staying.general

clubbing together a month’s worth of everything into one big gigantic post

Dec 22nd

Posted by SEV in staying.general

1 comment

This is the 4th attempt I’m making at trying for a halfway decent beginning to a post. Have I really been reduced to saying such banalities? I can’t quite believe it. When I look at my front page, most of my recent posts are about movies. Reviews, basically. Most of my recent posts have also ended with a sign-off saying that I will have a proper update soon. This post, by virtue of being an “update”, doesn’t count as a proper post either. I have notes here, there and everywhere galore… none of which I have really expanded on. Hell, when I was going through my drafts I realized that I had a started a post last winter which I never got round to finishing.

I’m not happy with that start either, but its a start.

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dissertatio propositio

Dec 11th

Posted by SEV in staying.general

7 comments

Completed.

‘Nuff said.

What remains now (for the proposal form, NOT the final dissertation):

sign baby sign

Think the missus will be enthu?

the missus is around..

Nov 29th

Posted by SEV in staying.general

1 comment

I refuse to update this space in the meantime, by taking time off from her.

:D

Keep begging.

a longer break than usual

Nov 17th

Posted by SEV in staying.general

No comments

I’ve basically reduced my posting to just once a week, and hopefully it is normally exactly once a week.

However, the next post is not going to happen before this weekend. It sucks for all you ardent readers out there, but it can’t be helped. I have a deadline I’m way overdue for now. It sucks for me too, but thats because my overfull drafts/ideas folder remains just that. Overfull. Hopefully I won’t lose inspiration in the meantime.

If you’re bored you can always check out my ‘Shared Reader‘ items (link above). Some small updates are bound to happen there at least – deadline notwithstanding :P

And I wonder why I have no idea when exactly my PhD will get done. Sigh.

personas-ization

Nov 5th

Posted by SEV in staying.general

1 comment

Somehow Personas is making me regress. Back to a time when I first started using Firebird 0.7, and hacked my way into theming it (the Firefox of those days did not look pretty – it looked like what it was: a quick, nifty version of the Mozilla Suite Browser). And then with Firefox 0.9, official themes could be easier downloaded from the official Firefox site. My only irritation being that you could not easily preview them. Or use them (restarting was required, as far as I remember).

Worst of all, such themes would screw up in some tiny detail.. given that by this time Firefox was a permanently opened application in my Windows – the tiny detail would eventually grow to a huge gigantic flaw. One I just could not miss. It might be just the lack of theming the edge of a particular menu. But that was enough. Yeah, I know. Big huge non-existent problem.

And so, I quit theming. Indeed I scorned the idea. Who would do something like that? I even quit theming my Thunderbird. They seemed mere frivolous activities, for someone who did not appreciate the true utilitarian look of the browser. Eventually my entire computer would be regressed to its bare-bones look, grey and blue windows and all. As simple as you can get. Stark. Snappy.

Dull?

With UberT, theming developed into a challenge. How far down can you tweak XP to look like another OS? Longhorn (now Vista) previews were coming out, and just as quickly being made into themes. Flyakite OS X for the pure Mac experience. Indeed, I remember at the WWW2006 conference everyone was puzzled how my “Mac” was behaving like an XP. My Firefox? Got a Safari theme. But I remember my constant search to improve its look – none of the ones available were just quite good enough.

Yeah, I know. Continuing big huge non-existent problem.

Since I moved to Vista, though, such endeavors have ceased. Some amount of basic customization seemed enough. Wallpapers, task-bar/window color (always black!), transparency. It appeared as though Windows had evolved perfectly in this one aspect to fulfill our need for customization. Meanwhile Gmail added themes, as did iGoogle and so on and forth.

And Firefox remained in its default form. No more big huge non-existent problem! Even if UberT saw one and insisted that Glasser was the greatest thing for Firefox and Aero ever.

Now we’re at Windows 7. Themes are more neat than ever before. Nifty and pretty. One-click install into Windows from the site. Yes, yes, my Firefox remained its usual default self. Until now.

I had heard of Personas (during the Fx 3 release) but had never really paid any attention to it. Until I installed Fx 3.6 Beta. Personas built-in. Which I discovered by accident while reading the release notes.

The simplicity boggles the mind. Go to site. Hover to preview. Click to install. No restart. On-the-fly theme switching. And it styles nothing more than the window itself. I’m not irritated that the developer didn’t get the menu color quite right.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Now that I read this post in retrospect, it seems like the silliest thing to post about.

But remember Rule #32 from Zombieland: Enjoy the little things.

So here I am.

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i’m only two days late for something i nearly forget every year

Oct 28th

Posted by SEV in staying.general

9 comments

..and to think that I put in a reminder on my RTM (which I, obviously, ignored).

5 years. 5 years. 5 years.

Yes, yes, I actually repeated the same phrase thrice with formatting changes. Here’s a fourth:

5 years.

I really can’t get over that figure. Have I really have been writing consistently for that long? I had that many things to talk about? Ok, maybe not consistently. Ok, maybe I’ve not always talked a lot. However, the fact remains that this blog will soon have been around for a little more than 1/5th of my own life. This blog has seen posts about many things. Random meanderings which even I can only barely follow today. Personal milestones and musings inspired by those milestones. Feelings and reflections due to books, movies, music and what have you. Views on anything and everything. Frustration. It is an interesting collection of the way my brain has shaped itself over a few years. Makes me wonder why I didn’t do something similar even earlier in my life. Would have been interesting to read what I was thinking about at age 15. I doubt it would have lasted this long. This space endures. Somehow.

The last time I posted about such a milestone I was at 602 posts. Now we’re at #675. It has stabilized at roughly ~6 posts/month over the past year. And that number doesn’t seem to be going anywhere higher or lower, despite my public outcries to the contrary. Meaning 1000 posts will need at least another 4-odd years, assuming I continue at my current rate of posting. I want to say that this can happen faster, but who knows?

Five seems like a significant milestone. Should I be doing something special? Play a trick? Jazz up the place? Throw a party? Incidentally I did kinda-sorta party for Windows 7 last week. Got a Windows 7 Ultimate Edition for my effort. There was bowling, pubbing, bakwaas-ing, and finally sitting in a coffee shop and reminiscing. Sounds like a party to me.

We’ll pretend it was a two-in-one party for now.

Happy Anniversary, blog.

Hopefully it doesn’t mean you’re closer to dying – like it does for the rest of us.

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