This blog is officially dead. Farewell.

I started blogging back when blogging was a new 'it' thing. I think it was somewhere in 2003 or 04. I deleted my blog once, only to come back again. I used it as a place to just rant, rave and post about the songs I liked. A large part of it were rap lyrics.

From a very young age, I was addicted to the spoken word. English was not my native tongue, but I spoke and wrote enough to be able to survive. Sometimes, they say your gift is a curse. Hip hop music, rhyming, writing raps and recording music led me into the music world where I kind of got lost. There were not many rappers in my hometown. Even lesser where the western music enthusiasts. Don't get me wrong, Indi-rock or just Rock n Roll was just becoming commercial. Chennai had a deep underground movement which was manifesting into a big juggernaut with the advent of the internet.

With this in mind, I quit making music and anything even semi-pro. You can get the kid out of hip-hop but you can't get the hip-hop out of the kid. I was still a big fan, avid listener. That still remains in-tact. When I used to search for various rap lyrics of the different tamil songs which featured rappers, I was left with googling. Many times, I posted the lyrics after decoding them myself so that I can go back to them. According to the Google Analytics, my blog is still pretty popular for people who want to read these lyrics. 80% of my traffic comes from search engines. None of this was intended.

My other love in life, technology was growing faster than anything else that can grow. I become a techie, an IT worker among the millions of other Computer Science Engineers in India. The web still continues to fascinate me. Web development is my life now. There comes a moment in life when you have to let go of things. I've lost many things in life. Money, loved ones and interest in various facets of lifestyle. I guess it is time to take out all the skeletons in this blog and bury them once and for all.

I started this blog as a confused teenager. Then it became the angry young adult who didn't think before acting. Music was my outlet. Rap was my medicine. It still continues to be. However, with the changes in privacy, technology and the digging people do to unearth facts about you, I have lost faith in continuing this blog anymore. That does not mean I will not continue blogging. There will never be complete anonymity in the internet. 

Given that, and that I don't think I have a great person readership or anything like that, I plan to put this blog to rest. I will not delete it, as anybody can still get it from web archives. It will remain in the annals of web history, that there was once this blog. Or until Google deletes it or Google shuts down (rather impossible). I know I've done this before. Leaving the stage to only come back and entertain. But this time, its for real.

So, adieu my friends, readers, spammers and countless people who have been part of this blog's journey. 

P.S: I will be moving to blogging at some other place. Possibly my own website. Who knows what the future holds in store? I'll edit this post with a link when I launch my next venture. 

Of Indian Bloggers and Stat-Ran-KING!

So, I came across this nice enclave of Indian Bloggers, an attempt to form an ecosystem of IndiBloggers. Digging through the site, I found many great blogs that I've missed out on during so many years of my hibernation. What was also nice to see was so many amateur bloggers giving this old 'fad' a go. In the age of Twits, FB and Buzzes, I say 'Well done me lads!' and the female equivalent of that. In terms of blog years, I'm a geezer. Through the IndiBloggers, I found out the standards for jumping into a higher ranking are pretty huge for an old man like me. Oh wait, I'm gonna turn 25 in two months? Dang, I'm getting old.

I see a steady rise in the hits on this page. I know you came here to read my tamil song raps decoded into understandable 'suttha' English. I know you probably came here by clicking 'Next Blog' on the blogspot toolbar. I know you came here because you are my minion in blogger and are bound to follow me whatever shite I may write. Henceforth, I welcome the prying eyes of the IndiBlogger nation or junta or whatever clique name you liked to be referred to as. They needed me to introduce myself and write a few words about why my site must be reviewed. I'm not sure this post qualifies as an answer, but I'm sure its in my pocket. Somewhere. Where is it? *As I frantically open both my pockets, I find a hamburger. Hamburggaarrr*. Again, I digress.

Where was I? Oh yeah, to introduce myself, I'm a nice guy who was born in Chennai to parents who were Malayali. That made me a proud malayali who had mostly tamil friends growing up. Although my home was in Besant Nagar, the Elliots beach was my second home. I went to school in one of the most beautiful places you can imagine. I worked as a techie in of the best companies there is. I then came to the US of A to do my Masters. Yeah, yeah, same ol' story right? WRONG! As Eric Cartman's reincarnation in a narrow sense (pun intended), I roam the streets of the Capital of California as Navin Two-Face. MS Graduate body to those back in India, another H1B guy to those in the US. Caught in the middle of such situations, is this lovely life of mine.

I started blogging back in 2004. However, I had to delete this blog due to my own foolishness and horrible horrible things I did in the guise of 'Hey, I'm just writing what I want!'. Anyways, that bitter experience later, I restarted in 2006, I was posting only lyrics of Tamil songs which had rap and stuff. Did I mention I was a rapper? During the good ol' days of Chennai's rap scene, our breed was rare. Gangsta rappers roaming around in loose fit jerseys with bling all around. We looked like clowns but once we rhymed, we were one of a kind. I'm still mainly into Computers, Technology and Rap music. I've worn many hats, but one of my favorite ones was that of 'the blogger'. "What magic hat is that?" you may ask. Its a hat that has great power. And with great power comes great current bills responsibility.

Being a blogger, it heartens me to see the passion and the enthusiasm a place like IndiBlogger generates. Sifting through the different pages, I found some interesting pieces of writing. I'm not very Shakespearean in explaining this, but I call a spade a spade. The art of blogging is something that improves with time. Most blogs I see on the network are rank amateurs, but hey, even Roger Federer was once an amateur. I'm not a big fan of sophisticated oohh-look-at-him-he's-so-condescending type of writing. I'm a big fan of 2-fart-jokes-make-laugh-and-spiderman-will-save-me type of writing. I am a techie, so you must be knowing I use statcounter, feedburner and google's webmaster tools to promote this piece of turd art that I call "my blog".

So much for the introduction post. Now, IndiBlogger! Do your magic mantra or whatever algorithm you chew to get my ranking. Come on, give your chappa of approval for a dying old blog like mine. Give me the life, give me the reason to survive. Aaaah, Sister, Brother, Come together to help one another. *Starts tearing apart his hair*

P.S: The last paragraph was NOT lifted from a Vijay movie.

SEO

Its been a while since I posted anything. I've been doing some SEO (search engine optimization) on this blog. I've noticed Google has some cool tools which I didn't know existed. Feedburner was taken over by Google a while back, and I never bothered to check out the new feedburner. I was amazed at all the tools available now to optimize the hits that come to my blog.

I've also got my school website up. Embedding Picasa and Youtube channels was so easy, I feel that a whole bunch of new web designers would hardly bother to learn the code behind the embedding. I guess that is the idea, that any body can design websites. Throw in some CSS and a bunch of 'Embedded' code, make a couple of banners and you have a dashing website. Sadly, I feel like I'm getting old in the 'game'.

I think its something everybody goes through. You see technology moving so fast that you gotta start keeping up with it. 10 years back, when I had some sites up or 6 years back when I started blogging, I learnt everything the tough way. Nowdays, there are tons of websites to make your life easier. Its a welcome change, but I feel it dumbs down 'self-taught' web designers. To really master the technology behind great websites or web services, it has become essential to learn it in school. Back in 2003, when blogger was just bought by Google, the phenomenon that was AJAX was in its infancy. Now, its all over blogger.

Interesting how time flies. In a couple of months, I'll turn 25. The shades of grey haven't set in as yet, but in terms of 'tech years', its frightening to keep abreast of all the things happening online. My statcounter shows a steady increase in my hits in the last 4 months. Most of them through the 'Next blog' feature on blogger. My guess is that blogging, tweeting and the general reach of computers, mobile phones and internet tv are just starting to go mainstream. In many ways, I see a link in the 'anybody can build a website' analogy to 'anybody can blog' meme. Which is a good thing. The more, the merrier.

P.S: Feedburner is a great place to learn a bunch of stuff on SEO for your blog / website.

Revamp!

It's that time of the blog again. I've lost count of how many revamps I've done to this blog. The layout has been abused many times, but the fact that I still visit this place to keep tinkering around says something about me. I'm sentimental. Yes, I hang on to things. I have memories of my possessions, won't let go of them until they give up on me and yes, you'll find a lot of stuff like that in my room in Chennai as well as my current home in Sac town.

So, now that you are reading this, I'd like to let you know that
a) I intend to blog more often (how many times have I said that before?)
b) I have started using the words 'Thats life!', 'It happens' and so many other 'mature' lines to say 'Dang! I screwed up' or 'Oh noes!'.
c) Chennai still rules! Home sweet home..