Here's my next version of "Selected Posts." It's been a while, actually and from November 2005, I have a fairly large selection of posts to offer you.

Choice: the spice of Desktop Linux - Here I wrote about why Desktop Linux is not limited to just KDE or Gnome. You actually have a wide range of lightweight Window Managers to choose from and they are not as heavily loaded with features as the full fledged Desktop Environments. If you need a GUI for your work, but don't need it to "get in the way" like KDE or Gnome sometimes can, use one of those!

Is the internet really polluted by blogs? - some years ago, people questioned the relevance of blogs. Read this article to find out what I thought about the issue. Surprisingly, it has suddenly become relevant today in the context of SEO penalties imposed on sponsored blogging by a popular search engine

Why I don't debate online these days - Ask any experienced online forum user and you will get the answer to this question. Meaningless debate over the same topics over and over, adding nothing new to the original topic can become very tiresome as I found out during my extended stint at LinuxQuestions.org forums.

phpBB upgrade tips - I never really regretted giving up phpBB 2.0 after an endless cycle of security problems followed by quick, patchy updates. Upgrading a well-modded phpBB forum is akin to a visit to the dentist. And till date phpBB 3.0 is still officially "unstable."

The bloggers' definition of success - This article will tell you my blogging philosophy. It is somewhat long-winded by my current standards, but it's still worth a read. Till now I guess I've broadly followed those principles.

SUSE 10 review - A (surprisingly positive) review of SUSE 10. Since then, I've changed my views. I don't currently want to use SUSE and I guess I will never really use SUSE Linux. A big yawn probably sums up my current attitude to SUSE Linux (and many other Linux distributions) better than any words. I'm currently at the stage where Linux by itself doesn't interest me so much as what productive work I can do with it. I guess the novelty factor wore off long ago.

That's all for this edition. Oh, and don't forget to check the full archives for November 2005. There are some other good articles I've left out, among them some cricket articles (I was actively blogging about cricket those days). So feel free to leave behind your thoughts on any of them.

Continuing with my past highlights series, I present you with what I think are the best articles from October 2005. Please feel free to comment on any article regardless of age if you feel you have something relevant to add to them.

Blog hosting services - When I first began blogging, I always wondered why people chose the "free" blogging services like blogspot over self-hosting. Of course, since I already had a domain name and hosting space for LiteraryForums.org, I didn't feel the need to utilize any of these services. I still feel today that being in complete control of your content is the best option even from a "standing out from the crowd" perspective.

Of fountain pens and handwriting - a post on my thoughts on using pens (a serious one for a change ). My conclusions? Fountain pens with thicker nibs are best if you want to write neatly without effort. Of course, owning a Sheaffer does help.

LaTeX IDEs for Linux and Windows - Here I highlighted a few IDEs which make composing documents in LaTeX (a typesetting/document formatting system) easy. If you don't know what LaTeX (pronounced "Lay-Tech") is, you probably won't find this of much use!

Free speech versus responsible speech - At that time I considered this one of my best essays. I still think that people over-emphasize the value of Free Speech without understanding that it means nothing unless there is credibility. Without credibility at the source, Free Speech loses all its value, so it's necessary to temper freedom with responsibility.

Don't waste your time countering anti-Linux propaganda - Apart from the regular trolls who derive pleasure out of criticizing Linux all the time without taking facts into account, there will always be people who genuinely believe that Linux is only for hardened geeks. It's more a matter of perception than reality, unfortunately and that is where marketing comes in. Since the time I wrote that article though, Ubuntu has taken the Linux world by storm and proved how effective marketing strategies can help change these ideas.

Hope you enjoy reading these snippets from the past!

It's time for another "Archives" highlight post. As I mentioned before, it's fun to do this from time to time just to look at what I've written in the past and share it with readers here. It's not entirely just about linking to the old articles. I'll also be commenting on them from a new perspective. So here are some selected posts from September 2005.

Indians tend to make great bloggers - I'm not very happy with this article reading it now. Even at that time I was aware that I was making a huge generalization, but it's always interesting to discuss cultural differences and I couldn't avoid the temptation. However, I know from experience now that it's downright impossible to classify bloggers into distinct groups based on ethnicity. In fact, as I see it now, the best definition of blogging is content organized in a website in a reverse chronological order. At least that's the most common feature to be found among blogs.

Sensible dressing - My rant against Western dressing in a hot, humid climate. I still think that ties and suits are ridiculous in temperatures around 30-40 degrees Celcius. And it's a fact that a lot of companies still insist on that ridiculously formal dress code. I would never work in such a company.

Isn't Sourav ashamed of his performance? - Yes, I know, a cricket article. It was written at a time when Sourav Ganguly was still India's captain (my, my... how time flies!) and he was experiencing his worst slump in form as a batsman. That makes his current comeback into the Indian side all the more remarkable and commendable. I think being dropped was actually the best thing that ever happened in his career because I doubt whether his career would have been resurrected the way it has been now.

Of natural disasters and the "sympathy" factor - Hmm... no comment, except all I can say is that I don't write like that any more. I have given up trying to analyze things that are beyond my own sphere of knowledge.

That's all for now. Hope you enjoy reading those snippets from the past.

Once again, a look at some old, but notable posts I've made in the past.

A small note before I proceed. Because I really didn't have a dedicated audience back then (and even now, I count myself lucky to have a couple of active readers at any given time), I only think it's right that I try and revive at least some of the better-written ones for the benefit of new readers. So if some of you feel that I am recycling my old articles, you are (in a sense) right. But at the same time, this kind of thing also allows me to look back at what I was thinking back then and I find it interesting to add my comments on the same topics now. So hopefully you should find it interesting as well. I just don't want to link to my old articles without comment.

With that in mind, here are some posts from the month of August 2005.

Indian Cricket needs to move on - Incidentally it was my first cricket post on this blog. The interesting thing is, much of what I wrote back then seems relevant even today. Recently I even started a cricket blog to write about the game, but I have no interest in it now. Cricket no longer interests me. In fact, even back then I was kind of tentative about the whole thing and the World Cup 2007 fiasco sealed the deal for me. Besides, quite apart from my own lack of motivation on this score, I found that my regular readers were not exactly jumping up and down in anticipation of my cricketing wisdom.

XML and mainstream web development - Ahhh... XML. That beautiful meta-markup language that always fascinates me. In that article I actually wrote about the pitfalls of using XML in mainstream web design but at the same time acknowledged its sheer scope and power. I felt that XML might never become mainstream in web development. I still feel the same today although I myself feel a lot more comfortable with the underlying concepts. But XML still needs a programmer mentality and not a web-design mentality. Ah, well... at least with XHTML we have a cleaner, neater web markup language than plain old HTML.

Let's get back on track! - now this is an unusual article. Actually it was part of my (now defunct) LiteraryForums.org newsletter. I was getting extremely frustrated at the slow growth of the forum and the fact that I was pouring in tons of time and effort into it. Although things haven't changed much today, my attitude has undergone a considerable change. I have come to accept that LiteraryForums.org will remain a quiet, peaceful community with marginal activity. In fact, in many ways, I like it that way.

Customizing your Linux firewall - this is just a normal software article. Here I highlighted guarddog, which is a pretty neat, powerful GUI front-end to iptables. Those Linux users who find the iptables command line tool too cryptic or difficult will find this an extremely useful configuration utility. Even today I simply cannot figure out how to write my own firewall script from scratch. I cannot be bothered to.

Time for another blast from the past while I go through a lean trot looking for inspiration.

Python and Java - my take on these two highly dissimilar programming languages. I still think that the structure of Java makes it more suited for a formal software engineering course where development is formalized and the emphasis is on correct coding practices, while Python will remain a powerful, extensible scripting/programming language to get things done as fast and as easily as possible. Java can be a pain for coding smaller applications because it demands too much structure.

Unfair Criticism - some thoughts on how to criticize and do so in a constructive way. Too often, people find it easy to say that something is wrong, but have difficulty in pointing in the right direction.

Reverse Elitism and the Linux Community - my first real analysis of Linux flame wars and why they happen. The underlying issues are related more to human psychology than technology. I still like this article, although I think I would write it a bit differently if I had to do it now.

Choosing a web hosting solution - my first real HOWTO. Based on my own experience in searching for a host for literaryforums.org. The best web hosts are the ones who don't have anything to hide. Many web hosting providers hide a lot of stuff in their fine print and assume that people won't read. The lesson: be careful before you commit money.