The work is still in progress. If no one noticed the change, my efforts haven't gone in vain.
Anyway, San made the right guess. After all it was her email pointing out the cross-browser incompatibility of this blog that got me playing trial-and-error with HTML, JavaScript and the new markup language that Google is using (named Google Markup Language by some gyaanis). Being unable to work on Dreamweaver (so much better than FrontPage) bought me back to Notepad, like all those coders (feeling tekkie already). It's a new template (still working on it)!
Doesn't look new? Therefore it took me so long to put it together. Blogger beta templates are quite different from the ones that I got used to while designing the erstwhile template for this blog. Thankfully there were guys like Ramani and Hans around for help. The purpose was to keep the look as close to the old template and bring about a change in the feel. Blogger in beta does have a number of exciting features that I wanted to make the best of. The default Blogger templates do not serve my purpose. I'm still working on the template. If someone has some suggestions or finds something out of place, do let me know (with proposed solutions would be the better option).
The display on IE, also pointed out by Debanjan, still has some problems (as usual), especially with lower screen resolution. For now I'm back to regular blogging.
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Today's Hindustan Times has an a page one anchor describing what a Dutch diplomat has to say about the capital of the nation:
Anything that can go wrong, does go wrong; everyone interferes with everyone else; the people are a darn nuisance; the climate is hell; the city a garbage dump... New Delhi is the most miserable place I have ever lived in.
Turn to the Edit Page, and the former Union Minister of Urban Development Jagmohan, an example of the difference between the well-meaning and the populist, puts forward the reasons behind this mess:
When, in 2001, I was functioning as the Union Urban Development Minister, I had launched an extensive drive against offenders of civic and planning laws. At that time, I had pleaded with my fellow members of Parliament to consider: "In what type of Delhi do we want to live, and what type of legacy do we wish to bequeath to posterity and to our children and grandchildren? Do we want our city to become a junkyard of unauthorised constructions or an orderly and disciplined capital of a resurgent Republic?"
The response of the power wielders to this plea was a sudden change in my portfolio.
Politics is a short run affair; all that matters is the next election. It didn't matter to Jagmohan, he lost his seat. Why worry about the long run? John Maynard Keynes said, "In the long run, we're all dead." Right. But others will live and with the shrinking time frame of long-run implications we are almost seeing the results live. Delhi is fast transforming into the gutter, once a river, which divides the city into two. Delhi Metro rail isn't the saving grace.
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It's that time of the year when mother Durga embarks on her annual vacation, family and pets in tow. The hills in autumn seem greener; the streams sparkle a little more. A thousand miles away from home, in a land somewhat alien I can't smell festivity in the air. The conch shells and the drumbeats reverberate in the nostalgic realm. I yearn for the doe-eyed beauties uneasy in their crisp sarees. My ears search for the strains of songs in the tongue I called my own.
The baritone of Birendra Krishna Bhadra reverberating the autumn dawn - Y
a devi sarvabhuteshu - courtesy All India Radio (AIR) signals the arrival of autumn. The greens have already started browning, the Sharad Utsav is about to begin. Vishwakarma Puja, a few days ago, opened the doors of joyous festivity. This dusk when the sun shall set, there will be no moon to take its place. Tomorrow, there'll be one - a new one, the first of ten days of festivity and when the moon will become full, the East of India will welcome the goddess of wealth - Lakshmi - into their homes, others will wait till the following Amavasya, when Diwali commemorates the triumphal return of Lord Rama to Ayodha. East Indians (read Bengalis), revering the other avatar of Krishna avatar of Vishnu more, revert their religious focus back to Shakti - this time in the form of Kali... and the sequence continues.
For me the morning of
Mahalaya marks the beginning of this all. I might miss it in the morning on radio, but I make it a point to listen to the
Chandi Paath on that day. Not for religious reasons, but more for nostalgic ones. Father used to wake me and my brother up at the crack of dawn, just to listen to the broadcast on AIR.
This MP3* of an excerpt from the oratorio invoking the goddess Durga by Birendra Krishna Bhadra (music Pamkaj Mallick), also has a long story. It was originally on an LP record, lying in the backroom of a music store in Bhopal's New Market. I asked the owner to record that into an audio tape and a few years later I converted it from a magnetic tape to MP3. The feeling is the same, only the technology has changed.
Here are a few links (as usual) commemorating the initiation of the season festive (download, listen, view, read - whatever):
*Oratorio invoking the goddess Durga by Birendra Krishna Bhadra [MP3 2.26 MB 04:56 64 kbps Mono 44 kHz]
The complete Mahisasuramardini / Mahishasur Mardini MP3 download. Two files.
Part I [MP3 7.42 MB 00:43:27 24kbps Mono 22 kHz]
Part II [MP3 7.83 MB 00:45:50 24kbps Mono 22 kHz]
(Courtesy Deshantari)
Devi Sooktam - Hymn to the Divine Mother
In Sanskrit - Devanagri script. Three jpeg files [1] [2] [3]
In Sanskrit - Roman script, with English translation
(Courtesy Shakti Sadhana Group)
The beat of the dhak (ceremonial drums) [WAV 146 KB 00:00:18 64 kbps 8 bit Mono 8 kHz]
(Courtesy Timir Kanti Ganguly)
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One thing that many users liked best about Firefox was its Ctrl+Shift+Del feature, which made the process of clearing up personal data collected while surfing on the WWW disappear at the simultaneous click of three buttons (even in absense of this feature, would still be the great browser that it is). But the problem with online privacy is that the evidences of where you have been surfing to isn't limited to your local hard disks. We bloggers also keep a track of our visitors using different tools and derive joy from where our visitors had come from and looking for what. Most websites do the same and so do the search engines. The privacy policy of sites usually say "information will be disclosed where we are obliged or permitted by law." Unless you aren't doing anything unlawful (by the way porn can be interpreted as unlawful under many laws in different territories) you don't have much to worry. But then, the revelations can sometimes be embarrassing. Recently AOL released the search data of 657,427 users (AOL search is powered by Google). Though AOL later apologised, but the damage was already done. The data is still available freely on the web. This has also happened before.
We have reasons to be afraid. After all it is our privacy at stake. And there isn't one big brother watching over, but a huge number of potentially divulging brothers of all sizes. There are many internet based anonymisation tools available, some free, others cost money, some are effective, many aren't. I had tried a few which promised to keep my identity camouflaged, but my exact IP address and other details appeared on the stat tracker of this blog. Nevertheless, they were of a great help during the recent blog block.
Now's here another anonymiser called Topark – which is in fact a tweaked Portable Firefox browser (I'm yet to make it undergo some tests, so this post shouldn't be interpreted as a recommendation. It is more of a news than an analysis). Topark claims to "turn any internet terminal into a secure connection" and is "developed and maintained by just one dedicated university student."
You can carry it anywhere with you in an USB and plug it to the machine and run the programme and "and it will launch a Tor circuit connection, which creates an encrypted tunnel from your computer indirectly to a Tor exit computer, allowing you to surf the internet anonymously."
You may have heard about those heavily advertised second-rate software packages like Anonymizer, SafeSharing, InvisibleIP, SecretSurfer, etc. Well, not only do they charge you money and/or a subscription fee, but they are bloated and full of useless components. They also require an installation which leaves tracks on your computer. How is that anonymous? Try Torpark; its small, portable, clean, open-source, free of spyware/adware, and free.
But how does it actually work? Hacktivismo provides the details:
When a user logs onto the Internet, a unique IP address is assigned to manage the computer’s identity. Each website the user visits can see and log the user’s IP address. Hostile governments and data thieves can easily monitor this interaction to correlate activity and pinpoint a user’s identity.
Torpark causes the IP address seen by the website to change every few minutes to frustrate eavesdropping and mask the requesting source. For example, a user could be surfing the Internet from a home computer in Ghana, and it might appear to websites that the user was coming from a university computer in Germany or any other country with servers in the TOR network.
It is important to note that the data passing from the user’s computer into the TOR network is encrypted. Therefore, the user’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) cannot see the information that is passing through the Torpark browser, such as the websites visited, or posts the user might have made to a forum. The ISP can only see an encrypted connection to the TOR network.
However, users must understand that there are limitations to the anonymity. Torpark anonymizes the user’s connection but not the data. Data traveling between the client and the TOR network is encrypted, but the data between the TOR network and websites is unencrypted. Therefore, the user should not use his/her username or password on websites that do not offer a secure login and session (noted by a golden padlock at the bottom of the Torpark browser screen).
Torpark is dedicated to the Panchen Lama.
You can download Torpark v1.5.0.7 from here.
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