everything I need to know about Life, I learned from Noah’s Ark

1. Don’t miss the boat
2. Remember that we are all in the same boat
3. Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark
4. Stay fit. When you are 600yrs old, someone may ask you to do something really big!
5. Don’t listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done
6. Build your future on high ground
7. For safety’s sake, travel in pairs
8. Speed isn’t always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs
9. When you’re stressed, float a while
10. Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
11. No matter the storm, when you are with God, there’s always a rainbow waiting.

Also received a powerpoint point presentation of the same. Download and share it with your near and dear ones

An Angel says, “Never borrow from the future. If you worry about what may happen tomorrow and it doesn’t happen, you have worried in vain. Even if it does happen, you have to worry twice.”

1. Pray
2. Go to bed on time.
3. Get up on time so you can start the day unrushed.
4. Say No to projects that won’t fit into your time schedule, or that will compromise your mental health.
5. Delegate tasks to capable others.
6. Simplify and unclutter your life.
7. Less is more. (Although one is often not enough, two are often too many.)
8. Allow extra time to do things and to get to places.
9. Pace yourself. Spread out big changes and difficult projects over time; don’t lump the hard things all together.
10. Take one day at a time.
11. Separate worries from concerns. If a situation is a concern, find out what God would have you do and let go of the anxiety. If you can’t do anything about a situation, forget it.
12. Live within your budget; don’t use credit cards for ordinary purchases.
13. Have backups; an extra car key in your wallet, an extra house key buried in the garden, extra stamps, etc.
14. K.M.S. (Keep Mouth Shut). This single piece of advice can prevent an enormous amount of trouble.
15. Do something for the Kid in You everyday.
16. Carry a Bible with you to read while waiting in line.
17. Get enough rest.
18. Eat right.
19. Get organized so everything has its place.
20. Listen to a tape while driving that can help improve your quality of life.
21. Write down thoughts and inspirations.
22. Every day, find time to be alone.
23. Having problems? Talk to God on the spot. Try to nip small problems in the bud. Don’t wait until it’s time to go to bed to try and pray.
24. Make friends with Godly people.
25. Keep a folder of favorite scriptures on hand.
26. Remember that the shortest bridge between despair and hope is often a good “Thank you Jesus.”
27. Laugh.
28. Laugh some more!
29. Take your work seriously, but not yourself at all.
30. Develop a forgiving attitude (most people are doing the best they
can).
31. Be kind to unkind people (they probably need it the most.
32. Sit on your ego.
33. Talk less; listen more.
34. Slow down.
35. Remind yourself that you are not the general manager of the universe.
36. Every night before bed, think of one thing you’re grateful for that you’ve never been grateful for before.

GOD HAS A WAY OF TURNING THINGS AROUND FOR YOU.
“If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31)

My Valentine

He gave his heart to His valentine

“He heals the brokenhearted And binds up their wounds”. (Psalm 147:3)

Levlyn was a very proud youth. He loved his heart and cherished over its goodness. Once Jesus appeared to Levlyn and asked him, “Levlyn will you give your heart to me?”

Levlyn very coolly replied, “I don’t want to give my heart to anyone”.

His friends visited him and asked, “Levlyn will you give a place to us in your heart. He said, “Sorry, I can not give any place to anyone in my heart”.

Then his teacher came. He asked Levlyn, “Will you give your heart to the music I teach, you will surely become a great musician”. Levlyn was unwilling. The teacher went away with a sad face.

A beautiful girl named Shiny happened to meet him. She asked him, ” Will you give me your heart?” Levlyn was fighting with his thoughts. Then atlast with a smiling face he said, “Shiny my heart is only for you. You own my heart.” Shiny was very happy. She played with his heart as she liked. She was so careless that the heart fell down and was broken to pieces. Levlyn was shattered. He was all alone in a pitiful state.

Jesus once again appeared to Levlyn and asked, “Levlyn, atleast now will you give your heart to me?” Levlyn could not control his tears. He felt unworthy. He said, “Lord my heart is broken, it is of no value now.” But Jesus Christ took the broken pieces and joined together and healed his heart. Levlyn surrendered his heart to the most lovable person , his Valentine Jesus.

Source: PRAYER TOWER ONLINE

With 2005 just completed, as usual I sit down and evaluate how the past year was for me.

Began 2005 on a rather bad note with the sad demise of U. Colin.

2nd of Jan marked a really important day of my life when I met up with my beloved Madam C and on 4th of Jan I attended my first prayer meeting at Mt. Carmel’s.

The rest of Jan was rather uneventful. So was Feb except for me being appointed as Admin @ CFH and the Prayer Group Picnic.

Early April I hit the WordPress scene with my first WordPress Hack.

On the religious front, April saw a new Pope and my first retreat.
Additionally had begun April on a good note by being appointed as Management Trainee.

May saw me visiting Lonavala once again for a training session. Ended up falling ill over there!
Ended May by having a great time at our choir picnic.
It also saw me releasing my first plugin for WordPress.

And I followed this up with my second plugin in mid-June.

June also saw the release of the now highly popular Connections Reloaded theme. As of today the theme has been downloaded over 1800 times!

Ended June by being the runner-up at Mesopia (now Netbunch) which ensured that my two years of hosting has been taken care off

Began July on a happy note with my confirmation.
End July also saw the first ever massive floods in Mumbai. Fortunately, I wasn’t very much affected by them.

Celebrated my birthday in August and got a lovely present from Melody.

Gifted myself yet another fabulous birthday present in the form of the sexy Nokia 6681.

September was yet another picnic when I went with Melody, Elvis and Delilah to Khandala.

Began October with a visit to Pune on official work. Well it was one hell of an experience!

And I also officially launched my all computer blog on WordPress.com

November was rather uneventful except for small celebrations of my Mother’s and brother’s birthdays. On the work front both October and November were highly hectic.

December was more laidback and I also spent a good deal of it partying with the Goan Association gettogether, the Christmas dance and the New year celebrations, besides a lot of outings, dinners and movies!

Overall I think this year was pretty good. Except for a few frustrating moments and times when things didn’t work out, I have done a lot.

Work has been tiring but I have learnt and established a good deal. On the personal front I know I have grown in many ways. I have made many more friends but lost a few .

On the social front I have been overactive! Have definitely improved my dancing skills as well.

W.r.t. my site work, I have really progressed a lot. Have gotten very famous, though unfortunately I end the year with a second rank on Google. However, the visitors of my site have increased and so has my traffic rankings (broken into the top 700000 websites).

Ok, and this post has gotten long enough. I’ve just tried to list down the main events, but then minutely going through my blog definitely tells a lot of stories