March 2006 Archives
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March 31, 2006

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Essay - Self Reliance

Came across this very nice essay. A wonderful read.

Essay - Self Reliance - by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Translated by Adam Khan.


March 29, 2006

Interesting quote


A quote I found from here -- worth having a look.

Microsoft's John Carroll says Firefox users, the open source community, all of us owe Redmond an enormous debt of gratitude:

"For all those who lament the pre-inclusion of Internet Explorer, it's worth noting that if IE WASN'T pre-installed, most people wouldn't be able to download all that IM, media playing, or even alternative browsers such as Firefox. In other words, if IE wasn't pre-included with Windows, the market for software -- including open source software targeted at desktop computers -- might actually shrink."

March 27, 2006

An idea stock marketplace - Rite-Solutions

The following is a nice article -- about some executives in a company employing an "idea stock marketplace" within the company to identify promising ideas, and actually making business out of them.


Here's an Idea: Let Everyone Have Ideas - New York Times

March 20, 2006

Fairness

In my opinion, if not enforced, human inclination towards "being fair" is very low. And even knowing that he is being unfair is not a thing he is good at.

March 15, 2006

Want to get your own website hosted?

============

UPDATE: Via a tip from Pooja P, I was able to find links to 4 very good web hosting providers:


I suggest just selecting the one from the above which offers the most space for the least price, with no contract.
The original post follows.

===============

A recent mail I sent about this:

Hi XYZ/PQR,

You were asking me for tips on finding a web host to host your website.

I use http://hostdime.com. I pay $4 per month to hostdime for the hosting. I did this after shopping around abt a couple of years ago. Nowadays the costs have gone down even for some of the bigger companies, and space has become cheaper etc, so the market has changed. You should do your own study. A good price is upto $5 per month, or if you go for a brand name then upto $10 per month.

I will tell you what I have found out:

Hostdime has these good features:


  • very good customer support, they answer a phone call 24X7, within a couple of seconds. Literally. They answer faster than I answer my own phone..! (which can also mean they have less customers ;-) )
  • they have many features at a low price. They didnt arrange their plans well, they offer almost the same features in their cheapest and their most expensive plans. Hence, we who look for cheap bargains, get good features at a lower price.
  • they are cheap
  • they have "cpanel" configuration interface, which is quite powerful
  • some of the good features which I like in their plan are: perl, php, cgi-bin, ssi, real time streaming, unlimited email, unlimited subdomains, unlimited mysql databases, 6 web statistics programs, fantastico program installer, preinstalled cgi scripts, , etc.
  • they take regular backups

Their downside:


  • their uptime is not very high, I have sometimes observed my website being down. Hence I am a little apprehensive about giving out a xyz@gaurang.org email address, since I am afraid it may not be delivered if the site is down.
  • they have a one-time $20 fees to allow you to SSH in (not a big minus)
  • the server is slow when I run commands on it during an ssh session. For web browsing though, the site is okay in speed.

To start evaluating web hosting providers, check out the plans of the following companies:

To evaluate anyone make sure they support: perl, php, mysql, provide SSH access (atleast on request), web stats, and take backups. Ask them how much uptime can you expect from them. Ask them what configuration panel do they use, and what features does it have - a software called "cpanel" would be preferable, though not required. A unixy os (preferably Linux) should be mandatory.

You can get the domain name genearlly for a very cheap price from your hosting provider. So no need to buy it separately.


Taking a cursory look at yahoo and godaddy, I see goddady has a plan for $4 per month. That one looks good. Just make sure they support perl, and ssh access. Also ask them whether they have a powerful configuration panel. If not, then you can try out hostdime.

Abt having a blog on your website: since you will have your own host, you can select http:///movabletype.org or http://wordpress.org . You can download the software and install it. If you dont want that hassle, then http://blogger.com would be good enough, though it is much less powerful than movabletype and wordpress. Nowadays, http://360.yahoo.com/ is also a good choice for blogging if you dont mind the yahoo name. Update: Also check out http://wordpress.com and http://typepad.com

Hope this helps!

March 6, 2006

Commune blog moved here

Maintaining two blogs was difficult -- it was good in certain ways -- but it was like exhibiting multiple personality disorder... :-)

So I have decided to abandon the other blog that I had - Commune, and just maintain one blog - this one.

I copied all of the posts from there to here (hehe, not manually, using movabletype's export/import functions of course).

So you just need to look here for all posts. (except for the personal blog ;-) )

March 2, 2006

Being Twenty Something

A very nice writeup that came to me via email from somebody.

Thanks to Aloke for pointing out that it was written by "Brenda Della Casa", a NY based writer. Otherwise I would have risked getting a comment like this from him.

"Being Twenty-Something".

They call it the "Quarter-life Crisis." It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward. You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you know that you aren't a bad person. (few words cut) Random hook ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don't recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren't really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job... and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't.

You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself... and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that everyone reading it, relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out !!?

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