The Magic Pill

Gym: A place where the probability of the wallet losing weight is more than the wallet holder. Today, I quit my gym. I’m declaring this unabashedly because I’ve realised that I can’t fool myself with the harsh realities of busy life. I simply  cannot find time for the gym. I’ve tried every trick in the GTD book to snatch some time out of my rampant schedule for the gym. But, in between the day job, evening open source projects, socializing and reading sci-fi books, I couldn’t manage to squeeze in time for the fitness drill. Even the weekends turned out to be engaging for most part, with all the work overflowing from the weekdays bowl into the weekends. In these dark times, trying to gym was like balancing a pebble on the spoon held in my mouth, while running a marathon race.

Suddenly, I feel less guilty about the whole “can’t go to the gym” excuse. At least now, my wallet isn’t the only one losing weight. This makes me wonder why did I join the gym in the first place. I’ve realized that there are 2 kinds of people when it comes to eating food. First kind, who never gain a pound, no matter how much they eat. They can hog and hog and hog and not worry about the weighing machine dominating their nightmarish dreams. Then there are the second kinds, who have to just look at the pastry shop and their body fat expands exponentially. Unfortunately, I fall in the second category. So, quitting the gym isn’t the wisest decision I’ve made. But then, there is no point being a member of an elite gym when you’re never going to pay a visit.

This makes me wonder if there is a “Wonder drug”, a slimming pill which’ll take care of all the extra body fat. All you have to do is take a pill in the morning, then you can eat all you’ve wished for, throughout the day without worrying sick about how many calories you’re accumulating. The pill will somehow burn all the extra calories and magically keep you fit and slim, irrespective of your food intake. Now, that would be *invention of the millenium*, I reckon.

Confused and Intrigued

Confused, bewildered and intrigued – these were my emotional reactions after watching David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. I didn’t know what the fuss was, when my friend recommended this movie to me. He said that this is one heck of a arcane, complex movie. I’m a self-proclaimed movie buff and I’ve watched a gazillion cryptic films to be daunted by a daring claim such as: Mulholland Drive will definitely frustrate you at first and then it’ll make you think, really think.

The movie did frustrate me, alright. But most importantly it drove me to ponder over all the dangling threads of the sub-plots within the main plot. I realized that, even the main plot is not what it seems, it’s interpretation is layered, and to get to the crux of the plot each layer has to be peeled carefully and thoughtfully. After watching the movie, I googled the term “review of Mulholland drive” and found this beautiful analysis of this brilliant movie by Allen B. Ruch of TheModernWord. Allen has done a thorough job of de constructing the movie’s fine details.

The undesirable consequence of it’s complex story is, that you can’t discuss the movie or it’s labyrinthine plot with anybody who hasn’t watched the movie yet. So, I won’t spoil the surprise for you if you haven’t seen the movie, by revealing any details. But, I’d strongly commend you to buy/rent a DVD of this enigmatic movie, watch it and then analyse the movie by reading the review mentioned above. Trust me, if you consider yourself a serious movie fan, then you’ll love this movie.

How To Efficiently Set up a new Blog

It would only be appropriate to rename my blog as: “Perils of a Procrastinating Mind”. I’ve been delaying the process of writing a new post for quite a long time, for no apparent reason. Maybe, I’m just going through a phase of extreme lethargy. Last week can be described as, for lack of a better word, uninspiring.

But now, I’ve come out of my reverie and have decided to flex my writing muscles again. Since the inception of this blog, I’ve scribbled my thoughts on various topics. Though this route has given me the flexibility of exploring various genre, it has skewed my readership in a weird way. The week before I was helping my friend, set-up a new blog called Green Blog (a blog about environment, global warming, Solar energy etc). He asked me to write the first post for the blog. In my zealous attempt to write a perfect “first blog post”, I decided to send my draft post to some of my friends for review. I realised, to my horror, that almost all the comments in the feedback had a unifying theme: “You seem too conscious while writing this post”, “You are not being your usual self” etc etc. Either they sat down together and generated the feedback OR they are *right*.

So, I scrapped the original post and painfully rewrote the whole thing, but this time I tried being myself. I also jotted down some pointers on how to set-up a new blog. I’ve learned from my own experience that setting up and maintaining a blog isn’t a cakewalk. Here are some pearls of wisdom from me:

Choose your *Blog host* carefully:

There are several blog hosting services available on the world wide web. Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, LiveJournal et al. There are pros and cons to each of them and it would take another post to list them out in detail. So, I’ll be brief and blunt. Blogger is very easy to set-up a new blog, but it sulks like anything when you become an experienced blogger and try to expand your blogging experience beyond publishing posts. Typepad can be called as a wonderful blogging tool, but then it is definitely not ‘new-blogger’ friendly. If you try to register yourself at Typepad, it asks you your financial details upfront before you even publish your first post, which is a big put-off for newbies. LiveJournal is more of a community site, than a thorough-bred blogging site. It has many unwanted, irrelevant features; pop-up adverts, for instance get on my nerves. WordPress has a balance of everything. It doesn’t seem too daunting to a new user and has all the right features for quickly setting up a blog without any hassles. My recommendation would be: start with WordPress, and when you’ve gained enough experience blogging, try out other advanced blog hosts.

Layout:

Alright, you’ve set up your blog account and you’re all excited and ready to dive in and start writing n publishing your posts. But hang on a sec, before you start writing, you have to decide the look of your blog. Blog page layout defines the style and look of your blog. Don’t rush through this section as this will determine your taste when it comes to design. It *is* a big deal. The way your blog looks speaks a lot about you. If your blog looks like an angry fruit salad, then nobody would wanna make a stop to devour what you have to offer. The Blog hosting site offer several default templates( blog themes) to choose from. You also have the option of creating your own page-layout via HTML, CSS etc. It, really is a matter of personal preference though, and you have to use your discretion while making decisions like: whether the blog should have three column format or a two column format; how many posts should be displayed on a single page; background colour-foreground colour and so on and so forth. My mantra is to keep the design simple and elegant.

Blog Frequently:

Now you’re all set, you’ve set up your blog account and carefully chosen the layout as well. Then you write and publish your first post. From here on, the secret recipe for a popular and successful blog is to post on a regular basis. Keep your blog alive by frequently updating it. ‘What’ you write is not as important as ‘how’ you write it. Create a niche for yourself by writing about obscure topics. The more you write about it, more the people would want to read it, and slowly and steadily you’ll have a growing stream of readers. If your blog has a consistent theme, you might end up being an expert on that topic.

No Ads Till You’ve Grown:

Avoid placing ads( via Adsense or Yahoo ad service) on your blogs till you have a wide readership. Ads on your blog will only be tolerated if you’ve proved yourself an expert blogger and are worthy enough to be read regularly. Personally, I find adverts on blog page, appalling. They ruin the whole look and feel of the blog. So, first focus all your efforts into building the pillars of your blog which will appeal to a greater mass of readers and will constantly attract them to your blog. Only when you’ve reached a readership of, say 500 hits per day, you can fancy inserting advert links into your blog page.

This is what I could come up with at the moment, but I’m sure there are many more tips and tricks to successfully start your spin-off as blogger. Look them up on google and try to put them in practise. And if you’re successful, share the idea with me as well.