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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Enter new year with PageRank 1!

Google has just updated the pagerank values of websites which used to be shown in the google toolbar.
If you don't know what is pagerank then put it simply, it is the indicator of how authoritative your page/blog/site is. It is calculated on a scale of ten.Higher the pagerank, greater the importance of that page, hence more prominence in searches and hence more traffic to that page.
I m glad to announce that the pagerank of this blog which till y'day was 0 is now updated to 1. Wow how ecstatic I am!
Check Google Page Rank
Hence I have put up the page rank button as you can see in the left sidebar.

Site which has made it to the elite 10/10 PageRank this year is CNN.com. Wordpress.com and Twitter.com is now on 9/10.
If you own a blog quickly check your page rank.Maybe it has increased !
So what is your pagerank? Check it here .
Boy, what a way to usher in the new year! I am sure Google has made a lot of people happy today!

I wish a successful and a prosperous year ahead to all the readers of my Weblog. Thank you for all your support and participation in the year 2008. You can expect a lot of improvement in all areas in 2009.(Who knows maybe a change of domain itself?)
For now,lets celebrate and welcome the year of the OX!

Sunday, December 28, 2008

How much is your blog worth?

I came across through a nice tool to compute how much your blog is worth from Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog. The tool computes a dollar value for your blog using the same link-to-dollar ratio as the recent sale of Weblogs, Inc. to America Online:
How Much Is Your Blog Worth?

I would not have even given it a shot except that it was endorsed by Technorati(the google of blogging?) 
So actually all you have to do is give the url of the blog and it magically computes the value of your blog using some algorithms of technorating ranking,backlinks etc. 
I tried it for this blog and this is what came out:

        My blog is worth $2,822.70.
How much is your blog worth?


 Now I don't know what can I do with that data but it sure feels nice to know that your blog is worth something.!
This is what technorati has to say about this tool:

"We here at Technorati think that all your blogs are priceless. But when Weblogs Inc. was bought by AOL a few weeks ago, Tristan Louis did the math. He figured out how much each blog in the Weblogs Inc. stable was worth, based on their Technorati rank.
Inspired, Dane Carlson whipped up a handy little calculator with the Technorati API. Just enter your blog URL to see how much it's "worth" using the Weblogs/AOL math. Give it a try!
Let me know how much is your blog worth.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Is war an option?

I did not think that things would come to this. When Mumbai happened and the whole nation erupted with anger and lamentation, it seemed that the nation has come together but for what? Now since the grief has settled there's a possibility doing rounds in emails,blogs,smses and the news is as usual filled with it. The possibility of an INDO-PAK war.

Even if I remove the basic fact that I am an Indian, the opinion still exists that Pakistan should have behaved more responsibly not only as a neighbouring state but also as a global citizen. After all which country will deny one of its own sons whose identity is established beyond all doubt.
And yes, I know most of us agree on the theory and know Pakistan should have done better but still I never imagined that in this age , even speculation about a war between two nuclear powered nations could come up.And it has not remained a coffee table discussion any more with the nuclear committees in both the countries having secret meetings, the option seems really an option.

I received an sms which said " vote:  should india go for war? count :  war:69  no war:10 dont break the count".Clearly , we are stretched far beyond our limits.
So should India go for war? What is your opinion?

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Remembering Christ.

"The kingdom of God is within you.
                                                                                    - Luke 17:21

 
Christmas is the time to refresh our memories with the teachings of the great one.Let us all once again pause and listen, he is speaking.... and with his words in our hearts let us celebrate.
Merry Christmas to all of you!

The Art of Living provides a healing touch in SA.

The Art of Living has been continuously working towards providing relief for prisoners. This is a recent article covering the programme by BBC.



"Breathe in... And let go," she repeats.
The prisoners have their eyes shut, listening to her soothing voice.
They appear at peace with themselves.
"I can't see any smiles!" Ansuya says, and wide, honest grins appear on their faces.
They stand in their bright orange uniforms, flinging their arms up in a flurry of stretches.
Some inmates take it very seriously, others treat it like a bit of a lark, but it is clear that the lessons are popular. .......

Read the whole article here : BBC LINK

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Blog building: A perspective.

"To create a blog is as easy as it is difficult to maintain it.


 If you own a blog or atleast created one(God knows what was the name before .blogspot?,long time back see!), you would know that to maintain a blog needs all the qualities required to be a good parent.You have to be
Consistent: Feeding your kid(blog) daily with nutritious food(quality posts).
Caring: Spend time on  how your child looks and what he wears(Template,Additional widgets,functionalities etc).
Provide good Education: SEO optimization?
Feel responsible for your readers.

Ever since the creation of this blog, I have been constantly learning more and more about the web,blogging etc.And I think the time has come to do some soul searching about this blog in particular and blogging in general.

This blog was created in September 2008. So after nearly 4 months and 50 posts I would like to share with my readers my learnings and achievements.

To put it frankly, with an average of 12 posts per month, I can say that I have been fairly consistent with my postings, however not without patches of absolute neglect! It takes a lot of perseverance specially in the initial stages of creating a sustainable blog because you put all your heart and soul into writing a fantastic article and all you see for the day is 10 visits and 20 pageviews and no comments! However with time and patience things change.Starting from 0, the readership(subscribed) of this blog has come close to 22+ which by no means is an underachievement, however I am not so pleased with the average no. of comments.

To comment and to attract comments is an art and science as well.And in this field the topic on which you are posting and the general views of your readers plays an important part. For example if maximum of your readers are boxing fans and you keep writing about "7 habits of highly effective people" then surely there will be a disconnect. I have to work on this regard!

The most important thing in making of a sustainable blog? Quality Quality Quality!
I have observed that for posts in which I have put my heart out and used all my knowledge and skills to give the best to my readers, it has attracted huge response.Not so for others.So if you want to build your blog from a newbie to a pro, you will need a lot of quality posts. Originality is also of prime importance because if the post is entirely original then you can express yourself better and readers can relate to you on  a personal level.
For example, my post in which I had put up my first youtube video where I had sung the song 'Imagine' had a greate response and I had an exclusive coverage in atleast 3 different blogs(and without asking for it). And of course the song is great!



And a last word about SEO, I have particularly struggled in this regard and my current traffic % from search engines is only 4%. Now if you want to build a blog with sustainable traffic flow you surely need to perform better in this regard. However, some of my articles have really done well to attract visitors from Google search. If you type the word SIKKIM or SHIVA in google image search then the links to this blog will appear in page 3 or 4, now that's not bad at all and I am sure with some more backlinks and some more work I can surely perform better.
If you are own a blog then I know that you must have similar thoughts and experience as mine, I would love to have a piece of your mind. How has your blog done?

RELATED POSTS:
How to earn from your blog.
Superb blog designs.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Swami Vivekananda - The saint who shook the world! I.

Ever since I first came to know about him I was at first instantly attracted to his persona, the magnetism which is evident even in his photographs. And when I first got a taste of messages and his writings, I knew I was hooked. His every sentence as if by a magical force shakes up the sleeping consciousness and gives it a direction . 
In this series of posts I present a glimpse of the man in some of his soul stirring lectures. The first one is on discipleship.




Discipleship

What does the disciple need in order to receive the truth? The great sages
say that to attain truth takes but the twinkling of an eye — it is just a question
of knowing — the dream breaks. How long does it take? In a second the dream is
gone. When the illusion vanishes, how long does it take? Just the twinkling of
an eye. When I know the truth, nothing happens except that the falsehood
vanishes away: I took the rope for the snake, and now I see it is the rope. It
is only a question of half a second and the whole thing is done. Thou art That.
Thou art the Reality. How long does it take to know this? If we are God and
always have been so, not to know this is most astonishing. To know this is the
only natural thing. It should not take ages to find out what we have always
been and what we now are.  

It is not easy to be a disciple; great preparations are necessary; many
conditions have to be fulfilled. Four principal conditions are laid down by the
Vedantists. 
The first condition is that the student who wants to know the truth must
give up all desires for gain in this world or in the life to come. 
What do you gain in heaven? You become gods, drink nectar, and get rheumatism.
There is less misery there than on earth, but also less truth. The very rich
can understand truth much less than the poorer people. "It is easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the
kingdom of God." The rich man has no time to think of anything beyond his
wealth and power, his comforts and indulgences. The rich rarely become
religious.
Going beyond these things, the disciple should say, "I do not care for
anything in this life nor for all the heavens that have ever existed — I do not
care to go to any of them. I do not want the sense — life in any form — this
identification of myself with the body — as I feel now, 'I am this body-this
huge mass of flesh.' This is what I feel I am. I refuse to believe that."
 

The second condition is that the disciple must be able to control the
internal and the external senses and must be established in several other
spiritual virtues. 
The external senses are the visible organs situated in different parts of the
body; the internal senses are intangible. We have the external eyes, ears,
nose, and so on; and we have the corresponding internal senses. We are
continually at the beck and call of both these groups of senses. Corresponding
to the senses are sense-objects. If any sense-objects are near by, the senses
compel us to perceive them; we have no choice or independence. There is the big
nose. A little fragrance is there; I have to smell it. If there were a bad
odour, I would say to myself, "Do not smell it"; but nature says,
"Smell", and I smell it. Just think what we have become! We have
bound ourselves. I have eyes. Anything going on, good or bad, I must see. It is
the same with hearing. If anyone speaks unpleasantly to me, I must hear it. My
sense of hearing compels me to do so, and how miserable I feel! Curse or praise
— man has got to hear. I have seen many deaf people who do not usually hear,
but anything about themselves they always hear!  
Next, the mind must be made to quiet down. It is rushing about. Just as I
sit down to meditate, all the vilest subjects in the world come up. The whole
thing is nauseating. Why should the mind think thoughts I do not want it to
think? I am as it were a slave to the mind. No spiritual knowledge is possible
so long as the mind is restless and out of control. The disciple has to learn
to control the mind. Yes, it is the function of the mind to think. But it must
not think if the disciple does not want it to; it must stop thinking when he
commands it to. To qualify as a disciple, this state of the mind is very
necessary.  
The next qualification is that the disciple must have faith in the Guru
(teacher). In the West the teacher simply gives intellectual knowledge; that is
all. The relationship with the teacher is the greatest in life. My dearest and
nearest relative in life is my Guru; next, my mother; then my father. My first
reverence is to the Guru. If my father says, "Do this", and my Guru
says, "Do not do this", I do not do it. The Guru frees my soul. The
father and mother give me this body; but the Guru gives me rebirth in the soul.

We attend lectures and read books, argue and reason about God and soul,
religion and salvation. These are not spirituality, because spirituality does
not exist in books or theories or in philosophies. It is not in learning or
reasoning, but in actual inner growth. Even parrots can learn things by heart
and repeat them. If you become learned, what of it? Asses can carry whole
libraries. So when real light will come, there will be no more of this learning
from books — no book-learning. The man who cannot write even his own name can
be perfectly religious, and the man with all the libraries of the world in his
head may fail to be. Learning is not a condition of spiritual growth;
scholarship is not a condition. The touch of the Guru, the transmittal of
spiritual energy, will quicken your heart. Then will begin the growth. That is
the real baptism by fire. No more stopping. You go on and go on.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Why?

Can u see why? Let me know what you  think of this product.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Wonders of winter.


It's so refreshing to feel the cool winter air on your face when you walk.
Just reminds me everytime of back home.
To celebrate winter, I have installed the snow flakes widget on this blog.
Let me know how it looks. It's very fine so you will have to be really observant.
If you can't see it immediately,have some patience... it will show up.
Let the webpage load fully and look around the header section.
So guys, Gear up for Christmas and a Dhamakedar New Year.


Wednesday, December 17, 2008

A classical piece. Remember Shakti.

5 masters of their own respective fields come together to create a magic of sorts,
TABLA: Ustad Zakir Hussain
VOCAL: Shankar Mahadevan
MANDOLIN: U Shrinivas
GUITAR: John Mclaughlin
PERCUSSION: Selva Ganesh

ENJOY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

TOO BAD HE MISSED!!!

A war that could have not been.
A war on terror?
All I can see is lakhs killed who did not know what is terror? And their wives and kids astray. A country destroyed.
A fitting goodbye. TOO BAD HE MISSED!!!



No wonder the whole country wants to do throw shoes at him:  BBC LINK

Friday, December 12, 2008

The supreme Yoga

Wanted to write about this a long time ago.


If you have read even once 'Yoga Vasistha' then you know how delightful and fulfilling it is. It immediately dispels all the bickering and complaints,fears and desires,worries and anxiety of this small mind of ours.
I simply love the way it is translated by Swami Venkateshananda. No beating around the bush.No sweet talk.Dot to the point.
And after reading it I could imagine why 'Yoga Vasishta' is considered the crown jewel of all the scriptures.
The scripture which has existed for thousands of years is a dialogue between Shri Ram and his Guru Vasistha.
In the begining it describes how an immense dispassion entered the heart of Shri Ram and he started being aloof and keeping to himself understanding all the world and the actions to be futile.
It was a step just before enlightenment.
Then Sage Vasistha imparts this knowledge unto him and also to countless others in the generations to come.

Sage Vasistha has a way of imparting the highest truth on the face without much decorating with words.
I remember and instance in Bawa's room in Vishwamitra one day when suddenly the discussion turned to Yoga Vasistha and Bawa said   :" You know in one instance Shri  Ram puts forward a question to Vasistha and Sage Vasistha replies "THIS IS AN IMMATURE QUESTION!" " and he gave one of his sweet chuckles "Imagine telling to Lord Ram 'YOur question is immature'!!.....another chuckle.

And also there are many very very interesting stories narrated by the Sage and he has a characteristic way of telling them. It starts with " A very long time(some world cycles) ago there was a king .....and so and so happened..........
 I tell you this first hand because I was there in the king's court!!"

Yoga Vasistha is the highest level of philosophy in any culture which can be conceived of.No wonder a few intelligent people realised this and twisted a few things and came up with 'THE MATRIX'.


So what is Yoga Vasistha all about??

"NO ONE CAN TELL YOU WHAT THE MATRIX IS. YOU HAVE TO SEE FOR YOURSELF!"

Imagine

My first video on Youtube. A response to Mumbai.
Just recorded it without much preparation.
It's a webcam and the mic is that of my laptop so the sound quality isn't great too.
And the guitar is not so good one(not mine!!).
But I think it's good for the first time.
What do you say?














Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one