Blogger block

Charu refers to an article on how to dela with the blogger burnout, a term I came to terms with when Jivha quit blogging. For me it has been more the case of Blogger block rather than burnout. I have never been a zealous blogger anyway but few months back I at least would right twice/thrice a week, it is still twice or thrice but the weeks have turned into months. A friend, who just would not have Null Pointer on his blogroll ;), tauntingly observed recently, “I like your blog but it would be better if you atleast have one post a week instead of one a month”. Some write to me enquiring if I have quit blogging, and while I am reading all those blogs regularly, I am often ashamed to find a referrer log entry from a reader who visited my blog expecting some new post but (perhaps) went away perturbed. I worry if s/he would ever come back again.

A thing that prevents me from blogging regularly is absence of net connectivity at home. Then the recent happenings at the personal front are to be blamed too. Blogging at work is definitely awkward, your colleagues keep staring at your monitor and are not content to ask “Yeh kya hai?”; preparing a post especially in Hindi (and I am very poor at punching Hindi on Takhti) seems more heinous than looking a porno pop-up that shockingly appeared from an innocent looking site. During the day I must have been thinking at least a dozen times to blog about this and blog about that, but I am too lazy to jot it down immediately. Then it slips from your mind and poof, the slate is blank again. Now, I never have been in the habit of posting a link with a short comment, an advice given in the article that I just can’t follow, most of my posts are lengthy, some are notoriously so.

So I don’t think I (and the readers) have much choice really except that I don’t care a damn about those staring eyeballs and don’t feel ashamed in jotting a short link post instead of waiting to post longer ones and then not posting at all.

Zooming in on India's map

At least there is some initiative for India. Me thinks Map My India, the desi version of Mapquest has still long way to go but it’s good. I tried searching for my locality at my native place Bhopal (only a limited number of cities are covered as of now) and though it just managed to point at a broad outline, no street level data was given as with Google’s Keyhole, but then Keyhole would not ever concentrate in India, will it?

I can understand the limitations, you cannot expect the sarkari mapmakers to get into such nasty details, may be when the business prospects are understood and the moolah beckons the municipal corporations will wake up. As far as the business use of such products is concerned, unlike CNN news channels in India hardly ever use such micro-views with news capsules, we are still accustomed to looking at DD styled political maps of India and the ones send by our good old Insat. [Link through Animesh.]

Cal ho na ho

Are you aware of any date in history when nothing, absolutely nothing happened, literally? Well I was not aware of it and the answer unexpectedly came from Unix. On the Unix prompt if you do a 'cal 9 1752' you get the following calendar.

The missing days owe it to the Gregorian Reformation when the King of England decreed that the days from 3rd to 13th be knocked off the calendar month in order to adjust the days while switching from Julian to Gregorian calendar. A funnier explanation for the eliminated days is given here.