I was on the lakefront earlier today for my regularly irregular morning run and the weather was windy and warm. Before I knew what was happening, dark clouds gathered and it started pouring wildly. Large heavy drops that drenched me in no time. I reached my bike and pedaled as fast as I could. I was worried about my ipod, I was worried I’d catch a cold, my bike would get wet, I’d have to walk in wet underwear and soggy shoes, and… the list of worries continued.
“Wait a minute”, I said to myself, “What’s happening!?” I used to be a kid who loved playing in the rain, and the mud, and not worrying about getting drenched and dirty, and make fun of people who ran away from the rain. When did I become one of them?
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Mumbai has a distinct rainy season and it rains only between mid-June and mid-September. Rest of the year was dry. There was a special, almost a ritual-ish, significance attached to “first rain” (around mid-June). My mother encouraged me to go out when it rained for the first time, she said, “This is how you welcome rain! Smell the air, feel the wind, feel the nature!”
Oh, ha ha, rain is not dangerous, its just like taking a big shower!I was a little boy, playing in the dirt outdoors one day when it began pouring. My friend’s mother started screaming at the top of her screeching voice from the window of their house, “Stop playing! Come home! It’s dangerous!” My buddy (who was terrified of his parents because they hit him) ran away, while I was left puzzled. “Mom says its okay to play in the rain, so it must be okay!”, I thought, and continued what I was doing (probably digging a trench and replanting grass – I liked to pretend I was a farmer).
The rain grew stronger and washed away everything. I was upset that my ‘farm’ was destroyed, so I went home. I took a warm shower, clean up thoroughly and I changed into fresh clothes. It felt so good. My dad made me a cup of hot ginger tea and I told them about my friend. My mother said, “Oh, ha ha, rain is not dangerous, its just like taking a big shower! Too bad for your friend, his mother is overprotecting him.”
Later, rainy season meant only one thing – trekking in the Sahyadris. Every other weekend, a bunch of us gathered and went into the mountains. Geographically, western coast of India is similar to western coast of North America – there is a coastal strip, followed by a mountain range called the Sahyadris. Shivaji, our beloved king, built several forts on peaks of the Sahyadri range and hiking to those fortresses was our objective. We usually started before sunrise, or sometimes even on the previous night. At the end of the day, we were completely exhausted, dirty and wet with rain and sweat for hours. Next day was full of body aches and a hangover from yesterday’s thrills and exhilaration.
↑ Mahuli, ~850m (2785ft) above MSL
My ‘sheltered’ friend once asked me, “What do you do all day in the rain?”
Me: We climb a mountain, go to the top!
He: And then?
Me: We come back.
He: So why go in the first place? You get all wet and dirty, eww…
How could I explain to him the blissful feeling of being close to the nature, walking through the woods, in the dirt, around wonderful insects, bright flowers, foggy, wet weather and then reaching the peak, being on top of the world?
- – -
With all those sweet memories flashing in front of me, I decided to dismount and walk my bike home, getting fully drenched in the rain on the way. After a nice hot shower, I made some ginger tea, exactly like my dad made it.
Misal (Marathi: मिसळ), meaning “mixture”, is a delicacy in my home state of Maharashtra, western India. Misal is eaten for breakfast or as a midday snack or even a meal depending on how you make it. It remains a very popular snack since it is easy to make, is relatively cheap and has good nutritional value. The taste of Misal ranges from mildly to extremely spicy. Misal is often classified as street food.
Misal consists of 3-4 layers of different foods. In the picture, the bottom layer of beans is almost invisible.
I often make misal when I am in a mood for spicy food, especially when I want my nose and eyes to freely flow and my mouth to produce fire like a dragon. It happens every once in a while. Misal is like a comfort food that reminds me of home. 
How to make misal?
Every region and everyone has a unique style and here’s mine customised for my needs.
Layer one (the bed): Consists of beans cooked Indian style. The beans are usually a combination of Moth Beans (मटकी) and dried Peas (वाटाणे), but due to limited availability here, I sometimes use a mix of Black-eyed beans (चवळी), or Red/Kidney beans (राजमा) or even Chick Peas (छोले).
Layer two (topping): Consists of a spicy, crunchy mixture of nuts, puffed rice and other stuff I don’t know how to describe (फरसाण, चिवडा). But the closest ready-made thing you could get in an Indian grocery store is called ‘bhel mix’ or ‘spiced crunchy mix’ or simply ask for Haldiram’s Bhelpuri mix. Adding small pieces of boiled potato will make your food less spicier.
Layer three (garnish): Tomatoes, liberal amounts of coriander, green chilies, raw mango (if available). Drench it with tamarind sauce (chutney), mint chutney and my mom-made chaat masala (a common spicy mix to give it a spicier punch).
Bread (optional): Traditional way is to eat the misal with a pav/pao bread (पाव) but since I make it dry-type, I usually skip the grain.
That’s it. Enjoy the food!
I couldn’t have gotten an over sized penis or married a model with big boobs or become a multi-millionaire even if I answered all the spam mails I got over these years. But the fact that spammers still send the same kinds of emails or blog comments shows that people do fall for these frauds.
Here is a new kind of comment I got on my About me page yesterday. It was backed up by an email via the contact page.
- – -
DOSED
Tired of a competitor’s site? Hinder the enemy? Fed pioneers or copywriters?
Kill their sites! How? We will help you in this!
Obstructions of any site, portal, shop!
Different types of attacks: Date-attack, Trash, Attack, Attack, etc. Intellectual
You can work on schedule, as well as the simultaneous attack of several sites.
On average the data, ordered the site falls within 5 minutes after the start. As a demonstration of our capabilities, allows screening.
Our prices
24 hours of attack – $ 70
12 hours of the attack – $ 50
1 hour attack – $ 25
Contact via ICQ: XXXXXXX
- – -
I was both disturbed and surprised. The title of the message is called DoS’ed. DoS stands for Denial of Service, an attack that makes websites non responsive temporarily or permanently. Crackers routinely DoS attack several countries’ important websites. But so far, all the enlargement, lottery etc. spam I got was targeted at me, the reader. This DoS message, however, is pure evil. While phishing and attack websites or tools existed for as long as I remember, someone making it a business – that’s a news.
“Winning by sabotaging others” is a common attitude. Why not improve your own website or brand instead? Lets terrorise India so that we (Pakis) can win – Look where this attitude has landed that country today.
I’m sure that the authenticity of this spam is no stronger than those penis enlargers or millionaires from Africa. It’s the mindset is bothering me. What’s more, as the email filters are improving, so are the spammers – their messages are much more personalized and they are trying to identify targets selectively.
If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.
- H.H. The Dalai Lama
Question to the reader:
There are several paths to victory – strengthening one’s position or sabotaging others’. While everything is fair in love and war, I find it disgustingly unethical to choose a path that damages others. Any thoughts?
How to enable support for Indian, or any foreign languages in Mac OS X
Mac OS X has a built-in support for a very large number of language scripts around the world. So the option of typing in Hindi or Hebrew or Hungarian or any other language, is few clicks away!
1. Open System Preferences
Click the Apple icon in your menu bar and select System Preferences. Alternatively you can simply spotlight (command-space) for ‘System Preferences’ and it will show up.
2. Choose the International Languages you want
In the System Preferences, click on “International”. You will see the following screen:
Screen 1: System Preferences > International
Click on “Input Menu” to see a list of all supported languages in your computer.
Screen 2: System Preferences > International > Input Menu
Check the “Character Palette” checkbox.
Check the “Keyboard Viewer” checkbox.
Check the “Show input menu in the menu bar” checkbox at the bottom of the screen.
Scroll down and find the languages of your choice. For Indian languages based on Devanagri script (Sanskrit, Marathi, Hindi, Nepali), check Devnagari-QWERTY.
Screen 3: System Preferences > International > Input Menu > Select languages of your choice.
Type in your language
Notice an icon with a flag on the right side of your menu bar (next to the clock and the battery indicator). Clicking the icon will reveal the list of alternate input languages. Simply select the language you want and you are done.
Keyboard shortcut for selecting language: Option-Space (⌥Space)
As you can see, I have 3 languages: English, देवनागरी and Русский installed
Keyboard Map
If you are ever stuck, the keyboard map comes handy. Click the “Show Keyboard Viewer” from the input menu in the menu bar (image above). You will get the following keyboard layouts (shown for Indic scripts only, it will change as you press the keys as shown below):
Keyboard Viewer (click to enlarge) – its not complicated at all. My mother could use it within minutes.
Some handy keystrokes
Complex Marathi / Hindi characters can be built by combining sounds. Here is a small list:
| Complex Character | Breakdown | Keystroke |
|---|---|---|
|
प्र प्रि यां क्तृ ऱ्हा द्य र्य श्च बॉ |
प ् र प ् र ि य ा ं क ् त ृ ऱ ् ह ा द ् य र ् य श ् च ि ब ॉ |
p f r p f r i y a M k f t R d f y r f y S f c i b Q |
As you see, its pretty phonetic; “f” is used to shorten the sound. p=प, pf=प्
Using Indian languages in Windows XP/2000
Support for a plethora of Indian languages is available in Windows XP/2000 too. Here is a wikipedia page that shows you how to enable language support in Windows XP and certain Linux distributions.
Feedback
If this post was useful to you, please let me know. If something is unclear, I’ll revise! Thanks.
Is your blog Web 2.0 compatible?
Years ago, internet users were primarily technical or geeky people. But today, all kinds of people are seen on the internet: young and old, techie and non techie. Also, people’s attention times have reduced drastically and the more time you spend on internet, the more you know where to find what you are looking for. In my observation, anyone who is active online for about an year becomes oblivious to advertisements and ‘tricky’ url’s.
Web 2.0 is not a fancy term! If you look at web-design trends, you’ll notice that there has been a real shift in the way websites are designed today compared to how they were five years back. The exact definition of Web 2.0 is still being debated, but to me, it means only one thing: “simplicity”.
In this post, I will outline some of the most important design strategies for making your blog web 2.0 compatible, and in turn user-friendly. Make sure to read the disclaimer at the end!
1.0. Layout
Guiding principle: KISS.
Keep It Simple, Stupid! Blogs must designed to look clean, functional and free of non-essential elements.
1.1. Cut the flab:
Few years ago, when blogging was new, there was this over-zealous trend to ‘show everything you have on the front page’ (I did that too back in 2004!). It has changed; everybody now knows what blogs are, they know the elements: Blog posts, Archives, About, Contact, Pictures, Pages, Features, Links etc. If someone needs to look at old blog entries or contact you, they know there will be a facility to do that. Provide these facilities in a separate page because showing everything on the front page will only create a mess. Your ‘blog friends list’ is too long? make a separate page. Plenty of ‘awards’? dedicate a gallery. Like to share photos from your recent trip? Make a section for photos! usw.
1.2. Choosing a skeleton:
Blog templates are gravitating towards a one or two column layout. Why? Here is what I think. In the previous days of 640×480 or 800×600 resolution monitors, you could see content on a site without moving your eyes much. However now, with the wide screen resolutions, if you try to read a horizontal line from left edge to the right, you could be turning your neck around as if watching a tennis match. Anything beyond 2 columns could potentially confuse your visitor, and even a microsecond is a lot. If you want to use a third column, try to dedicate it to something exclusive – such as a picture gallery.
1.3. Positioning:
You could have a website flushed to the left, right or aligned centrally. Few years ago, websites were mostly left aligned since centering was not as easily accomplished as it is today. With XHTML and CSS 2, absolute and relative positioning is easy to do. Center aligned blogs also give me a sense of balance and add to the ease of navigation. Also, since you have gotten rid of unwanted elements, there is more space. So why not leave a liberal margin on the sides.
1.4. Content placement:
Almost all people start reading from the top left and move towards the bottom right. Left to right is the most prevalent system in the world and newspapers, magazines etc. are designed with that in mind. Personally, if I don’t find anything content-y in the top-left 20% of the screen area, I almost surf away. This excludes the header and sidebar, since our eyes are trained to assume them after looking at hundreds of blogs. In my mind, when I look at a blog, I go: “Header, check!” “Sidebar, check!” … if “Content” is not the second or third thing in sight, I am discouraged from paying further attention. Seriously, who would want to hide their content?
Further Reading: Current Web style
2.0. Color, graphics and typography
Guiding principle: Stronger, simpler, bigger, honest.
Mozilla.com,
WordPress.org,
The Apple Blog,
Brave New Traveler
2.1. Typography:
Bigger is better! Let me revisit the blurb above on screen resolutions. With bigger screen areas, users see many things when they open a blog. Ergonomics states that I must be able to view the content comfortably from my chair without having to arch my neck and narrow my eyes. The solution? Keep with times, use bigger text and clearer fonts. Serif fonts (e.g. Times New Roman) or Monospace (e.g. Courier) are not the easiest to read, so switch to sans-Serif (e.g. Arial, Verdana, etc). Use of an exotic font is pointless because it won’t be displayed on other people’s computers and the browser will simply default to its settings.
2.2. Use of graphics:
Jarring graphics and aimless animations must go regardless how cute they are. Web 2.0 is all about functionality, so use simple but functional graphics and garbage the rest. Vivid graphics are used to bring attention to a particular matter. There is also a huge leap towards standardization of icons, for example we all mostly know the following icons:
2.3. Color scheme:
For a long time, color scheme was under rated. I remember back in 2003 I had designed my website with a color scheme called Agni (Fire) which is not very different form what you see today. I entered into a web design contest but I was disqualified since they thought that the colors were ‘too bright and funky’. Thankfully the internet has some sense of fashion now. Bolder colors are increasingly used now: blues, oranges and greens are everywhere you go. In addition, the color scheme can being used as a tool to separate various parts of your blog. People often have a distinct header and a distinct sidebar – either marked by a graphic or a colored separator. I like this kind of ‘fencing’ since my eyes can jump to the relevant portion quickly. Don’t be shy of using strong colors, gradients, lines and boxes to separate content in Web 2.0.
2.4. White space:
Since you have a bigger screen and you got rid of unnecessary elements from your page, this is an excellent opportunity to use liberal amounts of whitespace. Note that white-space is not necessarily white. It takes the color of the background (often white or a light color). The more the white space, the easier it is for your eyes to move.
The same goes for line spacing – have your lines sufficiently spaced. For example, reading something that is as tightly spaced as this paragraph will strain your eyes, or you might lose the line altogether. It is also hard to highlight or bring certain text to attention. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin in dolor sed nulla faucibus semper. Ut rhoncus libero in lectus accumsan ultricies. Suspendisse vehicula tempor sollicitudin. Curabitur a nisi lectus, eget consequat justo. Aliquam in sapien eu diam gravida rhoncus. Aliquam libero nibh, dapibus ut suscipit et, scelerisque in leo. Maecenas ut erat sapien, quis scelerisque erat. Sed tempor molestie turpis et ullamcorper. Duis euismod ipsum semper elit mattis egestas. Suspendisse quis dui feugiat elit vulputate laoreet id sit amet massa. Donec eu eros lectus. Sed cursus risus et purus pretium non viverra tellus iaculis. Morbi ac ligula ut magna facilisis mollis et ut mauris.
2.5. CSS is the new God
Unbelievable things can be achieved using CSS. It can be used to create rich layer effects, text effects, boxes and separators and can manage a host of other things like your links and navigation. Most implementations use CSS but find a way to go beyond the normal, superimpose a translucent layer over a picture maybe?
Further Reading: CSS Zen Garden, Visual design, 9 Essential principles,
3.0. Navigation
Guiding principle: Simple and accessible
3.1. Navigation menu
…is either placed on top of the blog just below the header or on top of the sidebar if you want it there. In any case, the navigation menu must be clearly visible and among the first things you notice. Think from a users perspective – do you want to list everything under the sun in your navigation menu? Probably not. Most of us are happy with links to basic pages like ‘contact’, ‘about’, or so. Drop-down’s are great, but I always wonder if a blog really needs detailed navigation menus like that. If you have a copyright policy or an awards page, think whether it’s worth including it on the most prominent piece of real estate on your blog. You can always have sub menus for such stuff – that’s what the sidebar or footer is for. List your categories, awards, links etc there and spare the visitor of a complicated navigation menu.
Navigation menu must be complimented by an appropriate title for the destination page. If you click on ‘Contact Me’ in the navigation menu, the destination page better say ‘Contact Me’ right on top. Web 2.0 is about honesty and simplicity together. Leave the tricky menus, cloaked url’s and dishonest stuff for websites selling phentermine, cialis or free porn.
3.2. Navigation Links
Another aspect of honesty is to ensure that the user has clear and full information before s/he clicks a link. Inserting advertisements in your text will only fool your visitors once. Similarly, stay away from masking the link url with some text in the browser’s status bar. Such tricks will discourage repeat visitors, and will also reduce the credibility of links to other websites that you cite in your blog post. Its a good idea (but lot of work) to use the ‘title’ element for your links so that the user can mouseover and get information about the link. I use a distinct icon to indicate links to external websites. It looks like this: 
Blogs have huge amounts of information catalogued in them and unless there is a good way to access older information, nobody will see it. Therefore, rich and relevant internal links are encouraged in blog posts. Trackbacks will ensure that even the older and relevant content is still connected to current posts. Use of ‘Previous-Next’, ‘Older post-Newer post’, ‘On this blog a month ago’, ‘Recent posts’ and such features increase the interconnectedness and accessibility of your posts.
4.0. Content delivery
Guiding principle: No discrimination
The days of Internet Explorer for windows as THE browser are long gone. There are a number of operating systems and plethora of browsers available for people to choose from. Even my mother prefers Firefox.
4.1. Compatibility in multiple environments
Anybody can design a website these days really, but what keeps the web-designer’s job is his/her knowledge of cross-browser compatibility. 
Do not assume what you see on your screen will be the same as what others see because most likely that won’t happen. Although your design may be perfect, remember that the browsers are not. Each browser uses an ‘engine’ to render web pages and their interpretation of your CSS definitions is never the same.
Do you blog about technology or does your blog attract lot of people who are top level managers? It might be worthwhile to make a ‘mobile’ version of your page to display it properly on handheld devices such as blackberry, iphone, ipod or other cellphones.
4.2. Using javascript, flash, and other features
Fancy features enrich browsing experience, but they must be used precisely for that: to enhance content delivery, not to deliver the content itself. Minimise or avoid the use of anything beyond XHTML and PHP to deliver information. Javascripts are quirky on several browsers, and flash may be slow loading. Try browsing your blog with javascript, images and flash turned off – are the users missing essential content? Information is to be conveyed in a clean and simple manner in Web 2.0 so critical content must never depend on alien scripts.
4.3. Accessibility
Several people (including me) often turn off images while browsing on a slow speed internet connection. To ensure that a user does not miss on important stuff, use less graphics and even if you do, always have an ALT text for every image. This is mandatory for XHTML compliance too.
If you are an accessibility freak (which I am not), try adding keyboard accessibility features.
- – -
Disclaimer
That’s all I have in my bag today. Hope these tips help you create a better user experience on your blog.
These tips are merely some guidelines that emerged from my observations and readings and by no means are the rules for a perfect website. Depending on the content you may use some or all of the above features. As long as you are keeping everything simple and clear, I will like your site.
Further Reading: What is Web 2.0?, Web 2.0 design guide,
Feedback
Please let me know what you think about this article. If you have suggestions to see something improved on my blog, I’ll be happy to hear them! Thanks!
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