This blog has been called lots of things: excellent, good, fun, enjoyable, and even boring, monotonous, horrendous (ok not this one). The most recent comment has been “boring”.

So, why was it called boring. Because, it has been a while since I made a personal post.

This blog sees two types of visitors, viz. those who visit my blog for the personal posts and those who visit my blog for the WordPress related posts, plugins and the theme.

When I started ajaydsouza.com in October 2003, I had only one thing in mind, blogging about my life. In fact, even till today, most of my posts are still filed under Personal.

Over time, things evolved. I got into WordPress plugin development, released my first and only theme and then started blogging professionally. So, little surprise that this blog moved away from the traditional personal blog to a blog that targets multiple audiences, those who read my personal blog posts, those who come for my plugins, those who read my reviews and those who come for the jokes.

And, I try my best to please them all.

So, what determines my blog posts?

It’s always been the life that I lead. When I was in engineering college, a lot of this was visiting restaurants, watching movies and trying to pass engineering.

When I got into work life, it revolved around visiting restaurants, watching movies and working my heart out.

When I got into MBA, I stopped blogging that frequently. This was primarily because MBA life didn’t give me a minute to blog.

In the second year of MBA, life eased out a bit. I was able to take up blogging professionally again. I also revived Techtites, which was dead for nearly a year before that. In fact a lot of my “free” time today is spent on planning posts on it.

Now, in my current day job, it seems a lot similar to MBA life when I didn’t have time to dedicate to my hobbies. However, if you’re tracking me on Facebook, you’ll realize that I do my best to do something besides work.

So, to wrap up this post, here’s what I have been up to recently:

Vincent and me when shopping for a new laptop he needed to buy. We ended up picking up the Gateway ID series laptop.

It is a really beautiful high-end laptop at just about 50K. As for me, I’m a Dell person. This December, my beautiful, but now old, Inspiron 6400 should get a much needed cleanup. I hope Dell support is as good as it was a year back!

We also attempted to visit the Pizza Hut in Forum, but they are under renovation. So, we ate at the Sahib Singh Sultan, which in my opinion is really out of place in a mall like forum. The restaurant was really delightful.

The restaurant is a tribute to a bygone era and everything from the interiors to the culinary experience is reminiscent of a mix of the traditions of Indian royalty and the British Raj.

The restaurant will transport you to the year 1853, when the first Indian train made its run from Bori Bunder to Thane. Much care has been taken to recreate the feeling, with the tastefully done décor, silk tapestry, and exquisite silver ware.

From one end of the wall to the other, there is a Pullman-style carriageway which makes you feel like you’re dining inside an actual train.

On the technical front, I have moved this blog to Media Temple. I’m not sure if this is the best option! In my bid to cut costs, due to limited income, this seems to be a compromise. I also need to work on optimising this blog, which is painfully heavy for some strange reasons. If anybody knows why please do let me know!

Now, it’s time to hit the sack. I begin a new week in a few hours. But, I promise to blog really really soon!

When someone decides to message you all of a sudden and grumble that you are not blogging, then it is an indication that it has been a while. Well, I know it has, considering the last post was a month back. However, my life is so full of work, that I honestly, don’t have much to blog about.

Anyway, as an update, I have been working long hours all through the week and the concept of weekend is a blur. e.g. I worked till 1.30am on both Thursday and Friday! Weekends that do come along are spent with me resting all day long.

Well, that’s life of an investment banker. I knew the hours would be long, but didn’t expect it to be this long. Normally, this would have been a problem, if I wasn’t enjoying the work so much, I would definitely have hated it!

Talking about investment banking, as of yesterday, I completed two whole months as an investment banker! I know these two months have been simply amazing. The learning curve has been very steep, but I think I’m doing just fine.

What about my plugins, blogging and the rest of the world of IT? Well, it is there. I did put in a few posts at Techtites a while back when I had a full two days. Otherwise, Umar has been doing a good job so far. And, Shahrzaad’s occasional posts have been helpful in keeping the blog alive.

As for the plugins, sadly, they require a dedicated amount of time which hasn’t been a luxury I can afford. However, I have tried my best to support the same in the forums.

I am taking leave at the end of this month, as a break and also to take a trip back home. Hopefully, I should have the time to get in some coding as well!

What better way for a blogger and a developer to pass his time than to blog and develop

That’s exactly what I have been up to this past week or so.

New Plugins

So, the past week has seen a new plugin added to my already growing list of plugins. Over, the next week I intend to continue work on the plugins. I plan on scrapping a few ones which have long since served their purpose as well as reworking others. The latest ones could also do with many feature additions. So stay tuned for a few releases

New look for Techtites

I’ve also been working on a brand new look for Techtites. With the help of Moin, I’ve been able to revamp the entire site to a much better template. Have spent a good portion of the week working on the template. The first and major step was making the theme ready for WordPress 2.7 commenting system.

There’s still much to be done, especially the sidebar. Better ad placements has also meant a better click thru and so a wee bit more income.

New Look for Lil white mouse’s Blog

I also revamped Lil white mouse’s blog. We picked up a new theme. However, it being too narrow for a single column, I spent a good amount of time “expanding” the same for better placements of images etc. I still have to make the theme WordPress 2.7 compatible, with respect to the threaded and paged comments. So, that’s a task I plan on fulfilling over the next few days.

New Look for Weblog Tools Collection

Mark has still not widely proclaimed it, but regular readers would have noticed the brand new theme at Weblog Tools Collection. I’ve been working with him over the past week to convert the XHTML / CSS template into a WordPress theme.

This is indeed rather painful especially if the template and theme are not designed by the same person or in the standard WordPress default theme format.

New look for AjayDSouza.com

If you’re reading this in your feed reader, then take a look at the updated AjayDSouza.com.

I recently stumbled upon Glassy Evolution by iSoftwareReviews and the theme just leapt out of the screen and I decided to use it. Thus ended a long hunt for the perfect theme. Well, sadly, this wasn’t the perfect theme either. For one, the theme doesn’t support WordPress 2.7 threaded and paged comments, so yet again, I went ahead modifying the theme for the same.

I’ve also made changes in the footer, getting rid of an About section. That is still a WIP as you can see. So is the sidebar, which will do well with some of what existed in the old theme.

I’ve added some social bookmarking plugins at the bottom of each post, so please do use them for promoting the posts you like

So, below is the old look and the new look.

I’ve also opened up the option of purchasing 125×125 advertising on this blog. There are currently four advertisements available for purchase at only $50 per month which is excellent considering that this blog is a top 100,000 blog as per Alexa, with over 700 pageviews a day.

Some Personal Life

With me blogging on both Techtites and here, I really haven’t had much of a personal life out of the ordinary. Did watch How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and Outlander.

Dinner and lunch have been out quite often, with Talk About, Tamanna, Andhra Mess and Mudra being the joints that were frequented.

The entire next week is lined up with four assignments to complete, as well as a Finance paper that we’ve been working on for college.

If you’re interested in keeping track of my life, do follow me on Twitter.

No, I am not talking about the movie, but just the last 20 days of my life; life that has kept me so busy that you haven’t read about any personal updates.

So, here’s a quick round up of the last two weeks of my life.

The week from 19th to 24th of Jan was like any other week of my life. Spent all of it blogging, reading, eating, talking and sleeping.

23rd was the first and last test of this semester. The test was on Strategic Marketing. We were given a choice between a two simple questions and a case on TESCO. IMO, education should be practical and case based to ensure that people actually apply their minds to everything. A healthy mix of theory and practicals is ideal. However, MBA turned out to be primarily a learn by rote, which is something I simply can’t do. Hence, was forced to understand and write exams where results took a hit. No regrets on that, because I put in my best and did well so far

Aditya, Sneha, Namrata and me decided to go out for dinner on 23rd. After much pondering we went to Haka’s on FC Road, Pune. The food sucked completely and totally. Really felt like I was cheated of my money.

Took the early morning Volvo to Mumbai on 24th to spend the long weekend at home. Met up with Lil white mouse on 24th evening for dinner. I had to get the taste of the horrible Chinese food out of my mouth. So, we headed off to our favorite joint Dynasty. As usual the crab meat soup was delicious. We ordered the Seafood platter and it turned out to be sizzling and not dry, though I would have sworn it was dry the last time I ordered that.

Sunday, the 25th was a quiet day. Lil white mouse came over in the evening to spend some time.

26th is the Republic Day of India and so a public holiday. As a result the roads are usually empty and people stick home. This weekend was different because many had left the city for the long weekend.

I went over to Lil white mouse’s place in the afternoon and we then went shopping to Westside, near Opera House as it was the last day of their sale. Following this, we returned home and then to 5 Spice in Bandra. We were seated at the Non-Smoking, Non-Alcoholic sections of the restaurant, which didn’t make a difference, since it was a dry day.

The service here was a lot slower, possibly because the design of the place is such. The however, remains delicious

I initially planned on returning to Pune on 27th, but postponed that to the next day. Spent 27th at home, working almost all day. Took the earliest Volvo I could to find my way back to Pune.

The last few days has been dinner at Tamanna, dinner at Mezza9, a class and presentation for Strategic Marketing. Looking at my mention of that subject you may tend to think I’ve shifted to Marketing. Well, no, I remain a Finance graduate. That is just one subject

I’ve given Techtites a new look yet again. So, will be spending tonight working on that one.

Began the week with a presentation in Advances in SCM on Tuesday (Monday was just another day). Our job was to rate the supply chain of any company in any sector.

We chose Glenmark Pharmaceuticals. We had to rate their Inventory Turnover, Asset Turnover and Cash-to-cash cycle time to arrive at the final rating.

Yesterday was Pongal, which is a festival celebrated by Tamils on the first day of Thai to mark the harvest. As part of Pongal, there was a special lunch organized with a huge variety of food, sweets etc.

Needless to say I ate a good deal

Spent the rest of the day in my room blogging, catching up on reading and the usual. Asked my roommates to pickup sandwiches from Subway just as they did on Monday. Now, someone needs to go off to the city on Friday

As part of Pongal, there was

As I mentioned, I returned to SCMHRD, rather reluctantly I must say. Spent the entire day catching up on blogging and finally got down to finishing the synopsis for the Finance paper before retiring to bed. Realized I had forgotten one of my hard disks in Mumbai itself, which means a good amount of entertainment awaits my return.

Friday was lecture day. It began with a four hour lecture (which got cut short to two) of Strategic Marketing and this was followed by an Advances in SCM lecture.

Dinner on Friday night was at McDonalds when a whole bunch of us headed out there. The normally freezing AC at the place was off to give us warmth from the cold winter outside

Spent Saturday as well working on my blog. I’ve started the Plugin Review series at WLTC and it’s been met with a great response! This time I will reviewing plugins weekly. If you’re a WordPress plugin developer then submit your plugins.

Saturday evening was spent working on the Advances in SCM project. I still have to complete the presentation. Today is reserved for that. Dinner on Saturday was at Fasoos with Sneha only, since everyone else was out of college, so to speak.

Similarly, Sunday was the Research and Reporting day as well as tomorrow. SIIB had their annual festival spreading across Saturday and Sunday and Sunday night was the rock show featuring Parikrama. So, the entire evening was filled with their music. Except for But it Rained, I’m not a big fan.

As for the title of this post. We received our third semester results on Saturday. I’ve cleared all subjects and hence the title of this post. CGPA is a 2.7 which is good enough this semester

One last semester to get through and yours truly is an MBA.

With over 50,000 Entrecard Credits, tonnes of ad spots and a few special prizes, Christmas has come early at Cheth Studios.

Prizes:

#1 (15,000 EC credits, $5 , Ad Spaces, Blog consulting)

5000 EC Credits worth $30 sponsored by: chethstudios
3000 EC Credits worth $18 sponsored by:anshuldudeja
2000 EC Credits worth $6 sponsored by: dwaynereaves.com
2000 EC Credits worth $6 sponsored by:sweetprettynaughty
1500 EC Credits worth $9 sponsored by:seeknomore
1500 EC Credits worth $6 sponsored by:nestingbuddy
$5 sponsored by: It’s My Party and The Fashop
Blog consulting by: sitegorge
468 x 60 ad spot for 6 months at broodonline
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I love third semester, or atleast what I have seen so far!

The schedule has been so much lighter than before that I have had sufficient free time to pursue other things, e.g my blogging which had gone dead in the past year.

For starters, I got about revamping Techtites.

Also spent whole of Sunday preparing blog posts for Techtites. My next step would be to work on this blog and see what I can do with it.

Evening in Fresher’s Day. After being postponed time and time again for the past week the date and details have been finalized.

It sure is fun to see the “costumes” that people wear for a simple event like this. As for me, a simple shirt and pant will suffice!

More news and hopefully photos at a later date.

Regular readers of WLTC must have found a lot of posts by me since the beginning of this year.

Weblog Tools Collection is one of the biggest blog resource sites which I’ve been reading for a good number of years now. I used to post my theme and plugin related notifications out there.

Late December, Mark asked me start writing for WLTC and I happily jumped at the offer

Here’s the formal announcement.

You will now see my posts regularly at WLTC. I will be covering WordPress news, reviews and analysis of plugins, themes, hacks as well as general blogging related topics.

This is a great opportunity and an equally great learning experience to be writing for a site the size of WLTC (it gets more hits in a day than this blog get in a month :O ).
I’m reaching out to several thousand people, if not more, besides being on the Dashboard of all users of WordPress.

Thanks Mark!

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!