Transitions

It seems that I'm always blogging during moments of transition. Start of a semester, let's blog it. End of a school year, let's blog it. Start of a summer job, let's blog it.

My theory -- or at least the one I like to tell myself -- is that I'm too engrossed in the day-to-day act of living at other times to actually bring myself to step back and blog about it. Transitions offer that natural break in the flow of life that encourages reflection and pondering. The rest of life is seemingly relegated to a stream of tweets. (Though, I don't tweet that frequently either.)

Still besides obvious transitions, aren't there any major life events to chronicle? Or does one week just bleed into the next? It often feels like that during the school year. But with the start of another summer, I'm hoping that I'll be able to blog more often and really capture those moments in-between transitions. That's the plan at least. Let's see how it goes :)

--Arkajit

Harry Potter Politics

So that was a looong hiatus, and I'm going to try to start blogging more regularly again. For most of the past year, most of my writing has been in the form of hard news stories for The Tech or the occasional essay for a HASS class. While I did have a lot of fun with that, I also feel the need for some more free-form writing as well, if for no other reason than for my own sanity.

To start things off, here's my first (of hopefully more) non-news piece for The Tech: Potter Politics.

--Arkajit

Google's New Clothes

Google has gotten a new look! The change is in the search results as shown below:


I never thought it particularly needed one. Thankfully the classic home page remains pristine and uncluttered as ever. But in the results page, the links to other types of search such as image search, have been moved into the sidebar rather than being in a row at the top. Facebook also went with a sidebar when it changed its layout a couple of weeks ago. My feelings about the change are conflicted. I'm not too crazy about the new design. The original format already had the PPC ads along the right. But now with the added links on the right, the actual space for search results seems more confined. I guess this does start the results a little higher on the pager. And there are some cool new features, though. There's the related searches links on the left. And if you scroll down to the bottom of the results...

... links to a few blog posts! Google Blog Search integrated into the main search! Though, I think they could put these somewhere nearer to the top instead of having us scroll down to the bottom for it. So at least, there are some redeeming qualities of the new layout. And I'll probably get used to it before long.

-- Arkajit

You Are...

...Time's Person of the Year!



Yes, you, me, everyone. Did we call it or what? Keep up the blogging, podcasting, web 2.0 spirit!

-- Arkajit

Space Blogging

Blogging has broken new frontiers: Blogs in Space! Ansani, the Iranian space tourist, begins her blog "A long, long time ago in a country far, far away ...". Awesome Star Wars reference!

As far as I know, there haven't been similar blogging milestones from other extreme parts of the world. So here are some new challenges for the blogging community:

• Blogging From Under the Sea
• Blogging From Atop the Summit of Mt. Everest
• Blogging From the Moon
• Blogging From Middle Earth
• Blogging From Hogwarts
• Blogging From Tatooine
  

So maybe those last three are best left to fantasy (I can just imagine Hermione saying "Honestly, are you ever going to read Hogwarts, A History. All those Muggle substitutes for magic don't work around Hogwarts!") :P .

But at least there could be records for highest/lowest elevation blogging, etc... It would be interesting to see how it would turn out. Though I'm not sure how feasible it is currently :)

-- Arkajit