Wishing all my dedicated readers a Very Very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2010! How did you bring in the new year? I spent it quietly at home.

Looking back at 2009, I must say that it has been a rather successful year for me on all fronts. While I may not have achieved most of the goals I set for Techtites, it was definitely a lot better than 2008.

I have refrained from setting any goals for this blog, primarily because it serves as a personal blog.

At this time of the year, I normally make a very detailed post about my activities during the year. This year, I’ll refrain from a very detailed post and just make a short and sweet summary.

I began the year knowing that I had a good job in hand. I spent the first three months of the year completing my MBA. I joined the bank in early April and have slogged patiently and diligently over the last nine successful months.

I have also ensured that I continued making regular posts both at this blog and at Techtites during this duration. It’s a hobby that I have ensured that I have not given up, despite the long work hours.

On the coding front, I took over the development of Ajax Edit Comments in March from Ronald. Honestly, I didn’t make much progress on that front and a few months later, Ronald returned to continue the development of the best comment editing plugin for WordPress!

In December, Ajax Edit Comments became a premium plugin available to all users on a paid subscription basis. And, for a limited period you can get the basic subscription for only $10/year.

The downloads of my other plugins have also increased over the last year. I have released several updates to my plugins and my theme. I also plan on quite a few updates on both these fronts. I have had a few themes that I hoped to develop just lying around, so am hoping to finalise and release some of these.

And, lastly, the highlight of year 2009 without doubt was my engagement to Lil white mouse.

Looking forward, I hope and pray that 2010 turns out to be an even more successful year than 2009!

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.

Been tied down all of this week with either gallivanting or working on my technology blog. So, here is a day-by-day summary of the last week or so.

25th December

It’s Christmas day. Because of the Terror Attacks in Mumbai [Photos], almost all places in Mumbai canceled their Christmas dances. Not that I went out a lot, but this time we decided to just have a quiet dinner.

Dinner was at the usual spot, viz. Dynasty. Lil white mouse‘s sister Ruth joined us for dinner.

26th December

I had planned in advance to dedicate this day to technology shopping, which is exactly what I did. Went over to Lil white mouse’s place in the morning and after lunch we took a trip to my vendor in Lamington Road.

Picked up a DVD Writer and a 500GB WD Elements for Lil white mouse, a 6-cell battery for Akshat‘s laptop and pendrives both Akshat and Aditya.

I also bought a Notebook Cooling pad, which is this cute plastic pad with three fans that has been effectively keeping my laptop cool. I do however, need to open the same and dust it properly.

27th December

My dear cousin Seema is down from the US and she decided to drop in to my place. We then headed over to my Grandma‘s place in Bandra. Picked up lunch at the Subway on Linking Road. The sandwiches sure cost a bomb especially when you are looking at two footlongs but they fill you up well. Spent the entire day at my Grandma’s place.

28th December

Sunday, once again. Began it as usual with mass in the morning. Lil white mouse came over in the afternoon to spend some quiet time at home.

29th December

This day Lil white mouse’s parents celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary and I joined them for dinner. We decided to go to Amrut Punjab, but being a Monday, the place was closed. So, instead we decided to go to Gajalee in Phoenix Mills. I have been to the one in Seepz, Andheri several times, but this was my first at Phoenix. And, I was disappointed by the service.

The food was good as usual, but the waiters were totally disorganized and unresponsive and we had to wait a long long time for food. For the prices they charge!

Desert was jack fruit ice cream at Natural Ice Cream.

30th December

Spent the entire day at home and went over to Lil white mouse’s place to fix the DVD writer. We then went to Maroosh in Phoenix Mills. Dinner was kababs and biryani. The food isn’t as good or maybe it doesn’t fit our taste buds. Desert was once again ice cream at Natural which is the shop next door.

31st December

We decided to spend New Year at home, our respective homes i.e. I was also tired with the activities of the previous week. So, on 31st, I decided to unveil the brand new look of Techtites. I have great plans for that blog. In spite of it being on the web for well over two years, it hasn’t really taken off. I’m trying to get new talent to blog for me, but it is always difficult to find good technical writers.

So, what do you think of the new look?

1st January

A new day in the new year. Lil white mouse came over and we ordered pizza from Smokin’ Joes’. I think they have among the best pizzas. Only problem is that they don’t have great offers which makes regular pizza eating expensive!

2nd January

Today. Decided to finally get down and complete this blog post. Plan on spending the rest of the day blogging. May also work on a plugin or two if I have the energy!

So, what have you been upto this New Year?

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.

Some of you may be aware that the Indibloggies awards are accepting Nominations. I have put both Ajay – On the Road called Life and Techtites up for nomination.

Nominating the blog is simple. It would be great if you can nominate my sites as well. All you need to do is add the blogs to del.icio.us with a set of tags.

The links below will assist you in this. Please use the Required Tags so that the nomination is recognized.

Nominate Ajay – On the Road called Life
Required Tags: ib06 ib06BestIndiblog ib06SciTech ib06Design

Nominate Techtites
Required Tags: ib06 ib06SciTech ib06Tagline ib06New ib06BestIndiblog

Feel free to add you’re own tags when adding the bookmarks.

Thank you very much!

Being a thorough techie I’m always on the lookout for technology news and updates. Am constantly searching for some good freeware to try out.

But to keep myself up-to-date required me to daily go through almost a hundred websites (and steadily increasing).

This inspired me to start a blog that will get the choicest of technology news all in one central location.

Hence, 30th October 2006 saw the launch of my technology blog titled Techtites.

Why Techtites?

Since the central theme of the blog is technology, for the purpose of SEO I wanted the domain to contain the word “tech”. Unfortunately, almost every technology name I could think of was taken.

Until my astronomy pal suggested the name Techtites, which is a play on the word Tektite.

Any of numerous generally small, rounded, dark brown to green glassy objects that are composed of silicate glass and are thought to have been formed by the impact of a meteorite with the earth’s surface.

Tektites are considered to be of great value and I hope that Techtites will also be of the same value to you.

Today with a new look, I’ve decided to tell the world about it

Do check it out, subscribe to the feed and let me know what you think about it.

And if you have some hot news, you can tip me off.