"Infinite Zounds" - a new quiz blog

I've started Infinite Zounds - a new blog that features (at least) one new question each day. There are quite a few quiz blogs around, but what's different about this blog is that the underlying theme is what is usually known as "Current Affairs". Each question is about something that was in the news recently and is contemporary in attention. So no questions about the Harappan civilisation, film noir from the 50s, the books of Raymond Chandler, or the performances of Kumar Sanu - unless they were in the news recently for some reason.

(In fact, it is highly unlikely that the blog will have any questions on Sanu - you can stop hyperventilating now.).

If you visit the blog, you will see that each post also contains the answer below in addition to the question. The answer is hidden, to let you hazard a guess in your head if you so choose to. I don't like going back to a blog the next day to find the answer, which is why I've done this.

You can subscribe to the blog via its feed. Unfortunately, this feed may contain the answer as well - that's something I haven't managed to solve, despite setting the feed to publish partially. Based on how things go, I might change the feed to full. Until then, if you subscribe via the default feed, consider a general spoiler alert to be in issuance.

An alternative is to follow the blog via Twitter or Google Buzz (or use the email id 'infinitezounds[at]gmail').

So, inviting you to take a look at Infinite Zounds, and see if the questions take your fancy. Let me know if it does.

I'm a Twit

Ok, don't laugh, but I'm "twittering" here. The answer to the why (if there is such a question) is that I wanted to try it, Harish seems to like it, and I realise I do want to micro-blog, but not clutter this blog with the excruciating minutiae of everyday life, which Twittering seems to massively entail.

Let's see.

Annus Blogus -VI

This blog turned six this week. A selection of posts from the last year.

re- tri- Bard watching al- aur al- anal-retenti-

-ctoriana -rtuoso -gnettes -cissitudinal -treous humour -erd? -bretto: poetry that makes your insides strong -eux jeu -zardly: everything is a mask -rescence -ctor ludorum -sitation -al -shal -daa -daa -ist -ntage homage -dimus needed -sionary loved this one -gil, The will, vi will rock you -scidity -ncibility -scosity -jay speaks -ew point, (silly) -shay kaay hotaa? -tuperation

-va!

In previous years:
2007 was the empty post, 2006 was the embedded image post, 2005 was the handwritten post, 2004 was the nadsat post, 2003 was the boustrophedon post, 2002 was the first post.

Here but there

Here but there

There's so much to write about: the travails of following Vishal's music when it releases, a hey! to Johnny G still pending to be noted, RSA winning a World Cup for the 2nd time and England actually making a final again, my potential retirement from cricket (no!!), panthers at IIT and the resulting linguistic deep fry, and learning to keep my mouth shut while setting a quiz.

All this is on hold due to some upcoming quizzes to be done and a paper to be made camera-ready and so on.

Latest scientific survey results in

Latest scientific survey results in

A recent survey shows that when you read my blog, it is good for health.

My health, naturally.

That section between the Indigo and the Yellow films please

I don't know what keywords have found their way to this blog, but since yesterday, it seems I have become an information source for films of a certain primary colour, as can be seen in the screenshot below. There was just one yesterday, but today both the Google ads on the right have gone Blue Nile cinematic.

Perhaps this was exactly the shot in the arm my AdSense collection needed?

Update: I reported the ads as being offensive or inappropriate (silly me) and now the ads have changed. We're now carrying "micronutra" ads which, given the right amount of creativity, you can imagine interesting things about.

कुछ और प्रयोग

I don't know if you've noticed, but Blogger now provides a Roman-to-Devanagari transliteration feature. I heard about it a couple of weeks ago, but only turned it on today. It seems to work fairly well so far. The only issue for me is that it applies only to the "Compose" (WYSIWYG) section, and not to the regular html one, which is the one I use. So I have toggle between modes and paste. So I could have used another transliteration offering like quillpad, but this is not too painful either. Considering the initial source of information and the fact that this is only available for Devanagari currently clearly means the Google India people have pushed and scored with this one.

Another recent Blogger addition has been to auto-save drafts. Excellent, because on quite a few occasions, I've lost big posts (let that be a lesson on brevity to me, though) thanks to crashes or power loss. More power to asynchronicity!

P.S. Have spotted my first bug: the transliteration mode is ON, but I'm in the Edit Html mode -> I enter labels for this post: I pick "blog_news", which is transliterated! (that too into "ब्लोग_news"). Yikes.

Annus Blogus -V

(or an excuse for one)

It's been 5 years since this blog was born and since I started blogging. I've done some special annual posts in the past, but not this time, considering the serious lack of motive force and the patina of dust that has accrued - this whisper was appropriate. But hopefully, and soon, we'll be back. Till then, enjoy the silence.

In previous years:
2006 was the embedded image post
2005 was the handwritten post
2004 was the nadsat post
2003 was the boustrophedon post
2002 was the first post

The Tagged and the Taggers

1. If you send me anything from the latest new social networking craze (read: "WTF?") "Tagged", prepare to face loss of vital organs. However distant you may be from me. (Previously on the topic)
2. If you tag your posts with compound words in Blogger (such as "Sahara skiing"), note that some of you are doing something that causes it to split into two words (ref: a Gaurav post) ("american", "idol"). I can't figure out what, though.

Blogger search - no longer a vast emptiness

I have ranted about Blogger Search being like a lollipop, but I'm now pleased to report that since the move to Blogger Beta (as I like to call it), things have improved by several notches. Now, searching via the top-left search box on this blog doesn't seem to go through the Google search page using the "site:" qualifier. I have a feeling that they've twiddled around with the kind of words being indexed on blogs and it's paying off. All my recent searches have yielded perfectly suitable results, while earlier recall was about 25%. Nice work and the new Blogger continues to quietly impress.

Blog publishing frequently

Blog publishing frequently

This blog migrated to the newer version of Blogger, and as Aditya predicted, I'm all gaga over the possibilities of using labels. I'd like to label each and every post of mine, however trivial, and so site feeds for this blog will show up with the promise of new posts in their UIs, but will only be old posts garnished with a label. Please do not blame your aggregator.

Loading...

This is getting curiouser and curiouser. I didn't know whether to dismiss reports that there has been official word to block access to ".blogspot" and other sites from within India, given that I have been able to access them from my desk in IIT-B (but it takes a while to load, but the blogspot blogs do eventually load; wordpress even faster). Surely, if a government ban went through, IIT would be among the first to clamp down? Some people report that a message that the site is blocked is shown for some blogs - I haven't seen anything so far. One thing that is blocked in ITI sadly is youtube and apparently even google vidoe. Pity - I'm not if the reasons were bandwidth-hogging or other stuff.

Either someone's doing a really bad and slow job of monitoring and filtering content before it loads or there's a genuine technical problem or there's some unofficial "authoritarian" diktat floating around. Many bloggers have decided for themselves that there is something sinister about all of this and have launched a wiki to collect information about it.

It would be laughable, of course, for some babu to decide that blogs can be used to spread anti-national sentiment (you'd have to pull your network cable out to prevent the means to do that in the ultimate analysis). There are so many ways to get around it that it's hilarious.

Still, anything's possible. I'm not sure how terrorists use blogs to communicate. Have I been sending out subliminal messages in HTML, I wonder?

For some reason, it has been quite a struggle to board the wagon, what with countless darogas shaped as "Microsoft VB Runtime Errors" not letting me pass. I actually am over-represented in blog-dom-mania thanks to panic clicking. But like a blue, blistering barnacle, will cling on for all its worth. Interestingly, I sneaked under the tent and joined 63 other hopefuls for this year's BBC MasterMind India. I have been asked (from my choices) to take on the "Recipients of the Bharat Ratna". Good, no?

And must drop in a word, if not the entire arsenal, on the new look (cough, splutter) Times of India. If anyone is the Trishanku of Indian newspapers, it is this no-longer-venerable spread. Caught between hoping for the broadsheet respect and the tabloid whistle. Interesting fonts no doubt, but caught trying to overdo the "it's lesser, but that's more" mantra. And the Sunday Review has become: "Men and Women". Actually, it should be: A Man & a half and 2 women from beneath the Ads. Way to go ... STOI ... down