My second cartoon character! Accept this profile or create your own if you wish!

Name: Bhoopathy... "Big Boss" Bhoopathy
Character: Dangerous
Curriculum vitae: Gold smuggler, law breaker, gangland boss
Habits: Plays chess with himself
Punch line: "I'm a ba..a..ad man."

No boss can be without a sidekick or a hatchet-man. Blockhead... er... "Rockhead" Joe is his (not so) perfect assistant.

Name: "Rockhead" Joe
Character: Umm...?
Curriculum vitae: Right hand man
Habits: Scratches his head often
Punch line: "Duh... boss"

Having always been satisfied with KDE as the desktop for my Linux box, I decided to experiment with other options in this area, particularly the lightweight window managers. I've been discovering quite a few good ones and I thought I would share the results here.

I'll say right away that if you're perfectly happy with KDE or Gnome, there's no reason to switch. As a matter of fact, I maintain that KDE is the current champion of desktop Linux and I won't be totally giving it up either. However, what I can offer you is a glimpse of some of the alternatives to the two heavyweights of desktop Linux should you be curious enough to experiment. And for those with older hardware and slower machines, these desktop alternatives could really be handy because they're lightweight, configurable and extremely useable. I'll focus on IceWM here, because that's what I've picked as my window manager of choice. Here's a screenshot of IceWM on my Debian desktop with the rox file manager running.

IceWM is actually like a good cross between a WM and a DE. Unlike most WMs, it comes with a few bells and whistles like a little taskbar and panel to hold your minimized and background apps and an application "start" menu. But what really attracted me was the GUI IceWM configuration editor and the menu editor icepref and iceme respectively: no messing around with config files. The basic configuration is quite simple and the UI is very intuitive, especially for users of DEs like KDE and even Windows. What would attract many people is the fact that it comes with a large number of themes. I've chosen SilverXP as my theme because it looks sleek and nice. I've also configured the focus to follow the mouse and made the menus navigable without clicking. This gives IceWM a smoother feel. A couple of things to note, though. Like most lightweight WMs it doesn't come with an integrated session manager, meaning that you cannot save session data whenever you exit IceWM. You will probably need to install and configure one to suit your needs. Another is the fact that you may need to manually create and manage your applications menu in IceWM because your distro might not use a common menu configuration file which works will most WMs and DEs. Luckily in Debian, I was able to solve this problem by using the update-menus utility which creates a "Debian" menu with all the apps installed on my system. Thirdly you will need to configure xscreensaver daemon to load automatically at startup if you want a screensaver option. These issues might not be serious, but they could potentially annoy people used to the conveniences of a full-fledged desktop environment which are taken for granted. The menu problem, in particular, could be a real show-stopper for some users. But on the whole, I would say that IceWM is a minimum fuss WM and you will probably find that you need to do very little initial work to get it to work the way you want.

So would I recommend IceWM? If you want an easy to use WM that's a lot lighter than a full fledged desktop environment, I think you can't go too wrong with IceWM. However, before you make a decision, you might be interested in checking out others like WindowMaker, Enlightenment, and even Xfce which is a full-fledged but lightweight DE. As a matter of fact, I use Xfce on Slackware and I find it to be an excellent desktop environment too. Enlightenment is another good looking GUI and if you're fond of eye-candy it would be a good choice. However, I am not the biggest fan of fluxbox, because it's just too basic by default and requires quite a bit of work initially to become useable. However it has a dedicated fanbase and being extremely lean and mean, it should be really responsive on older hardware.

I've tried them all and I've chosen IceWM. You might pick another one. There are quite a few WMs and DEs I've not even mentioned here and which I haven't had time to play with: the number of options are overwhelming. Did I mention freedom of choice? I'm discovering it every day with Linux.

Titanium_geek gave me a very good idea and so I thought I would start posting my cartoon characters here! Nothing serious, just a series of anonymous characters to satisfy my own creative thirst. I used to do a lot of this a few years ago and Titanium_geek's cute cartoon reminded me of my old hobby. Disclaimer: any resemblance to any real-life character, living or dead, is purely coincidental!

Here's the first one. Raakaa, the rogue. Colourful, ain't he? You can fill in his bio yourself. Let your imagination run wild!

Mega Man X recently brought up a very valid question about blogs in the LinuxQuestions.org forums. Here's what he has to say on the subject:

But what is annoying me the most today, are indeed the blogs. I was just searching the web for some Ubuntu backports for Breezy and I hit a blog with a guy talking about Chuck Norris. The whole thing is a mess (not that the Internet has ever been organized either)

I think somehow soon we will need an advanced search option on google to bypass useless blogs, if that's not possible already. Does blogs annoy anyone else? Or even worse... do you have a blog? If so, why?. Is it stuff worth reading or is it just like a diary? Because I believe peoples browsing the web could care less that your dog or cat is sick, what you've ate at school and what you did last summer...

Source: LinuxQuestions.org forums

I must say that the concerns raised are quite valid although I beg to differ on the subject of severity of the problem. The vast network of interlinked blogs out there have certainly gained a degree of visibility on many search engines out there. And I have to accept that a large number people are increasingly annoyed by the growing number of online diaries and journals that are sprouting up like wild mushrooms by the day. The sheer number of blogs out there render most search engines helpless in filtering them out completely. It's not merely a question of blocking out all blogspot.com addresses out there for instance because the problem goes way beyond that.

Because, as end users of the vast ocean called the internet, we cannot change anything - that's for certain. Moaning and groaning about it will not help. Rather, we should adapt to this situation and explore techniques to separate the wheat from the chaff. And believe me, while useless personal blogs have grown, the number of quality websites providing a rich wealth of information and education have grown as well. Ultimately it's a question of perception and how well one is tuned to take the good and filter out the rest. Crap is crap, whether you find it on a blog or whether you find it on a corporate or business website; whether you find it in a personal diary or in a regular, mainstream newspaper.

Let's admit it. Searching the web is inherently limited because while we can input keywords to search for occurrence of words, we cannot input ideas to search for relevant content. Let me take an example: today I want to read any essay which talks about the issue of "quality over quantity." It is extremely hard to find a generic one on this particular subject simply by entering quality over quantity in google, because my search has more to do with the idea rather than the actual keywords. Google obviously doesn't recognize that fact and hence provides less than satisfactory results. It throws up topical pages on other issues which have these words "quality over quantity" and not an essay dedicated to this topic as such.

Another factor is that search engines don't necessarily index every single website out there and that SE ratings can sometimes be seriously flawed. Search engines can only look for quantitative factors: number of links pointing to a site, number of occurrences of keywords but not necessarily how those occurrences are relevant to the search on hand. In other words, the search engine cannot rate the quality of those sites which have a higher rank. We try to cut down this discrepancy by refining searches, but ultimately if a site is not indexed by google, that site will not occur in google results, no matter how hard we try. Many times, I've given up on searching because the quality of the results have simply not justified the time spent in doing it. Do a broad search and you're swamped with irrelevant results. Do a more refined one and you get only two hits, both of which have almost nothing to do with what you wanted to find in the first place. This has been my experience more often than not.

I am certainly no expert on search engine technology, but I believe it has more to do with the skewed methodology rather than the content. And I also think it's a by-product of search engines not being able to keep up with the current growth of the world wide web. But blogs are but drops in the ocean. I don't think they are so important that they get higher weightage in SE ratings just because they are linked to a dozen similar blogs. On the contrary my observation is that blogs certainly do not "dominate" search results, although they might admittedly have more visibility in searches these days. And you certainly get irrelevant results from other websites as much as you do from personal blogs.

I think singling out blogs is unfair. There are certainly useless blogs out there, but there are worse kinds of nonsense going on in the internet and in much higher volume than inane personal ramblings or diary entries of a bored person. Generalized observations such as "blogs are the crap of the internet" miss this perspective. While I admit that search engine results need to keep improving over time and blogs probably have to be filtered out where irrelevant, it's certainly not such an important issue when we think about the other kinds of trash littered all over cyberspace. If the world wide web is polluted, blogs certainly are nothing more than minute specks of dust in a room full of rotting, stinking garbage.

I recently downloaded and installed Opera 8.5 in my Debian box being curious on two counts: firstly, how it compares to Firefox with regard to features and secondly how well it complies with W3C standards including rendering of XHTML and its CSS capabilities. The fact that Opera is now free for use without ad banners was an added incentive to give it a try.

When evaluating any alternative to an existing product or service, I usually consider two things:

1. Functional benefits of the new product over the old one: namely what is the reason for switching? Are there any added benefits of using product A instead of product B?
2. Ease of migrating from one to the other. How much do I have to re-learn to effectively use the new product and how much work do I have to put in to make the new product as effective as the old one?

In the case of a web browser, it really boils down to this: does Opera give me something that Firefox doesn't and is it easy to migrate existing settings and bookmarks from Firefox to Opera?

First things first. It is possible to import Firefox bookmarks into Opera. I'm not sure whether it's possible to import passwords, form data and other settings because I never save them anyway even in Firefox. However what I can say is that Opera does have a very enhanced form data and password management system should you choose to use it. Some users might like this. I don't. I turned it off straight away.

That brings me to the features of Opera. It's definitely richer in features than a barebones install of Firefox (that is, without extensions). And it does take quite a bit of getting used to, particularly for somebody tuned to the convenience of Firefox. I turned off most of the features I was not comfortable with, the Wand in particular. However I should mention that one feature I can live with is the handy, integrated RSS reader. The tabbed browsing is quite non-intrusive and smooth. And Opera definitely feels a lot more responsive than Firefox in the way it loads up web pages. It seems to display page elements faster than Firefox and it also displays the loading progress in a nice way.

How well does it render websites? Well, it's hard to judge on a few sites, but it seems to be right up there with regard to standards compliance. In fact, it is the only browser I know of which supports outline numbering for the heading tags <h1>, <h2> and so on when specified in the CSS. Generally it displays most web pages in a standard way. However, I must mention that Firefox seems slightly better than Opera with regard to CSS. There are a few small, but noticeable glitches in the way Opera handles certain CSS elements. On a scale of 1 to 10 for rendering standard, Firefox would rank 9 and Opera would probably be 7 or 8 depending on how you critically you classify its flaws.

To sum up then, I definitely consider Opera to be right up there with Firefox. Maybe in some areas it even surpasses Firefox although it does have some peculiar quirks as well. But this brings me to a very valid question. Is there any reason for existing Firefox users to switch to Opera? With all its features, I am still not totally convinced why a diehard Firefox fan would want to switch. After all, Firefox became the phenomenon it is only because it cut down on all those features which made Mozilla notoriously bloated and allowed users to browse the web without the intrusiveness of a heavy interface. Opera isn't exactly intrusive and it sure isn't "heavy", but somehow it seems to lack the comfort factor which one associates with Firefox. Maybe it's because Firefox has earned such a solid reputation of being a safe and secure browser that it has become quite impossible for the average user to view any other browser in the same light.

All said and done, I think Opera is worth a try. Whether you switch completely to it or not, you will find it handy as a second browser on your system. Personally I won't be giving up Firefox and it'll probably remain my main browser, but I am not going to uninstall Opera either. And that really is the essence of freedom of choice.

Some time back, I took a conscious decision that I won't be taking part in serious online debates any more, at least not on a regular basis. Now there is a good reason for this and before you think that it is a case of battle weariness just after a heavy round of flame war, I want to correct that impression. I haven't been into any serious discussion for months now and I am actually beginning to enjoy being away from them and being able to ignore being drawn into them. But more on this later.

Firstly I would like to analyze this issue from a personal or first-person point of view. I think the issue I want to address goes deeper than merely being tired of flame wars, bad as they are. As a frequent observer of online forums and communities I have found a fundamental problem with debating online. There are a couple of factors here. Debating is a tough art and demands a considerable amount of time and energy. Constructing a logically sound argument to put forth your views, especially on emotive topics like politics or religion (and particularly religion) puts a tax on your brain and undeniably puts you into an "auto-censor" mode where you try to cut down your emotion in favour of logic and argument. This is a tough balancing act, particular with regard to issues which affect you personally and ideas which you hold close to your heart. There is a fundamental problem, I think, in communicating certain things by the written word across the electronic medium in a multi-way, public conversation. One being that you really cannot convey emotions that well - they tend to get misinterpreted most of the time by different people to whom you would rather not relate on a one-to-one basis. Another is that you are forced to sound "politically" correct by taking up positions which you would not care to defend when asked to do so in a real-world face-to-face scenario. I think writing down thoughts tend to clarify them too much sometimes and shows up your thoughts differently from what you might actually feel. Blurred or neutral points or view become too sharp and sometimes sting when unintended. I found more on one occasion being called upon to defend what I thought was a light-hearted quip and which was misunderstood by others as offensive in tone. And no, smilies don't help either. Rather they might in fact show you up as a hypocrite. Sometimes you're forced to apologize for something which you might have felt was a perfectly acceptable remark just to cool things down. Believe me, you may not feel the effect of a single apology at that time, but they make you more wary, more cautious and reluctant to participate over a period of time.

All these are personal issues. The other side of the coin is the debates actually become quite boring, repetive and mentally tiring when continued beyond a point. In real life, time and space constraints act as natural impedances to prolonged debates. Unfortunately, the online medium tends to overcome barriers rather too easily. A public internet forum or discussion group, being available to anybody at any given time, allows people to carry on debates to ridiculous lengths when you would rather see it die down after a certain point. Months-old debates continue to be revived by misguided or over-enthusiastic new debaters just to throw their "2 cents in." And the cycle continues. These debates become a nuisance just to observe, let alone participate actively in because every fifth reply is an echo of a previous one without any new thoughts added to it.

Talking of people, I want to say something which might offend some, but I will say it anyway. In fact it might apply equally to me as well in some instances and I accept that risk in saying it out. Most people who participate in debates refuse to participate in a meaningful manner. I'm not talking of mere sensible participation which anybody can achieve by posting a reasonably relevant reply to any topic on hand. The point I want to make is that people ought to do their homework and know their subject before they debate. This goes for anything: be it science, religion, politics, art, literature or even Linux verus Windows. Unfortunately people prefer to pour out their opinions instantly (in the "heat of the moment," you might say) without respecting facts. They prefer to push the "reply" button without caring to see what your point of view really is and what are the relevant points you've raised. You might have spent a good fifteen or twenty minutes constructing a perfectly sound, fact-filled argument only to be rejected instantly by a moron who doesn't read beyond two lines of what you've written. They don't flame actively, but by ignoring you, they actually insult your intelligence implicitly. This, I think, is one of the prime reasons why flame wars occur in the first place. More than the actual variance in points of view which can be addressed, refusal to acknowledge is the prime reason for flame wars. Now, these people might not be, in reality, be trolls but they can appear to be so by their thoughtlessness.

Let's face it. Some topics are best left to the experts: science and religion in particular. Academics armed with more facts and knowledge are in a much better position to debate these topic on rather more solid ground than laymen. People who rely only on their personal experience, opinions and feelings might not find too much common ground for any meaningful discussion with other lay people. On the other hand, academics who've done their research and who have a reasonably knowledge of not only own areas of speciality but also an understanding of why some things are the way they are, tend to go deeper, probe better and get answers which might actually help them and others. With due respect to all laymen including techie "geeks", I don't really think they are in a position to carry on religious or scientific debates. I have learnt to respect that and I humbly raise my hands to show that I don't have more than a cursory knowledge on some issues and I would rather stay out of such discussions than come forward and arrogantly proclaim my ignorance. This is not about freedom of speech, but rather about credibility which I have talked about in an earlier article. It's about respecting knowledge when you see it and acknowledging your own ignorance. It's also about owning up to factual mistakes. Unfortunately all I see on most online debates is finger-pointing, accusations and sometimes, elitist arrogance. It's not to say that you should apologize sincerely each time you make an error but merely to acknowledge that you have made it. Sadly, people shy away from such niceties which are in fact, the heart and soul of debating.

I want to conclude by saying that I'm not against debates. It's just that I personally find them more stressful, unproductive and meaningless as each day goes on. There are no winners or losers in an online debate, but only a lot of keyboard-weary fingers at the end of the day. Ultimately that bigot will remain a bigot, the racist will remain a racist, a religious zealot will remain a religious zealot, the liberal will remain liberal and an atheist will remain an atheist. Nothing really changes. In fact, over a period of time, I've learned to predict how certain people will react to certain topics. They sure didn't change their opinions or attitudes just because some faceless internet debater like me told him that he was right and they were wrong even by using sound logic and solid facts. And I'm sure I didn't change either. That ultimately is the clincher. I didn't gain anything by online debating, but by staying out of it I find myself more active and productive in other activities. It has also freed up my creativity to pursue other interests online and made me more relaxed about participating in a community in a non-controversial and pleasant manner. The ability to ignore serious debates on controversial topics hasn't come easy, but the freedom that it has given me is worth whatever price I've paid in the process of learning it the hard way.

Titaniumgeek brought up a minor issue with regard to blogger-powered blogs that I had noticed before, but hadn't paid sufficient attention to earlier. It is about having to "refresh" the browser before the changes appear on the blog.

I guess the reason is simple enough. Unless systems like WordPress or bBlog (which you install on your own server and are live scripts) Blogger doesn't use dynamic server side scripting like PHP or MySQL to generate its page every time you request it. It has to "publish" the blog into HTML once you make the changes. So although the web page is technically updated, your browser doesn't recognize it since the older page has already been cached. With dynamic blogs the server side script when executed automatically loads the blog from the database each time it is requested and so you don't have this problem.

This is a minor issue, but quite annoying in the long run. Hopefully blogger will come up with ways to avoid this problem in future.

Being very conscious of web standards compliance, I have been working hard over the last couple of days to clean up the code in this site and I can finally say that I have achieved what I wanted: this blog now validates to XHTML 1.0 Strict. Apart from this I have also cleaned up the CSS code to ensure that there are no warnings or errors. You can verify compliance to this by clicking on the W3C logos in the sidebar on any page of the site. If you do find any errors or warnings, I'd be glad if you could inform me.

Now if this site doesn't render correctly with Internet Explorer, send just Microsoft a mail, won't you?

If you're like me and you find your list of "to-visit" sites ever expanding by the day, you would find a desktop feed aggregator a real must-have. It's a great way to get the updates on the latest news, your favourite blogs and forum communities all in one place like a desktop mail client. If you're unfamiliar with syndication, here's a basic introduction to RSS.

There are plenty of free desktop aggregators around. I, for one, use Akregator, which is a KDE desktop feed aggregator. I highly recommend it because it renders the feed summaries in HTML and you can even view the full website without having to open another browser window. For those who prefer Gnome/GTK, Straw is a good option too. Here's a screenshot of Akregator running on my Debian desktop.

Firefox also has a live bookmark feature which you can use to subscribe to websites that provide RSS syndication. Websites which have a feed will display a small icon like this in the bottom-right corner of your browser which you can click to add the feed to your bookmarks. This is a good option for those of you who prefer to use the browser, though I personally find a full-fledged aggregator to be more convenient

On the other side of the fence, if you are a webmaster and your site keeps getting updated on a frequent basis, consider providing RSS/Atom syndication for your users if you haven't already. There's no reason not to and in fact, most of the commonly used blog scripts, forums and web content management systems have this feature built-in to them. If not, it's quite easy to get a plug-in or a hack which would work with your particular system. In most cases, it's quite simple to provide a basic feed for your readers and it can enhance their experience of your site. A small, but thoughtful feature like this would go a long way in bringing back visitors to your website.

I had mentioned in this article that the latest update to phpBB was a whopper, especially to those who had heavily modified boards. Well, earlier this week, I managed to successfully apply the upgrade to 2.0.18 and though there was a little niggle with the Last Visit Mod, it wasn't anything serious and there was a patch to fix it as well.

To those who are deferring their upgrades from 2.0.17, I must say that this update wasn't as bad as it looks. Certainly the sheer number of files to edit makes this a lot more tedious than previous upgrades, but in reality, I found that a lot of those files had just one or two lines of changes to the code. I'll share a few general tips on how to make the code changes manually.

First of all, phpBB has released a very good guide in HTML describing the code changes. I suggest you download it first and go through the changes carefully before you start modifying the forum. It is important that you first upload the install/update_to_latest.php file and run it on your forum before you apply the upgrade.

Now on how to start. Firstly I would recommend creating a test forum offline. If you have a local web server running, it's ideal. You can download your forum and actually replicate it offline. This requires a bit of tweaking with your configuration files, but it's not a big deal. I did it on my Debian server. It's quite easy if you know the stuff. On the other hand, if you cannot have a test server, it's fine. Just go ahead and make the changes, but be sure to keep a back up of all the changed files in a separate folder offline. In any case, take a full forum backup and a database backup for double safety. I cannot stress the importance of this vital step enough.

The actual code changes can be quite tedious and in some places a little tricky. It's a chore. Take plenty of time over it. You can even do it over a couple of days if you wish. I made a mistakes in the first attempt - a small typo. Never apply your changes live before cross-checking first. It might take a little bit of extra effort, but it should save you a lot of work later if something goes wrong. If you have the luxury of testing it on a test forum like me, do it. It's a great way to make sure that nothing is obviously wrong and you've not made any typos. Finally upload your changed files, take a coffee break and hope for the best! It should work fine if you had done all the changes correctly.

If you have a very heavily modded board, the hardest part would be to find out whether any of them have been broken by the upgrade. In some cases, it might not even be obvious that there's something wrong. Through phpBBHacks I found out that a few mods are known to be broken with this update. Luckily most of them can be fixed quite easily. I suggest that if you have any problems with the upgrade, you ask at the very helpful community there. Help will certainly be forthcoming. Happy upgrading!

It's amusing how Ten Sports insists on dragging up old India-Pakistan encounters in Sharjah, going more than a decade into the past. Incidentally they invariably tend to show matches which India lost. And while I can understand that Ten Sports has limited footage of Cricket from the past in comparison to some of its competitors and is not a particularly India-friendly channel in this regard (take ESPN-Star in contrast - they actually have a regular series called India Glorious!), still, I don't think we need to keep seeing those old matches over and over again. It was even more amusing when they showed some matches of the more recent India's tour of Pakistan and insisted on showing the matches where India lost, for instance the ODI played at Peshawar! It is another matter that India drubbed Pakistan 3-2 in the ODIs and 2-1 in the Test Series - such a historic series it was and yet they can only pick on those games where Pakistan won. Oh, well!

Anyway, going back to Sharjah, it brought back memories of some of the lowest points in Indian cricket at that time. The infamous Aaqib Javed hat trick was one (I think I remember seeing that match). The Javed Miandad last ball six was another (I didn't watch this one, however). Watching those matches are depressing, in a sense because we can almost smell the Indian batsmen's fear of the Pakistan quickies, particularly Wasim and Waqar. Actually things weren't so bad for India going even back. But again, you wouldn't expect Ten Sports to show those games.

Whatever it was, it's an interesting exercise to compare the past with the present. To see where India went wrong in those days (of course, some might insist India agreeing to play at Sharjah might have been the biggest mistake). It was a very strong pro-Pakistani crowd back then and the umpiring was more than dubious. Some of the leg-before decisions that I recall were pathetic. And of course, Wasim and Waqar, not to mention Aaqib Javed were at the peak of their careers. Pakistan also seemed to have such a strong batting line-up and India seemed just mentally unprepared to challenge their hosts. We had a few bright spots now and then, but they were few, indeed.

Later on in the 90s, Sharjah became a more neutral venue, thanks mostly to the expatriate Indian population and the crowds were almost always 50-50. In spite of this, Pakistan continued to be successful there and India continued to have a bad time. And of course, other opponents like Sri Lanka began to emerge and they tormented the Indians on the slow pitches. Venkatesh Prasad and Srinath used to get clobbered mercilessly at the hands of Jayasuriya and Saeed Anwar and we didn't have too strong an attack to back them up either. Indian bowlers never could get used to the conditions there and the toss always seemed to be against India. And you had just a couple of fielders in Azharuddin and Jadeja who could lift the spirit of the team. Sachin Tendulkar carried the whole team on his shoulders in those days. Which reminds me, the only bright spot which remains in my memory for India at Sharjah is the glorious back-to-back centuries of Sachin against Australia in 1997-98 which helped India lift the Coca-Cola cup.

Of late, we rarely see any Cricket at Sharjah. The match-fixing and betting scandal ensured that India wouldn't play there any more. And Sharjah depends heavily on sub-continent participation to make a real success of a tournament. And Pakistan-Sri Lanka encounters, absorbing as they are, rarely reach the heights of an India-Pakistan classic. On the whole, maybe it is a good thing that India stopped playing at Sharjah some years back and allowed the team to shrug off the ghosts of the past. Having said that, maybe this present Indian team could go there without fear of failure. Pakistan sure isn't the same team that mentally dominated a beaten India ten years ago and the script could probably be rewritten today. It would be interesting indeed. I don't know when India would go back to Sharjah or whether they would at all, but who knows? Time will tell.

Picture Courtesy: in.sports.yahoo.com

Of late the trend seems to be blogging about blogging. You know, the buzz words: blogosphere, del.icio.us, tagging, social bookmarking, technorati, web 2.0, blogroll, live bookmarks, Flock... it just goes on and on and I am sure I have missed a quite a lot here. Many bloggers have commented on the importance of these tools to bloggers and how utilizing these web resources are critical to successful blogging.

I don't have a problem with embracing technology even though I find many of them quite bewildering. As a matter of fact, I have tried to understand what "blogroll" really is and to be frank I have only a vague idea of what many of all these new terms mean. I am just getting started as I only recently signed up with Technorati and I still have no idea why it's important to get "tagged." What I do know is that these people who talk about blogging success seem to emphasize a lot on getting yourself a higher search-engine rank, getting more hits on your blog and making more money through ads. They also tell you how you should blog, what you should blog about and how much you should blog to become successful.

I do have a problem with people who try to tell me I have to do certain things and blog in a certain way to be successful: you know, the "10 ways to blogging success" type. They miss the point. What exactly would you define as success? It is so subjective that it's hard to even find any reference point, let alone describe it.

Would you define success as getting more number of hits on your website? Sure, there are plenty of ways to do this. Exchange links with every Tom, Dick and Harry's blog and get a higher rank on google and Technorati. Load up your sidebar with links to hundreds of blogs who link back to you. Or even spend some money to get listed on AdWords. Just want to get more comments? Find any crap blog, post a vague, hypocritical comment praising the author and leave behind your link with your name. At least three out of five will reciprocate by leaving vague, hypocritical comments on yours - you know, the "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" routine. Or do you define success as just enjoying what you're doing, period? Lucky you! You don't need to do a thing. Just be yourself.

Well, whatever be your definition of success, I guess many of us just want a fair combination of all: site traffic, community interaction and popularity. There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting all this. However, each blogger has to define how much they're willing to sacrifice just to become popular. I want more traffic, but am I willing to link to any random crap that I find just so that I can get a reciprocal link and improve my SEO rating? Or do I want to plaster my links on several other blogs with useless messages just so that the author will check out mine? Do I want to hypocritically praise just about anybody to get a praise in return? I want popularity, but do I want to write in a certain way just to get popular? Should I "play" to my audience by writing on topics which I don't a crap about? Do I have to write only on particular issues just so that my blog appears to be more focussed? Or do I write anything I want to irrespective of whether my readers will like it or not?

I think every blogger has to answer these questions in his/her own way. I don't condemn other ways, but personally I would care about whom I link to. In fact, if I like a blog or a website, I would link to it regardless or whether I get a link back or not. I would care about community building without necessarily wanting to be the most popular. I would care about how whose blogs I hang out on and do so whole-heartedly by either commenting usefully or not commenting at all. (On that note, I would add that one of the most challenging things for bloggers looking to build a community is finding other blogs which actually interest them. In spite of so many search engines and tools, it's exceedingly difficult finding bloggers with whom you can actually relate to among all those thousands out there).

I would write about what I want to without worrying whether my audience will like it or find it relevant or not. I generally tend to write serious articles, but occasionally I do post an "intermission" type entry just to add a little spice. I'm a great believer that if you have something to say, the right audience will ultimately find their way to you. On the other hand, if you want to "play" to your audience, I have no problem with that either: it's just that I wouldn't do it. Many people think that focus is important, but I don't think it is such a critical thing. I just define success in the quality of my writing in my own eyes. So I have scripted my own formula. Have you?

Ultimately it's about finding your level of comfort. Whether you agree with my point of view or not depends entirely on your definition of success and the reason you blog in the first place. If popularity at any cost is your way, by all means go ahead and do the things which will make you popular. As I said no way is better or worse. But that means there is no "cookbook" or "recipe" to success either and that is my point: it's up to each of us to find our own formula and be happy with it.

Ever wondered how you would sound if you spoke in a different accent? Well, the dialectizer solves the problem, at least with regard to the written word. Check out The Dialectizer. A hilarious time killer! :mrgreen:

Here I am "speaking" in Cockney.

I had also linked it in my side menu under humour, but thought I would make a post about it anyway.

When people, including the expert cricket commentators, euphorically start singing praises to the attitude, professionalism and aggression of the current Indian team and shower plaudits on the selectors for the infusion of young blood into the team as though all these are something totally new, I think they miss a point. While all their enthusiasm has a solid basis, the point is that, these things haven't cropped up all of a sudden out of thin air. After all, what we're seeing now is the result of quality hard work, fundamental changes in attitude and selection policy: all of which began some years ago. It's difficult to find an exact point where things started changing, but I think the era of true professionalism began when John Wright took over as coach of the Indian team. And it was under Ganguly that we found that edge of aggression that was missing in Indian cricket for a long time. It has been slow but steady progress and while attitudes have been changing, they haven't changed in a day. The process has to go on till we can challenge the best teams in the world.

In analysing the recent successes of Indian cricket, let me begin with the selectors. I think they showed great courage in infusing young, untested players into the Indian team in this series. They might seem like gambles which have paid off in a big way, but I guess we shouldn't really be surprised at the success of these moves. After all, the selectors haven't really gambled in the dark. On the contrary, the players who've made it into the current team have been part of this changing system. This can be best seen in their attitude, professionalism and aggression which the system has brought about.

Secondly, I think we need to put all these successes into the correct perspective. The signs are indeed encouraging that we have so many young players jostling for places in the team with seniors. True, we have won five out of six matches now with these new players contributing, but India has always been a strong side at home in One Day cricket with the exception of the last couple of years. Besides we've always been good at bilateral series, while triangular tournaments have been our biggest problem. And, as Geoffrey Boycott recently commented on Star Sports, we have yet to see how well these young players adapt to the longer variety of the game, stronger opposition and playing overseas under different, sometimes difficult conditions. So there are still a lot of things left to prove for this new bunch.

On the positive side, I think that the key difference between Indian teams of the past and the current team has not been just the young blood in the Indian team, but the number of players now fighting to make the team. There seems to be an endless crop of young fast bowlers emerging from the ranks. While there have always been "youngsters waiting in the wings", the difference now is that the talent pool seems to be much larger as well as richer. Today these players no longer seem afraid of International cricket. They want to belong there. They do not go by reputation and they are more assertive and aggressive. Eight or ten years ago, it was hard to look beyond Javagal Srinath for a quality fast bowler. Today we have plenty of young fast bowlers and many of them can bowl in the 140 km/hr range to boot. Fielding has hit another high point in Indian cricket and it's no longer just one or two of them who're carrying the team. The situation now is that we have eleven decent fielders and three or four who are outstanding. And last, but not least, wicket-keeping standards have improved tremendously in the last few years. No longer do we have to look at make-shift arrangements and compromise on the quality of wicket-keeping just to include another batsman. Sure, Dhoni and Dinesh Karthik aren't perfect, but they are miles ahead of the likes of Deep Dasgupta and Parthiv Patel (who started well, but really deteriorated alarmingly before he was dropped) and their batting is better too.

So Indian Cricket indeed is indeed the land of opportunity. What's really different now is that the current players are grabbing their opportunities with both hands. They understand that the price of opportunity is performance and can be nothing else. The new trend I see is that the selectors are willing to give more players more opportunities, but they aren't going to wait for ten or fifteen matches for a particular player to prove himself. And this doesn't go just for the "new" players - it goes for the senior players as well. The new mantra is - or should be - "five or six chances at most - and then you're out if you don't show any signs of performance." And that, in my mind, is really the biggest difference in Indian cricket today.

Picture courtesy: uk.sports.yahoo.com

I have finally designed my own WordPress theme from scratch. I would sure like some feedback on the theme, including errors found if any. There are a few problems rendering with IE 6 (arghh!) mainly due to IE's CSS limitations, with a few tweaks I am sure I can fix those.

I have always hated binary downloads: you know - the files you cannot download except by clicking on a link on a popup and which hides the real download URL behind a redirection page or a script. The kinds where you cannot just copy the URL and allow your download manager to connect. But when I experienced it again with none other than ATI, I have really discovered a new level of hatred for this phenomenon. I just wanted to download the latest ATI Linux driver for my Radeon 9600Pro card, so I went to their Linux driver download page. The download size is about 60 MB in size so I fired up KGet. Nasty surprise! KGet only downloads a stub HTML file of about a few KB whenever I try to use the link. The real download URL is hidden behind a redirection or a script. The only way to download it is to use the browser.

Here is a message from this stub HTML file:

You're using a download manager. Download managers usually offer to search for alternative download locations. While this is nice for the user, it's bad for the webmaster because a download which originated on another site could theoretically still be downloaded from this site, without anybody knowing.
Workaround to this restriction: Set up your download manager to send a HTTP referrer, and when you click on a link on the ATI site the download will then be authorized.

The people at ATI ought to know better than putting me through all this hassle as a user of an ATI chipset product! I still don't understand their workaround instruction which is about as cryptic and user-unfriendly as it can get. For that matter, the whole ATI website is a mess of cryptic URLs and "authorized pages" which cannot be linked to properly. I'd sure like to meet their webmaster. I have a thing or two to say to him/her.

I can understand protecting important content using binary downloads. Probably software you wouldn't want anybody to download just like that without a password. But a free driver, for God's sake! If the download size was insignificant (maybe a few hundred KB maximum) it doesn't really matter. But when you have a huge download of several megabytes, you'd better give a great reason for preventing people from downloading stuff using an ordinary download manager. There are still a lot of people in this world who're on slow speed connections including dial-up, you know! What can I say? As a webmaster you'd better respect them or you wouldn't win too many fans.

In cricketing terms, India were dew... sorry, er... due to lose a match after four wins in a row. It was a Sunday, it was a day-night affair and India played with an inexperienced bowling attack. It was Sri Lanka's best chance of notching up their first victory in this Videocon Cup. While I give Sri Lanka all credit for winning this match, I must say that they played in favourable conditions under lights. Sri Lankans love chasing under lights and India were left defending a mediocre score of 285 without a strong bowling attack to defend it.

The Indians didn't play badly. Though tempting, it would be unfair to label them complacent just because they lost a game after winning four in a row to seal the series. It was only natural that they wanted to give the younger players an opportunity to go out there and show their mettle with a tough season ahead. And to be honest, I think they did a fair job under the circumstances. However, the hostility of the conditions under lights with the dew taking over the outfield proved too much for these young bowlers. Hell, even stronger bowling sides like Pakistan and Australia have struggled with dewy conditions in the subcontinent over the years. It was too much to expect these guys to bowl out Sri Lanka on such a good batting track. By the way, I've never been the biggest advocate of playing day and night games particularly in India, because the playing conditions change drastically in the evening and give one side or the other an unfair advantage. I say this not because India lost and Sri Lanka won in this instance, but because in the larger scheme of things it takes the competitive edge out of cricket by not providing a level-playing field. Then again, cricket administrators have never seriously looked into this issue in the past because it's the "spectacle" and the "show" of playing under lights which count, not the cricketing aspect of the matter. So they continue to brush this issue aside year after year.

I strongly believe that India lost the game in the first half of the match, probably at the toss. Even as early as when Yuvraj came out to bat and struggled to get the ball off the square, I knew that it was not India's day. Talking of Yuvraj, he seems to have hit a rough patch. The problem with him seems to be in his mind more than with his bat, because he appears to be unsure whether his job is to defend or to attack - whether to graft for his runs by playing himself in or to play his natural game by going after the bowling. In that confusion, he's not really been doing anything at all with the bat. Unlike Kaif, he needs a more clear cut role in the team, because he is not comfortable batting at any slot that is given to him. Maybe it's an issue for Greg Chappell to look into.

I cannot explain the feeling or why I thought that way, but somehow I knew very early on in the match that Sri Lanka had a 90% chance of winning the match. In other words, it was almost certain. The best illustration of this trend was probably when Dhoni walked out to bat and walked back in after facing just one ball. He was a touch unlucky with the decision, but it kind of exemplified the day's play - maybe because it was a Sunday and maybe it was because it was a day-night affair. Whatever it was, it was just that kind of a day when the Indian batsmen gifted away their wickets just when they were starting to get going. Maharoof, the supersub hit the jackpot by running up and bowling and getting four wickets just like that. I don't think I've ever seen a less deserved four wicket haul than that. Luck sided the Sri Lankans all the way and to be fair, they earned their share of it by playing good cricket all through.

All in all, I think the Indians would gain a lot from this defeat if taken in the right spirit. Even though Sri Lanka won, it was a tough fight until the final few overs and the fielding standards the Indians maintained were excellent, the run out of Jayawardena being the highlight. The young players have now got some exposure in tough conditions and this experience should help them get mentally tougher. If anything, this defeat should sting them really hard because that's the way you come back and motivate yourself to perform in the next match. Just look at the Australians: they've come out and mercilessly decimated a hapless West Indies team in the first Test match at the Gabba. Since the Ashes defeat, they have looked much hungrier for success because they absolutely hate losing. They appear that much more motivated to prove that they are the best side in the world. This new-look Indian team should learn a few things from that. Win or lose, the attitude is what matters.

Picture courtesy: news.bbc.co.uk

I recently read an article on successful blogging and I think that while being well-meaning, the author basically failed to understand the wide range of bloggers with a whole different set of priorities, reasons and expectations while maintaining a blog. The blogosphere is a complex world out there and I think the author's recommendations cannot apply universally to many kinds of blogs and bloggers. I'll add my own thoughts to the points raised by the author. While I cannot copy-paste the full article here, I'll just say why I disagree with some of the key points. The quoted portions are in italics.

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home.

This need not be so. I think the power and flexibility of hosting your own blog is much more comfortable. Again, there is no hard and fast rule. I just think that the author should not assume that everybody out there who chooses a free option does so because he/she is a newbie. There are plenty of professional blogs out there hosted on blogspot.com.

You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you.

Why so? I have a wide range of interests which I want to write about. I find limiting the scope of a blog irksome and I like to explore my writing talents. Why should I write just about Linux? Or just about books? Why cannot I write about all things that I find interesting? After all, blogs can be topical or not. It's totally up to the author. Again, I don't say the point is wrong. All I say is that the should is a rather strong point here.

Update Daily (nothing less) This step is a must and not a suggestion.

Why is this a must? I know of some excellent blogs out there that have a good readership base and those blogs don't get updated daily. In fact, I would go the other route and say that those who update daily are actually running the risk of running out of interesting things to say and becoming stale and boring. I think that everybody should feel free to update when they want to. Not just because they *have* to. Too many bloggers become boring by repeating themselves on a daily basis. Just find your comfort zone, that's all.

It's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs

Simple: I don't want to make money off my blog. I am sure that there are many others who share the same opinion. Unless you're a celebrity or otherwise extraordinary, you will just grow old waiting.

Track Your Blog. How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors.

I agree with this point. Comments are nice though. I always appreciate a message or two, if only to get a little bit of feedback now and then.

Listen to Your Audience

When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful

I don't think one should write on something just to strengthen "keywords" on search engines. Again, the writer of this article seems to assume that every blogger out there wants traffic, traffic and more traffic. Nobody should write just to get read. People should write when they have something to say.

Use multiple blogging accounts (free) to attract more people.

See above.

Short & Concise

I'd rather make a stronger point by using more words if necessary rather than keep an article short just for the sake of keeping it short. I think each blogger has his own levels of verbosity and each blogger should find his/her own ideal word count. For the umpteenth time, no hard and fast rules.

Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much.

Not too much is the key. Use graphics lightly to keep load times to a minimum. Again, use graphics only when necessary. Not because X, Y or Z said so.

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal.

Every blog has its own content and style depends on the author. Again, though I agree that an informal way of writing is good, there is no hard and fast rule that such kinds of blogs are more successful than others.

Interact With Your Visitors

I actually agree with this point though I don't think that a "regular feature" is a must to keep visitors coming in. Again, only at my convenience.

Make Money

No thanks!

You're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service?

You don't need to be a professional to host your own blog. Take me, for instance.

Ok, so I am a bit critical of that article and I do think that the author has got it wrong on more than one point. I think the key issue is the failure to recognize that every blogger out there has his or own exclusive and personal reason for blogging which might not match other people's intentions. Notice how many "should"s and "must"s the author uses. I think there is a failure to appreciate the huge variety of blogs out there with so many different agendas. In other words, everybody has their own definition of success which need not match the definition of this author. But on the whole, I appreciate the efforts of the author in writing such an article to at least give me some points to think about even though I don't agree with many of them.

Here's a screen capture of my Debian desktop with KDE running. I have quite a lot of photos taken in Switzerland, Belgium and Germany by my mother on a business trip, which I use as wallpapers. Some breaktaking scenery! Here's just a sample. Notice the detail of the ripples in the water: just wonderful.

I installed SUSE Linux 10 a few days ago and I must say that I was quite impressed with this distro on the whole. It is one polished, professional Linux distribution with a smooth, painless installation procedure that is very beginner-friendly while at the same time being easily accessible to the expert user who wants to customize the whole process. I for example, needed to customize the partitions manually and also choose not to install a boot loader and it was quite easy to achieve this with the "expert" mode tools during the setup. At the same time, somebody who has a basic system can easily breeze through the installation with the default partitioning scheme. It all depends on the level of expertise and how much control you want over the process. For instance, if you have another Linux installed on your system, I suggest a custom partitioning scheme.

The installation of SUSE is basically a two-step process. First it installs the base system using only the first CD and then you reboot. Once you do and continue the installation by booting into the newly installed system, you get to configure your hardware, locale and system parameters and settings. Once this is done, you get a fully working Linux system. On my system at least, hardware detection was fully automated and I didn't get a single prompt for any settings. Of course, experts can choose to configure their hardware manually as well. It's painless, fast and easy. The downside of SUSE installation is that you need all 5 CDs even for a basic installation because the packages are spread across the CDs and you never know which essential package is on which CD unless you really dig deep to investigate individual package files. This was a definite downside because I was forced to download all 5 CDs before I could install SUSE. Of course, if you choose to buy a boxed set from Novell, you could avoid this hassle.

YaST is the real strength of SUSE, though. It's a fully integrated system configuration tool that does pretty much everything you might need from hardware, software, network configuration, server setup and other system administration. However though it's GUI, you will need to learn it and due to the sheer number of modules, you will need some time to really learn how to use it. On the other hand, a basic desktop user won't really need to do much system administration except software management.

While on the subject of package management, I want to talk a little more on this from the perspective of a Debian user. SUSE uses the RPM system and has a wide variety of packages available, but not surprisingly it comes nowhere close to matching the size of the Debian software repository, which has more than 15,000 official packages. Though this is understandable, I did find it irksome to note that there are no SUSE packages for gFTP and audacity, for instance. As a Debian user who is spoilt on the huge official software repository (not to mention those found on apt-get.org), I found this limitation to be a turn off. On the other hand, the default SUSE package repository is large enough for typical users who may not need all the stuff that I generally use. By the way, there might be SUSE repositories online which have unofficial SUSE packages of software not found in the CDs, but I must admit that I haven't really investigated this aspect yet.

One other minor issue is that the default desktop fonts are a bit odd but that can be easily corrected by installing the Microsoft core TrueType fonts as a patch in the YaST online update module and customizing your fonts.

My impressions? SUSE is very much a desktop oriented distro, but not necessarily limited to the desktop user. It's polished and professional and looks like a complete product. While YaST is excellent overall, the software management part of it is not nearly as convenient or polished as apt-get on Debian. The best part of SUSE 10 is probably that it's hardware detection is great, it's installation is smooth and painless and requires minimum manual intervention by default. That might really encourage users new to Linux to try it out. But if you are an experienced Linux user, particularly with distros like Debian or Slackware and you are used to being in control of your whole system, you might find the limitations of SUSE irksome.

Note: I have also submitted this review at LinuxQuestions.org, where you can find SUSE reviews by other users as well.

India has wiped out Sri Lanka 4-0 in the home series. All of a sudden there are questions asked about the second best ODI team in the world because they have lost four matches in a row. In a sense it was inevitable that there are calls for change from former cricketers and experts, most notably Arjuna Ranatunga.

Why this sudden fall from favour? Marvan Atapattu put on a brave face during the first couple of matches, but in the third and fourth ODI we could just feel that he had lost the plot. Except Muralitharan, none of the Sri Lankan bowlers found their comfort zone in this series. We played on some fantastic batting tracks and the nature of the Sri Lankan bowling attack has been exposed. His captaincy too has been come under heavy criticism, but I feel sorry when the captain is accused for not leading the team properly. After all, his 87 off 100 balls in Pune was probably the right tonic for his team to put up a fighting total of 261 on the board. But then, after the early breakthroughs, Sri Lanka just couldn't keep up the pressure against an Indian team already strengthened by their supersub, Suresh Raina. And in the end, that substitution was crucial - he steered India home after major hiccups in the middle order.

In analysing Sri Lanka's failure in this series, I can think of a few reasons why they haven't really performed. First of all, I think that they are not at all comfortable with the new ICC rules: the powerplay and the supersub. They haven't really found an answer to the powerplay situation - when to utilize it and when to bring on their ace card Muralitharan into the attack. On more than one occasion, Atapattu appeared all at sea while utilizing his powerplay: not knowing whether to attack or to defend. On the other hand, India has benefitted greatly because of the supersub rule. They have played their cards judiciously and made full use of the powerplay situation, both while batting and while bowling. I always felt that the new supersub rule would benefit teams like India which have more specialists than all-rounders than teams like Sri Lanka, which rely on batting all-rounders like Dilshan and bowling all-rounders like Maharoof. I think that was the case here. For a long time Indian cricket had been suffering from a lack of flexibility which an all-rounder provides. The question always was about whether to pick four bowlers and one all-rounder or five specialist bowlers in the team. The lack of a real quality all-rounder always hurt badly. The new supersub rule has really solved one aspect of the issue. The other aspect of playing an extra batsman has been solved by the presence of Dhoni for the time being. We can now pick four or five bowlers according to the situation and then supersub them out when needed. Dravid has used this effectively to India's advantage and the results were there for all to see.

Another reason why Sri Lanka has failed here is the match conditions. We play a lot of day games in this country on a variety of pitches and under different weather conditions. Early morning moisture does play a role in influencing the decision at the toss. And all the tracks have been quicker and more batting friendly this time around. Spinners haven't really been able to attack the batsmen as much as they would have liked. Compare this to Sri Lanka, where the conditions are vastly different and most matches are played on slow pitches at the Premadasa in Colombo with an odd game played at the SSC or at centres like Galle, Kandy or Dambulla. The pitches are usually slow to start off with and get slower and lower as the game progresses. Sri Lankan slow bowlers love such conditions under lights. Unfortunately for them, these Indian pitches haven't really deteriorated as the game progressed and we have had excellent batting conditions in daylight. Then again, Indian batsmen love the ball coming on to the bat and we have always prospered on tracks with true pace and bounce.

All in all, I wouldn't count Sri Lanka out yet. Atapattu sure needs a change in strategy in the last three ODIs. He has to sit down and assess the conditions as well as how to use the new ICC rules to his advantage. He has to be more aggressive while using Murali and Chaminda Vaas. It's important that Sri Lanka bag a couple of wins at least going into the test series to keep up their morale. They will be motivated by that and they need to regain some pride. They are still a strong side and even in their loss at Pune, they showed signs of resurgence. India should not rest on their laurels but try and polish off their opponents while they're still down. That will be the acid test of Dravid's captaincy - how to motivate his team to do just that now that the series is in the bag.

Picture courtesy: uk.sports.yahoo.com

I was helping my brother upgrade his newly launched forum from SMF 1.0.5 to SMF 1.1 RC. All right, so we should have gone ahead and installed 1.1 RC in the first place. But since Fantastico allows installs of 1.0.5 with a single click of the mouse, we thought it would save us the trouble of uploading the installation files and upgrade later at our convenience.

Actually it is a simple upgrade procedure. Just upload and overwrite the old SMF files with the upgraded versions of those files and run upgrade.php. Right! That's what I was thinking too.

It appears that SMF will not work unless you absolutely set the file permissions exactly the way it should be. So first, the upgrade script refused to work at all. At that point, we thought we had somehow screwed up the installation because we kept getting HTTP 500 errors. So we started with a clean plate and reinstalled SMF 1.0.5 all over again and restored the database. Then we tried upgrading again and we got the same error. Now I was convinced that something else was wrong and we had done exactly what the upgrade procedure told us to do. Then with a little bit of searching around in the SMF forums, we realized that there was a problem with file permissions. Finally we managed to set the correct file permissions 755 to upgrade.php and it worked fine. Although there was a bit of trouble with the cache loading the previous error pages which at first led us to believe that we had made another mistake, it sorted itself out all right in the end. We'll now be working on bringing the forum back online after making a few changes to the templates.

I had mentioned before that SMF is definitely not the most intuitive forum software out there from the administrator's point of view. Whatever be the drawbacks of phpBB, it is definitely a much more user-friendly and admin-friendly forum software. However I think the current problems are quite minor and with some time, these little niggles should be smoothed out by the developers of this feature-rich forum package. I eagerly await the next major release of SMF (whenever it is due).

By the way, phpBB has released 2.0.18 after a long period and it's a massive upgrade for those who are doing the code changes manually. Just a tip if you have a heavily modded board - I would suggest applying the upgrade in an offline test server and test it out thoroughly before you take it to your live forum. In any case, always follow the golden rule: take a back up of everything on your server before you proceed. Better safe than sorry!

When I watched Mahendra Singh Dhoni start off against Sri Lanka in the third ODI in such a belligerent fashion, I thought, "if this guy can stay for half an hour, it'll be good entertainment. Whether India wins or loses this match, it'll be good fun." When he went on and on, I thought "I just get the feeling we are on to something here!" (imagine Harsha Bhogle's voice at this point). By the time the match was over and Dhoni had completed his single handed rout of a demoralized Sri Lanka, it was a mixture of immense pleasure and awe at having witnessed one of the most belligerent knocks in One Day Cricket. Beating Adam Gilchrist's ODI record for the highest score for a wicket-keeper batsman was no joke. Dhoni has certainly written his own rules in International cricket and it's probably his ticket to Test cricket as well as he very unsubtly pointed out at the post-match presentation.

I'll just add a couple of things here. First from a purely cricketing point of view, I think Dhoni is one of those players you don't tamper with. Sure, it's easy to praise the guy when he's got a huge century playing so aggressively. But it shouldn't blind us to the fact that he's going to have days when he won't score at all. It's natural that a guy playing with such aggression cannot score big runs every time he steps in to bat. Unfortunately, this century might well alter things for Dhoni. The typical Indian reaction to his knock was one of euphoria, but then the expectations will also rise higher the next time he walks in. There will be experts calling for Dhoni to "play with responsibility and utilize his talents properly." There will also be those who feel he should continue to "play his natural game." Whatever may be their advice, I think Dhoni should be left well alone to do his own thing. For the good of Indian cricket, nobody should ever tamper with his style, technique and most importantly, mindset. Fortunately, we are in 2005 and experience has taught us how to handle such players. When Virender Sehwag first made his way into the Indian team, he brought such a refreshing attitude which endures to this day. There were some who felt that he should "tone down" his game, but luckily he has stubbornly refused such advice and his aggressive attitude has survived up to now. In the 1990s, it might well have been a different story. In 2005, we welcome such players in Indian cricket. No longer are we obsessed with technique, foot movement, finesse and so on. In the era of Mahendra Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, Irfan Pathan and Virender Sehwag, we've learnt to accept that it's the results which count, not the means. It doesn't matter in One Day cricket whether a guy scores a boundary off an outside edge slashing wildly or scores it off the most beautiful, picture perfect cover drive. Runs are runs and that's what matters ultimately.

There is another issue which I want to raise here. It's about rewarding our cricketers for such brilliant performances. During the post-match presentation, when Ravi Shastri announced the special cash prize of Rs. 10 lakh for Dhoni's performance from the cricket board, I was staggered for an instant. Don't get me wrong - I really did think that Dhoni's record breaking effort deserved a special award. However, let's be reasonable about it. In the euphoria of victory, the local cricket association, the state governments involved and sometimes the BCCI offer huge gifts to players for one-off performances like this. Cricket experts and commentators start groping around for superlatives in their excitement and enthusiasm to eulogize the player. In fact during the post-match review show, good old Kris Srikkanth actually went to the extent of comparing Dhoni with Viv Richards! There is nothing new in all this especially in Indian cricket. However, Rs. 10 lakh is a staggering sum. To add to that, I read this in this morning's paper that Dhoni's home state government is giving him a sum of Rs. 5 lakh! That's 15 lakh earned in a single day! I agree that this was a special performance and I can understand that sponsors sometimes offer huge amounts of money from their own pockets for an especially brilliant one. But think about it: when the BCCI or the state association or the government offers such rewards, whose money are they giving away? With whose authority? How can a single, individual performance in a team game, however great it may be, be rewarded so lavishly? I think such knee-jerk, emotional responses to success in Indian cricket need to be toned down. Tomorrow if Dhoni scores a couple of ducks in a row, are they going to take it away? Let's not deny that there is a streak of irresponsibility in the behaviour of our governing bodies in such situations. I could understand a sum of Rs. 1 lakh even. But 15 lakh! That is surely going overboard. All said and done it's just a game and come to think of it, we've not even won the seven-match series yet. Ok, ok, so it's a religion. But perspective is such a good thing. Let's use it for a change.

Picture courtesy: uk.sports.yahoo.com