Category: Blogging

Restarting Bloggin

After a hiatus of xxx months (insert a number here later), I have restarted blogging. I am not talking about this blog. This was always on. Just that the readership was changed to invite only. Hopefully, some people do read this (stats say, no one reads this).

I am starting two new ones. (?), to talk about serious things. Business, money, poker, life, India, travel etc. And Armchair Activist, to talk about all frivolous things.

And this one, War of Words stays. Private. This is where I shall talk about things that make me sad, happy, excited etc. Basically personal stuff. Things that I dont want the world to know. Things that I want to only share with few friends.

Spread the word 🙂

Why I did what I did?

So why did I do what I did? Multiple reasons. Here are a few that come to my mind immediately.

I realized that I was writing for the world. I was hoping for appreciation and rave reviews post every blog post. I was trying to please an audience that I was hoping to get with my blog. I started expecting fanmail. I was refreshing my mailbox every minute. I was on the lookout for a literary agent already. I was losing myself.

Apart from that I was wasting a lot of time on cooking up stories/posts that would get me more hits and more readers. I was becoming a publicity whore. I would deliberately post things that people would search for. I wanted to be on the top page of digg and delicious. I wanted to be famous. And while I was doing all this, I was losing focus of the bigger picture. That I am supposed to be myself when I am writing. That I should be talking to friends rather than strangers. That I should be writing for the pleasure of writing rather than for fame.

With my blog in restricted mode, I know that every post counts. I know that I am talking to a select few. I am talking to friends. I know I will be talking about things that are important to me.

Hope the experiment works well. Hope I stick on. Hope I keep writing.

P.S.: Having said all this, I do want to meet new people. I do want to engage in debates and discussions with people that are better than I. I do want to be famous. Am sure, Inshallah, some day I shall cook up some other blog for that ;P

Year # 6, Post # 740

Its been six years. Since I started writing War of Words (first post). It has been an awesome experience. Learnt lots of lessons. Bumped into hazaar people. Made quite a few friends. Improved the way I write.

Best part about writing a blog is that you can go back and read what you thought at a point in time. In fact I am surprised how consistent I have been been with my thoughts. I am confused, frivolous, random, impractical as I was in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009.

Hope to continue writing. Hope you continue reading 🙂

Private and/or Public

So, after my last few posts, someone very special asked me what is the merit in having a public blog that anyone can read. What kicks do I get by sharing my life with strangers? I was told that I share things that are very private in nature and yet allow everyone to read them.

I think blogging helps me. It helps me put structure to my thoughts. I helps me take a stock of situations. I helps me with vital feedback and links me to the outside world. And obviously its a great marketing tool. I cant imagine not having a blog. A vent. A window to the world. A place where gyaan, bakar and conversations flow.

However, I do realize that I tend to get personal when I am writing and I need to stop that. Since writing is such an integral part of me, I shall start a new blog, private, strictly for myself and few very dear friends.

On War of Words, I shall only share random interestingness and oddities. I will talk about things like Bing’s and Yahoo’s “merger” in the search business, Manmohan Singh’s reply in the Parliament, Bangladesh winning a cricket series over West Indies and so on so forth. And obviously I would keep writing fiction and posting one word posts. Hoping that they are cryptic enough to hide things ;P

And for the other blog, lemme know if you want access to that. There ARE early bird prizes.

Personal Information Management

So, these are problem statements …

  1. I know a lot of things and want to know lot more.
  2. I read tons of material and my to-read list is growing exponentially everyday.
  3. I come in contact with a lot of wonderful people. And I need to stay connected with them.
  4. And finally I want to be able to manage my todo list on a daily basis.

And with busier and mobile life, its imperative that something about managing information is done. And fast.

I have decided I would use online tools for these tasks. Simply because Internet is now as ubiquitous as it could be and online tools are almost as good as offline ones. Also I want to use simple tools. Life is too complex anyways, why use complex tools?

So, here is a list.

  1. A pen drive for files that are too large to be shared on the Internet. And carry along data that is very critical that if Internet goes for a toss.
  2. del.icio.us – bookmark links, webpages and other things that I want to keep track of.
  3. pbwiki – take notes and invite comments
  4. Google Docs, Calendar – for creating lists and schedules
  5. Google Reader – to keep track on my reading list
  6. SaurabhGarg.com and septemberthe22nd.blogspot.com
  7. Slideshare and Scribd – for managing files, documents and presentations

And then I will continue to use these online tools/services

  1. Twitter
  2. Dopplr
  3. Facebook
  4. Flickr
  5. LinkedIn

What else should I use? Is there a good contact management software? Where I can keep a list of my contacts, where I know them from, what do they get to the table and all that?

khddssd blogs

Note: Edited on 20 May 2013 to remove links.

There was I time when I would boot my blog editor on Blogger and post about every small leaf moving with every strand of wind. And then there came a time when I would post things that are truly monumental.

As we increasingly live in a digital world where every bit of data and information you put anywhere on the Internet can be searched and indexed and retrieved easily. And moving with the times, I need to change the way I blog.

I will no longer create a new post on every small update. Now its about one place for everything related to a particular topic.

  • This might mean several edits on the same post.

  • This would mean trouble for people reading my blog from RSS readers.

  • This would also mean comments going out of context. This would mean more trouble.

But I think the trouble is worth it. A post would no longer remain a small rant on things. It will, over a period of time, become a long page with lots of details on a particular topic. It will become my personal Wikipedia. In fact I had realized this long back and hence the pbWiki.

Also I have realized that juggling multiple blogs is very difficult. Apart from contributions to mutiny.in, pluggd.in, venturewoods, I manage quite a few blogs. My photoblog, personal blog, new new thing, Friends from Creativeland, value investing and probably a lot more blogs that I am forgetting (yes unofficial MDI blog, MML blog etc.). It is very difficult to juggle between all these. You tend to put a lot of effort on creating one and promoting it and as a result you ignore the other ones to die their natural, slow and painful death.

What do you think? Should I post on every small think? Or one large post with lots of data and information works?

Originally posted on here.