gavin's blog

It's been a long time since I've posted, it's now a whole new year and we're well into it!

Why did I stop posting? Just because I got really busy with writing the first draft of ToT, which to cut a long story is a book I'm writing, that's been a labor of love for most of the last decade. Apart from that, the blog wasn't really going anywhere and I kinda just let it slide.

Now it's been a couple of weeks since I finished the first draft and I'm aimlessly pottering around trying to figure out where to go from here. Of course the second draft beckons, but I figure I'm still not done 'flushing the cache'.

A lot of things have happened while I was away from the blog and I really don't want to go through all of them here. Let's just ease into it, okay?

Hi, y'all,

I hit a bad slump and have been off on all counts the past week or so. I got back from a trip out of town, and felt so disconnected I just couldn't get started at all. I don't know how to explain it, I don't understand it myself. The last couple of days I've been doing the things that I know are good for me - reminding myself who I am, and what I've achieved - refreshing my identity so to speak, and things are looking a tad better. Still feeling the melancholy though.

Many apologies to blog followers for the hiatus, and many thanks for hanging in there.

this last month, from the first month. This last month, there were over 350 'unique' visitors. Today, it's exactly two months since this blog was started, and I'd like to thank everyone who's been reading and participating regularly. Particularly Suchitra, Melody, Jay, Balaji, Pardha.

...in Saturday's edition of Mumbai Mirror (Mumbai's latest tabloid), in their Bloggers' Park section, that you can also see online HERE. (The link seems to work only half the time, as has been reported by blog-readers, so you'll have to click twice or thrice, if you are so inclined!)

The topic of the day was Paheli as India's selection for the Oscars, and part of my post on it is included. Yay!

is a great new blog I came across just now, that I'm adding to the blogroll.

Came across this just released free blogging handbook released by the group Reporters without Borders.

I'm going to be looking carefully at the techniques laid out there - much of what I think and say is subversive and I've thought an underground blog would be the way to go - but I didn't know how to go about ensuring anonymity, and one of the primary purposes of this book is to teach how to do just that.

What the site says about the Handbook:

Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents

Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.
Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.
Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.

Thanks go out to Kosmic Bloggers for the first link to this blog (at least that I have detected, blogging newbie that I am). Lovely blog, and it is also the first link I'm putting up in the blogroll (Blogs I dig, left sidebar, below Fav Links) I'm starting right now. Also adding a few other links to the blogroll.

that this blog has been up........

The experience of writing has been a liberating one, and it has been very useful to discover what I like expressing and how.

........here are some stats:

# of posts                 44

# of words             ~12K

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Page Loads              259

Unique Visitors         209

First Time Visitors     174

Returning Visitors       31

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The returning visitors include multiple counts over the month, so it actually is fewer than a half a dozen people (based on IP addresses)....which is disappointing. Over two hundred Unique visitors seems good, but since these aren't translating into returning visitors, it really doesn't mean much.

Reuters has released a story just 10 minutes back about Katrina, global warming, the US & the Kyoto Protocol, that echoes my earlier post. Not that it wasn't obvious, though.

You tell me.

I'm going through a crisis of confidence here. I'm not going to embarrass myself or you by going on and on about it, but its MAJOR.

I know why I should write this blog - because I have something to say, whether or not anyone cares about it. But is that really true? Taken to extremes it means the creator is crazy if all he or she cares about is expression and not reception. And reception has been very unclear in the case of this blog. I know, I know, its only two weeks old, what can I expect? Still, as I said, reception has been very unclear in the case of this blog.

So inundate me with your encouragement. Or signal me with your apathy. But please, please don't ignore me.