It all started with "dil se..". Not that I hadn't heard him before. But this was the first Rahman album that caught my attention. I have heard it countless times. Papa bought this cassette when he bought the new music system. That was 97' and this is 08' now. 11 years and I have been an ardent Rahman fanatic the whole time. In all probability not a single week of my life has passed since the last 10 years when I haven't heard a single Rahman song. Be it "Taal" , the "Times top ten enlisted", "Roja" or the deep tunes of not so popular "Thakshak" nad a lesser known chinese film,"between heaven and earth" I have been engrossed in Rahman all the time.
It was the early nineties and Indian music industry was losing face in the international scene due to the word "inspiration". Mr. Anu Malik was inspired from Mr. George Michael , Mr. Bappi Lahiri was inspired from almost every disco artist and all music directors were deeply inspired someone or the other in Hollywood. Mind you these inspired songs were doing very well in the Indian market but at a very expensive cost of originality and cultural heritage. During this time Mr. Mani Ratnam was in search of a new talent for his upcoming "Roja". He approached Rahman. Little did he know that he was going to change the facet of the Indian music industry for ever.
Rahman scored the compositions for Roja and became a star overnight. People loved his style and got in him the long wanted fresh and original compositions. Rahman's music took this country by storm. But very few people actually understood the music. It was pleasant to hear but what was most important about the music was the fusion style. It wasn't copy paste orchestration like others were doing. It was a new genre of music.
Since then Rahman has influenced every person in Indian who listens to music. He touches hearts(swades), fights poverty(pray for me brother), is genuinely super patriotic (vande mataram & jana gana mana), has taken music to great heights(taal), has provided India with top dance tunes( chaiyan chaiyan), seldom fails to rise upto the expectations( jodhaa akbar) and in short is a national treasure.
I AM A RAHMAN FANATIC AND AM PROUD TO BE ONE... DIL SE
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
A Tryst With Web Designing
"Monetize your blog".
These three simple words entered me into the realm of web designing.
Bloggers must be in no doubt as to where these three words screamed at me first. Yes, it was google. It was then that I thought, why should I waste my time on some website that allows me just to write my thoughts. Though the idea of making money from my blog was fascinating, I thought of taking it a step further. What if I had a website of my own?
I hit on google once again and pulled out all that I could about making a website. As it turned out, to design a totally custom made website I needed to learn html at the least. Even then I would have to use javascripts or php scripts to make a dynamic website which was exactly what I wanted. Not to mention database knowledge. The whole procedure made me a little skeptical about turning my desire into reality.
Months passed and though the idea of designing and having a website of my own never left my mind, I could not take any initiatives to make progress. Still I surfed regularly on related topics and one day I came to conclusion that I would have to take someone's help to go ahead. I now searched for a partner who would have a little experience in the field and who would at least give me a basic platform to start a website. I did not have to look very far. Turns out a guy in my class builds website. More famous for his hacking skills than website building, Abhisek was the most perfect guy that I could have got.Talking to him once made me clear that he was no amateur. With a lot of experience in hacking since his school days Abhisek had long ago entered the world that I was to set foot into now. He said he would build a website for me.
I had ideas for the website and I had resources for the investment. I had to buy a domain name and the hosting would be done by a friend of Abhisek. I wanted a sort of bazaar, an internet marketplace but only on a local basis. Local shopkeepers would give data and we would it feed it on a regular basis. I had thought of internet transaction as well but it had some legal complications. So all I could do would be to give information to the local consumer about the products available in his city.That way one could sit at home and know about all products and costs before setting out to purchase it. It would save a lot of market rounds on the part of the consumer and in a way it would also advertise the shops interested.
So I started forming a team who would help in this project(which is what I called it then). I rounded up 3 other friends and set out to buy the domain name. We decided on bazaar99.com.I bought the domain name for rupees 450.
The next phase of the project was tough. Abhisek was to start the designing and scripting part and I was to collect data from local shops on their commodities. As having all products on the website was simply not possible, we decided to categorize the products. So we had computer and peripherals, books, automobiles and some similar stuffs whose retail shops would be easy to find.
So me and Sarang(the one who never fails to raise my morale by his positive criticism) set out one fine day to search for the shops. We asked for catalogs and product list.Even though the response was not overwhelming, we still could manage to get a few things. But this task took us about 3-4 days of city rounds. The thought over doing this over and over again was troubling me but still we decided to go ahead with the idea.
So a few months later the website was ready. I had to feed data that I had gathered in the mean time. But it was late now as product rates had changed, new products had arrived and the old ones lifted off the market. It was tough on my part to not include the data for which I had toiled and not to mention that all this work had soiled and resoiled the relation with my friends. Abhisek had come closer now but others had drifted apart, with one of them even sentimentally hurt. The website not able to receive proper funding now could not be advertised. What advertising was done was mostly on local forums and websites allowing free classified ads. Orkut was a good advertising platform but it soon became evident that with the amount of scrapping that I was doing, it was turning into cheap publicity. Someone even called the website a "har ek maal" website due to its name. With time passing,hits decreasing, and the shops taking lesser interest than ever, the site was reduced to sheer mockery. This pleased some and displeased some, but most of all it hurt me like hell. I was thinking on the lines of remodeling. It is at that time it struck me that if I could rename the site and a certain features which would attract the mass in Orissa, I could popularize it.Thus onlineorissa.com came into existence. It took some time but finally the site was up with some new features like community, groups, user profiles and forums. It worked out fine for some time with me dedicating more and more time on its popularization. This time I hired an U.S server with a few dollars that I had earned from freelance writing( the tryst with which we may talk of at a later date). This server was available for only three months out of which nearly two had been consumed for development of the site.
We had planned to transfer the site to Abhisek's server once it was back(it had been down for some reasons.) Three months had passed, the site was down and there was some trouble with the transfer to Abhisek's server. It simply wasn't happening. Then came the semester exams and all my attention turned to that. The chain of events that followed didn't allow us to shift the website. It stayed put and inaccessible. In between all this, Abhisek and I decided that the time had come for us to open up a small web-designing and e-commerce solutions company. We christened it "KraftPage". Kraftpage.com was bought and plans to build it were set in motion. But a few months of inaction and unavoidable distractions kept us from implementing them. Also, we became lazy.
The most personally important aspect of all this was that, although it was my dream to build a website myself and I had been the major factor in the development of two websites, I still hadn't touched a line of code and was only involved in either collecting and inputing data or writing content for the site. The nearest I came to designing was when I tried to build a website for myself on my laptop.I used dreamweaver8 and had not come in direct contact of html other than on a few occasions.
The next phase came with the idea to build a website for my school(GreenField), whose online community is now based in Orkut. A call for an independent discussion platform woke me up to the task and I took it. This time I decided it was high time that I learned something. But things went bad as my LCD got busted and the computer went for repair till indefinite time. Still using my home computer, borrowed laptops, and a little but essential help from Abhisek and a few seniors I was able to get to the base of html and even began implementing javascript codes. The result looked nice. I am elated to say that I even edited a php guestbook script and made it to work like a news and articles script. The feeling was great. This was day before yesterday.
Today is a new day and a new begining. I shall learn something more, something from the past and something to look into the future. I may fail, I may fall but I shall not stop. I will look back and I will look back to see my mistakes, the mockery and the criticism. Then I shall look ahead and see a tomorrow void of these.
A few completed websites since..
www.gfsfamily.in
www.prakalpa.in
These three simple words entered me into the realm of web designing.
Bloggers must be in no doubt as to where these three words screamed at me first. Yes, it was google. It was then that I thought, why should I waste my time on some website that allows me just to write my thoughts. Though the idea of making money from my blog was fascinating, I thought of taking it a step further. What if I had a website of my own?
I hit on google once again and pulled out all that I could about making a website. As it turned out, to design a totally custom made website I needed to learn html at the least. Even then I would have to use javascripts or php scripts to make a dynamic website which was exactly what I wanted. Not to mention database knowledge. The whole procedure made me a little skeptical about turning my desire into reality.
Months passed and though the idea of designing and having a website of my own never left my mind, I could not take any initiatives to make progress. Still I surfed regularly on related topics and one day I came to conclusion that I would have to take someone's help to go ahead. I now searched for a partner who would have a little experience in the field and who would at least give me a basic platform to start a website. I did not have to look very far. Turns out a guy in my class builds website. More famous for his hacking skills than website building, Abhisek was the most perfect guy that I could have got.Talking to him once made me clear that he was no amateur. With a lot of experience in hacking since his school days Abhisek had long ago entered the world that I was to set foot into now. He said he would build a website for me.
I had ideas for the website and I had resources for the investment. I had to buy a domain name and the hosting would be done by a friend of Abhisek. I wanted a sort of bazaar, an internet marketplace but only on a local basis. Local shopkeepers would give data and we would it feed it on a regular basis. I had thought of internet transaction as well but it had some legal complications. So all I could do would be to give information to the local consumer about the products available in his city.That way one could sit at home and know about all products and costs before setting out to purchase it. It would save a lot of market rounds on the part of the consumer and in a way it would also advertise the shops interested.
So I started forming a team who would help in this project(which is what I called it then). I rounded up 3 other friends and set out to buy the domain name. We decided on bazaar99.com.I bought the domain name for rupees 450.
The next phase of the project was tough. Abhisek was to start the designing and scripting part and I was to collect data from local shops on their commodities. As having all products on the website was simply not possible, we decided to categorize the products. So we had computer and peripherals, books, automobiles and some similar stuffs whose retail shops would be easy to find.
So me and Sarang(the one who never fails to raise my morale by his positive criticism) set out one fine day to search for the shops. We asked for catalogs and product list.Even though the response was not overwhelming, we still could manage to get a few things. But this task took us about 3-4 days of city rounds. The thought over doing this over and over again was troubling me but still we decided to go ahead with the idea.
So a few months later the website was ready. I had to feed data that I had gathered in the mean time. But it was late now as product rates had changed, new products had arrived and the old ones lifted off the market. It was tough on my part to not include the data for which I had toiled and not to mention that all this work had soiled and resoiled the relation with my friends. Abhisek had come closer now but others had drifted apart, with one of them even sentimentally hurt. The website not able to receive proper funding now could not be advertised. What advertising was done was mostly on local forums and websites allowing free classified ads. Orkut was a good advertising platform but it soon became evident that with the amount of scrapping that I was doing, it was turning into cheap publicity. Someone even called the website a "har ek maal" website due to its name. With time passing,hits decreasing, and the shops taking lesser interest than ever, the site was reduced to sheer mockery. This pleased some and displeased some, but most of all it hurt me like hell. I was thinking on the lines of remodeling. It is at that time it struck me that if I could rename the site and a certain features which would attract the mass in Orissa, I could popularize it.Thus onlineorissa.com came into existence. It took some time but finally the site was up with some new features like community, groups, user profiles and forums. It worked out fine for some time with me dedicating more and more time on its popularization. This time I hired an U.S server with a few dollars that I had earned from freelance writing( the tryst with which we may talk of at a later date). This server was available for only three months out of which nearly two had been consumed for development of the site.
We had planned to transfer the site to Abhisek's server once it was back(it had been down for some reasons.) Three months had passed, the site was down and there was some trouble with the transfer to Abhisek's server. It simply wasn't happening. Then came the semester exams and all my attention turned to that. The chain of events that followed didn't allow us to shift the website. It stayed put and inaccessible. In between all this, Abhisek and I decided that the time had come for us to open up a small web-designing and e-commerce solutions company. We christened it "KraftPage". Kraftpage.com was bought and plans to build it were set in motion. But a few months of inaction and unavoidable distractions kept us from implementing them. Also, we became lazy.
The most personally important aspect of all this was that, although it was my dream to build a website myself and I had been the major factor in the development of two websites, I still hadn't touched a line of code and was only involved in either collecting and inputing data or writing content for the site. The nearest I came to designing was when I tried to build a website for myself on my laptop.I used dreamweaver8 and had not come in direct contact of html other than on a few occasions.
The next phase came with the idea to build a website for my school(GreenField), whose online community is now based in Orkut. A call for an independent discussion platform woke me up to the task and I took it. This time I decided it was high time that I learned something. But things went bad as my LCD got busted and the computer went for repair till indefinite time. Still using my home computer, borrowed laptops, and a little but essential help from Abhisek and a few seniors I was able to get to the base of html and even began implementing javascript codes. The result looked nice. I am elated to say that I even edited a php guestbook script and made it to work like a news and articles script. The feeling was great. This was day before yesterday.
Today is a new day and a new begining. I shall learn something more, something from the past and something to look into the future. I may fail, I may fall but I shall not stop. I will look back and I will look back to see my mistakes, the mockery and the criticism. Then I shall look ahead and see a tomorrow void of these.
A few completed websites since..
www.gfsfamily.in
www.prakalpa.in
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