Firefox Issues!

Am new to Mozilla's Firefox, but the many plugins and extensions available for it, and the countless cool things you can do with it (like you can capture the complete web page as an image and save it, and wow, does the image have quality???) made me a fan of the Fox!

However, AM SORRY GUYS BUT THIS PAGE GOES NUTS WHEN OPENED IN FIREFOX. Am trying to figure out what's wrong here. It looks a li'l too ugly in it
(I use FF.v.1.0.6 and DeerPark Alpha1)

The post has gone way below the post title!! A mysterious gradient bar appears below the sidebar and the content area. Also, the borders look ugly!!!

So, if you are using FireFox, please leave a comment for this post and mention if the design looks ok in your browser. Pleeeeazeee...
I would be grateful :)

Thanx!

Update: Tuesday, 04th October 2005
Phew!
Atlast I got them to work fine. Now FireFox shows it the way I want it :) But yeah, it's taken up a lot of my "li'l free time". In office am busy with some design works. So will post when I get back most of my "li'l free time" ;)

Till then...    

Lost in decoration? ;)

Hey people!

Sorry, but I haven’t been posting here. In the last few days, I’ve been too engrossed in browsing through the many sites and more so in adding “extra stuffs” to my page. As you can see, on the sidebar I’ve added a new Shout Box (man, I love those B&W smilies), registered with a lot of directories and rings (and hence those teeny tiny banners), put up a random image display down below, and also joined the Google AdSense (and there, now you notice the Ads by Google on the top and a bigger one on the sidebar). Basically, I was just trying out things, and then all of a sudden my mean-black-page started looking like a night sky… filled with bright stars!! So finally made them all less brighter too :)

However, I got too engrossed in all this coz finding the right kind of stuff on the net was a time-eater. Anyways, this may go on for a while, I mean the decorating stuff, coz am a curious head ;) but I’ll be back with more posts.

Meanwhile, if you are interested in joining the Google AdSense and making some bucks, then check out this article. It can help you to some extent.

Till then…

About choices

After writing about Ms.Destiny, my musings on the subject was taken up for discussions with friends. A few of them believe that destiny is what decides where you go, but others say where you go decides your destiny, not the other way round.

However, even after all the talks and discussions, I still couldn’t make up my mind on this. I guess it’s coz of all the twists and turns my life has taken till now. Hmmm… Writing about all that could render this site unbearable to even the (one) hand full of visitors I get. Maybe I should go “Ah, what the heck! It’s my @#$%^&* page, damn it. I’ll write what I feel like. You can read, go and come back, or you can read, run and keep running.”

Hey, wait. That was just a thought, ok? I never said that. So do come back ;)

Warning: Reading this may give you a clearer, though not complete, insight into my past and the person I am. This in no way should reflect on the relationship we have right now, in a negative way. Please agree and continue ;)

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Ok, let me see how my life turned out to be like this. Back in the school days, I never had much to decide and I guess you didn’t either. It was all about buying new books, getting new uniforms, new bags, shoes, pencils, cute li’l erasers and what not. Sit in the class, have fun with friends, pray that the teacher is on leave and we get a free hour, go to the library and fight over the latest issue of Tinkle or Disney, wait for the pickup in the evenings, go home and change and run to the ground to play. Some VIP dies or some “union” goes on strike and the school declares a holiday, we go “Hurrraaaaayyyy!” coz for us it was about the holiday and not the world’s problems.

Innocence!

We were the first batch of the school and never had seniors. After the class 10 we were all meant to split and go to different colleges/universities coz we didn’t have a 11th and 12th there and that was really painful. My class strength was always a small one in number… more like a closely knit family. Many of us wanted to go elsewhere, to some colleges, instead of waiting for the class 11 to be started in the school, coz colleges were much less stricter and far more fun. For some reason, I never wanted to go elsewhere. I wanted to stick to the same school, and so, hoped and prayed they would start class 11. And they did. So, my life in that school was extended by another 2 years. New guys and gals joined us, and we made new friends. Life… was fun again.

Hmm... let me see now. Here I made a choice! To stay back in school and not go join a different college or university. If destiny had a role, it was the starting of Class 11 in the same school I guess, coz if it wasn’t started, I would have had to join elsewhere against my will, right?

Anyways, I guess it was too much fun and too less study for us in school and that reflected in our final results. And obviously, the not-worth-mentioning results gave us fewer options after the schooling! But I was one of the “lucky ones”, and got into a highly reputed technical institute after that. Somebody was thinking of putting me in some college in Bangalore in between, but I decided to join this place instead. Everyone who “blamed” me for the poor marks in school, were greatly relieved coz I got into something which was “hard to get in” though I never could figure out what was so “hard” in that. It was a 4 year course, 3 years in the campus and the final year in some company, more like an internship.

And here, I chose to join the technical institute which decided the next few years of my life instead of some college in Bangalore (and Bangalore was just beginning to be a Silicon Valley clone back then). Did destiny play a role here? Is that why I didn’t find the “getting in” part that hard?

We slogged our a$$es off for the next 3 years in the campus. It was a strict…no, too damn strict institute and it was more like a punishment for not being responsible enough in the 2 years before that. But yes, I got to learn a lot of things apart from developing a new skill. In the 3rd year we got to choose from a list of companies that needed trainees for the next year, and me along with another 2 of my close buddies chose a really good company to go to. Unfortunately due to some confusion later, we had to reconsider and 2 of us had to decide on another not-so-well-known name. Next 1 year I spent in what was actually the worst company in that list we got. Our friends felt sorry for us, but there was nothing we could do. It was part of our course and we had to complete it. We used to count the days there. And in fact the whole one year made us hate the trade and start thinking of switching to something better. And we did too.

So, what is at play here? I did make a choice…to go for one of the best companies. But something turned up unexpectedly and the whole thing was called off and we were forced to take a second decision. That ended up in me getting the worst one on the same list. That wasn’t my choice at all, and it even led to a lot of events and sufferings in my life later on. Destiny????

After the internship, all of us were on our own, looking for new jobs while many continued to work in the same company they had the internship at. The management wanted me to stay back in the company, but I was least interested. I moved on, ended up in Bangalore in the next couple of months. In the next 1 year, I tried different companies but my mind wasn’t set to accept this. After a lot of thinking and consultation, I decided to change the path. Yup, I took my first step into the world of computers and software. What followed was another long stint in life. I lost many things, but also achieved a few valuable things.

Wouldn’t go into details now, coz that would be a li’l too much for you ;) Anyway, here I am today, designing my own web pages and blog, writing my experiences and thoughts, and you reading it. I did suffer a lot through out this journey, but I’ve also learned a lot of things and also had my share of happy moments and some beautiful ones too. All this was based on my choices in life. Sometimes I did have to rethink or change my decision coz of unexpected turn of events. Was that destiny? Am I being taken to where I’m meant to be?

That one thing is what I don’t understand still. If all my choices were easy and had taken me the way I wanted to go, where would I be now? What would I be doing? Who would be my friends? Would I have met all the people who I met here? (And mind you, some of them are the best things that have happened to me ever). How different would my life be if I never had to rethink or change my decision in the past? Was I meant to be in the field I am right now? Or would I have been happier in the other one?

I don’t know. It’s a mystery I’ll never solve.

End note: I shouldn’t be thinking so much about it either. Life is all about choices, and what happens in the course of life is based on those choices. Nothing is pre-written. If we have to reach somewhere, we have to make the move. It’s our life, we are in control.

And for the record, if I get a chance to go back and change any one choice I made in the past, I wouldn’t do it. Coz, doing so may change everything that followed and I may lose some really valuable things I have now.

Thanx all for reading this and sorry for bugging you with it :)

Destiny! Is it?

Do you believe in destiny?
What IS “destiny”?

1. an event (or a course of events) that will inevitably happen in the future


2. the ultimate agency that predetermines the course of events (often personified as a woman); "we are helpless in the face of Destiny"


3. fortune: your overall circumstances or condition in life (including everything that happens to you);

These are the definitions of the word on the net.
But the question is, do you believe in it?

Do you believe that no matter how far you walk, how hard you work, or how bad it hurts, you'll always get to where you need to be?

Do you believe that no matter how careful you are when riding that bike, if it’s meant to be your time to say “bye-bye Dorothy”, it could happen even by a bird hitting the visor of your helmet and you crash landing at the wrong spot????

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This question has always been pestering me. And being the confused “brainy” I am, I sometimes think it’s stupid. I mean, it’s our life. Every road we take leads to some place. At every junction we get to make a choice. Where the next road leads us is entirely based on the choice we made. So what’s destiny got to do with it? Aren’t we actually writing our destiny every time we make a choice?

Am at a main “junction” where I have to make an important choice and am really confused if I should go left or right or just follow the road straight ahead. Hmmm... what do I do? *Crash* Oops! A car coming from my right just crashed into a truck coming from my opposite side. Good Lord! I could have been just crossing the road when that happened. Guess my time hasn’t come yet…to say bye-bye. Oh well, the roads on my right and straight ahead are blocked now by the truck and that car and all those cars that screeched to a stop, some banging into others. What a mess!! Oh dear! Am late. Got to go, but which way??? Ok, the road to my left.

…And I continue the journey of life…

Now, here, did the accident “help” me make the choice? Or did it force me to take that decision? Did destiny make me take the left road by causing that car crash? Or am I still writing my destiny by taking the road and not bothering to actually make a choice and maybe take one of the other roads? I could have even helped someone in need at the crash scene, who knows!

Will anyone ever know?

My life has had so many twists and turns in its course. It's taken me all of my life to get where I am now. And I always wonder if whatever happened did happen for a reason. Is it my destiny that’s brought me here? Or was it just my choices in life? Are destiny and our choices one and the same? God! Am confused!!

All I can think of now is, destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

Needs more thinking…

Aah! At last...

I did it. Modified the green polka dotted template of my page into this..mean..black..thing :) Not a major feat, this..considering am a designer, a web designer that too, and all I had to do was change the images and layers and sizes and stuff. But it still is a step forward.. the first towards me getting up, dusting my ass, walking over to the comp and start "blogging".. All my previous posts (don't start digging for them, there's just 5 of them so far...this is the 6th!) need to be deleted or stacked away in the (e-)attic and me should start afresh. But what do I write about?

Hmmm.. This has always been my problem. Am "creative"... I mean, yeah, I can draw, sketch, paint, design... I was born with it. People ask me why I don't do a painting, or draw something, or think of a short li'l story with a cute li'l character and animate it??

I can write quite ok too. Again, people ask me why I don't write something... letters, articles, or create a blog and start posting??

Well, I have just two reasons for that.

Reason One. I can never come up with an original idea when I really wanna do something for myself. No idea why it happens, but when I decide to do a painting or a drawing or design or write something, for myself that is, I suddenly find myself staring at a blank wall! And for some weird reason, I don't even see any patterns forming on the wall to inspire me.

Reason Two. Am lazy. Am a lazy lazy bum ;)

I really have to get myself to do things am good at. Creativity is a gift. And I've been blessed with it. Why waste it? I've seen many of my friends struggle to make a simple neat drawing even with the right tools!

All said, and this basic redesign work done, I think I've just taken the first step to make me more useful to the world. No. Lemme rephrase that. I have just taken the first step to make me more useful to the world :)

Amen!

Motivated?

I was browsing through the many web logs online, at random, for the past few days. Had to design a site for a client at work, and so wanted to get a general idea of how the whole thing is planned. Seeing the way people have taken to this new way of logging, am really amazed. So many of them...many really good ones, some of them excellent..and some, just nothing..

People have taken up writing in a serious way! And many of them have customized the page templates to such an extent..it's a treat for the eyes.

Anyways, all the random browsing has gotten me motivated...and I thought.. "Why shouldn't I do something like that? Am a designer too, for crying out loud. Ok, I shall do it."

But again, I know it's gonna take a while..coz am a lazy bum.

8+ months later...

Hmmm....after a long gap, am thinking of getting back to posting, a bit more seriously. Last post was on December 30th, 2004. A hell lot happened after that..in my life, my friends lives and the world in general. So, this is just a post to get me back into writing. Will soon be back with some more :)