Thoughts of a Rambler

written by Rajaram S

written by Rajaram S

• Changing the background of the Gtalk Chat Window. All you have to do is go to Start–> gtheme–> Change Background. Then, choose any jpg and reopen your chat windows and you shall have the background you want. When you download the theme, you get more than a dozen sample images too.

• Got bored of the same old smileys in your chat? This theme provides dozens of innovative smileys to be used in you chat. You can see the complete list of smilies and their codes on this page.

• Day in History: You can also post a Day in history in your chat window by using the command sravi:dih in the chat window.
• Joke of the Day: You can post the Joke of the day in your chat window by using the command sravi:jod
• Word of the Day: You can post the Joke of the day in your chat window by using the command sravi:wod
• Live Cricket scores: By entering sravi:cricket, you can get the latest score of that day’s match or the last recorded match.

• For the romantically inclined, try this command: sravi:msg1:I*Love*You or any other message with the * denoted a break of a line eg: sravi:msg1:I*like*chatting*with*you

• You can even send a hand-written letter to the person you are chatting with by using the command: sravi:msg2:Hi$I am enjoying this theme, You should try it too$Rajaram S

• You can even play any youtube/google video inside the chat window by using the command: sravi:gvideo:(google video link) or sravi:utube:(youtube video link)
• You can share random picasa photos inside the chat window using the command: sravi:photos:(google user id without @gmail.com)
• Read comic strips online within the chat window: Use the command sravi:comics: (number is from 1-34) to share various comic strips. Go to the comics page for details on which number to use for a particular comic strip.

and of course, the most important feature, you can chat too !

If you are interested in this theme, you can download the theme by going to Ravi Sharma’s Gtalk theme page here or you can download the zipped installer directly by clicking here.

Technorati Tags: google+chat google gtalk chat gtalk theme google chat theme free download google talk

written by Rajaram S

PollMummy is a new website created just for taking web polls. There is a PollMummy Blog where all the latest polls would be uploaded. There is also a Poll Directory where you can choose to take polls based on the topics you like.

If you have ever wanted to put a poll on your website or blog and didn’t know which tool to use and how to use a particular tool, check out the page on all the tools to create web polls. Last, but never the least, click here to subscribe to PollMummy Polls.

Technorati Tags: blog poll web poll polls create polls pollmummy

written by Rajaram S

written by Rajaram S

• Bird Flu mania gripped the world, especially Asia in early 2006 and that was probably the best time to make the movie “One flew over the bird’s nest“.
• If you ever visit Cyprus as a tourist, one of the main tourist attractions on your itinerary should be a visit to a Cypriot Doctor (No, i don’t wish you to be unwell, just go there as a tourist). If you want to be prepared in advance on what to expect, read “Quack Quack, Is the Doctor in?“.
• Rules in Cyprus are different for locals than for outsiders. You should know the tricks of the trade if you want things to happen your way in Cyprus. Some theories just don’t work in Cyprus – Failure of queuing Theory in Cyprus.
• Everyone, for whatever reason they may have, likes to make fun of American Politicians. So, why should i be different? God Bless America! and If America wants more oil
• How soon or late do you adapt to the modern technology surrounding you? Sometimes, even basic things like operating an ATM can become a nightmare. Read about The mystery of ATMs to find out.
• If you are from India or from the UK or from the US and have happened to attend any Indian party, you might be able to associate with my observations about Punjabi songs titles “What is it with Punjabi Songs“.
• If you have had a conversation with an Indian and there was no mention of cricket for more than 5 minutes, consider yourself to be very very lucky. Why are Indians so crazy about cricket. Cricket is after-all a stupid game, a waste of time!
• The history of the Mallu Nairs. Don’t read this if you are not from India, you wouldn’t understand a thing!
• What i have learned from my wife. This was part of a Group Writing Project at Middle Zone Musings. Well, after Vidhya (my wife) read this post, i learnt many more lessons.
• My first ever music concert and it rocked! Photos from the Bryan Adams Concert here in Cyprus.

written by Rajaram S

• 13 sites on Friday the thirteenth by Mercury
• 13 ways to lose a guy in 13 days by Ravi – I wonder how many from his list are from personal experiences.
• Few facts about Friday the 13th – My half-entry.
• 10 Money Superstitions for Friday the 13th by Rich (This was not submitted to the Group writing project, but i found this link through random surfing and found it interesting enough to be added to this list)

Once again, thanks to Ravi and Mercury for participating. Until the next, Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Group Writing project Blog Friday the 13th

written by Rajaram S

Okay, its thursday this time. I started this post yesterday, but couldn’t find time to complete and post it.

• Make Faces! Make a Flash Face by choosing various components of a face like head, hair, eyebrows, eyes, nose etc. Look below at the face i created. Not exactly a masterpiece, but a piece of work nevertheless! Have hours of fun making faces.

• Ok Tata Bye Bye: I love travelling and one way to vicariously enjoy the pleasure of travelling is by reading travelogues and this site has got loads of them. I particularly liked the travelogue of the 32 day solo ride through Ladakh called Freya’s Diary.
• Smashing Magazine: This site is truly smashing, to say the least. This has to be the one-stop shop for any one involved with any aspect of website design or anything artistic on the web. Enjoy this site. There are hundreds of informative articles.

Some of the articles on this site which i found to be well-compiled:

1. 50 Beautiful web-designs
2. Freebies: Icons and Buttons
3. 21 Fresh and Usable Wordpress Themes

That’s it for this Wedbesday’s edition. Enjoy Surfing!

Technorati Tags: interesting links browsing surfing

written by Rajaram S

1. Point Blank by Vikram Nandwani. In Vikram’s words, “I am doing custom caricatures to try & raise money for a Community Conservation Project in Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra”. His caricatures are funny and thought provoking. I have posted two of them below. Go over to his site for many more.



2. Photos of Kaipu(Poras Chaudhary). Digital Camera Magazine’s Photographer of the year 2006 winner, Poras’ photos are a cut above the rest. The richness of the colours in his compositions have to be seen to be believed.
3. California Coastline Photos. Aerial photographs of the entire coastline of California. If you are planning a trip/trek to any of the coastal beaches/areas, then the photos on this site will help you evaluate the place before you actually visit.

That’s it for this Wednesday. Happy Surfing!

Technorati Tags: interesting links browsing surfing

written by Rajaram S

If you are reading this, there is a good probability that you already have a blog up and running. There is a high probability that it is either on blogger.com or wordpress.com. If you are really interested in blogging and not started a blog just because the guy in the next cubicle did, it is time you thought about moving out of blogger and wordpress to your own domain and hosting it with any hosting provider. Following are excerpts from a fictional book “Blog Hosting for Dummies” which was written fictionally by me sometime in the past. Click on the picture to the right to see a bigger picture of the cover of the book.

• You have an identity of your own on the internet. http://www.srajaram.com/ definitely sounds better than srajaram.blogger.com
• You can have your own email ids on your domain. I don’t use this option, though
• Search engines rank (SEOs say so) content on domains higher than that on free hosts. So, your writing might receive a bigger audience.
• If you intend to make money through your blog, having your domain is a better option as blogs on own domains are preferred over blogs on free hosts by many ad networks.
• Buying a domain costs just under 10 USD a year and this small investment or rather the lack of could prove very costly in the future in case you end up becoming really famous!

Of course, moving to your own domain has its share of worries

• Where do you host it ? There are hundreds of companies offering hosting and which one do i choose?
• Hosting a site costs $$$. Currently, i host it on blogger and it doesn’t cost me a cent.
• Blogger/Wordpress never goes down. What if my host goes down and my site if offline for a long time?’
• I don’t know HTML !! How do i “write” pages then ?

I hope that this post would cover most of your apprehensions about hosting your blog on a platform other than blogger or wordpress. The easiest way is to buy a domain name and redirect it to your blogger blog.

I buy my domains at GoDaddy. Their interface is clean and clear. They also offer a free hosting package where you can host up to 5 pages. Of course, the godaddy ads appear on these pages. One thing about buying hosting plans with free domain names. Avoid buying the domain name through the hosting company. You never know whether the domain is really yours or registered under the hosting company’s name. Domains are cheap, buy them yourselves.

I am assuming that you are planning to “buy” your hosting package. Firstly, these are things you need not worry about when looking for a hosting package i.e not look at what the company says on its pages

• Support providing by the company. Almost all companies say that they provide 24/7 support. Don’t trust them. Search around on google for “ support” and you might find comments by people who have had first-hand experience with the support from the company.
• Uptime reliability. I have never seen a hosting company give a figure less than 99.5% uptime. Do a similar search on google to find out the reality.
• Type of hosting. 99% of the blogs go for Shared Hosting which is the default. If your blog is really popular or you expect it to have hits in the range of a few million a month, then you should go for a dedicated server i.e. dedicated hosting. Dedicated hosting costs bigtime $$$.

Things you should be concerned about

• Space provided. Actually this is not much of a concern as most hosting plans give at least a GB of space which is too much in my opinion for an ordinary blog. Of course, if your blog primarily contains photos or videos, then you might run out of space fast. What i do to avoid this situation is that i upload all my photos to Google Picasa Web and then link to it. I don’t know whether this is perfectly legal, as i know that it is not with flickr. If you have videos too, why not put them on youtube or the numerous other clones and just link to them?
• Bandwidth. If your blog becomes super-popular, then you need to worry about it. If any site says “unlimited bandwidth”, then be assured that they are lying. Any bandwidth in the range of 100 GB a month is more than enough. I never thought that i would reach this limit, but it happened with this post on Aishwarya Rai’s wedding pictures. Also check with the company about their exact policy on this. My hosting company told me that, for my plan, the bandwidth shouldn’t exceed 1MB a minute.
• Number of domains, sub-domains, number of email boxes. These aren’t really a concern for the novice blogger. But bigger the better. I am yet to create a sub-domain on my domain, but i know that i get x sub-domains free.
• Databases. If you are planning to install wordpress as your blogging platform on your domain, then this should concern you. Make sure that the hosting company doesn’t charge you extra for mysql databases. Most packages offer them free. I haven’t used any database until now for my website. Of course, if you are geeky, go ahead and try!

If you don’t want to get into the hassle of writing HTML or installing wordpress, just create your blog in blogger and post the pages onto your domain, which is what i do. I hope that this small article helps you a bit in establishing your blog on your own domain. At the end of it, if you want to “Win a year’s worth of hosting at BloggingTips.com” , just enter the competition at BloggingTips and hope that you win. If i ‘Win a year’s worth of hosting at BloggingTips.com’ , then i shall probably introduce the Cyprus Blog. In fact, I am planning to make the switch for my Hindu crossword blog to its own domain soon, by hopefully winning the competition on Blogging Dosh.

If you want to blog daily, but don’t find the time for this on a regular basis, Ms.Danielle’s blog site has an interesting tip for busy bloggers (applies to wordpress users).

If you like this article, digg it by clicking this button

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written by Rajaram S