The rhyme and the 200th

I wrote a rhyme today. It was sudden. Elita apu sent me a message @ orkut asking "what r u up to?", so when I replied, I replied with a rhyme.. Here's it for you

Have to study,
Need to study,
Must study,
'cause exams are nearer already.
But can't be steady!
And also I'm not ready
What to do, knows anybody?
Just Pray for me, buddy.

So you should understand why I wrote this. Because my exams are just knocking at the door. So update will be less frequent. But I will try my best to post. Well we got almost 3 months leave. But when it comes to preparing for the exam, I found that I lost the habit of studying. Anyway trying to rebuild it. As I am not doing good in BUET so expectations are not high. And you know as expectations are not so high, it would be easier to perform satisfactory result. So lets just pray for me and wish me luck.

200th post: Ok apparently it's my 200th post also. I don't want to make it a special one like the 50th post or the 100th post. Rather I'll just follow the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid ) principle. It's been a great fun for me to write and spend my free time here. Inshallah I'll continue to do so. Special thanks to everyone who read this blog regularly and inspired me posting valuable and thoughtful comments. These discussions in comments are very important for me to understand and to know the topic a little bit more and also sometimes helps me to learn new things. One more good news is I've been nominated for the Best Bangladeshi blog in Asia blog awards. Voting hasn't started yet. I'll tell you on due time to vote for me. So keep the fingers crossed till then.

It's been rainning heavily outside now. Wish I could go outside and bath in the rain. ----At this specific point, While I was composing this post at 3.16 AM on an early september 11 morning, I got disconnected. Later I came to know that all the hubs in my network are burnt due to thunderstorm. So was out of internet for the last two days. I didn't expect that it will take only two days to change them and put the network back online. In the end, I am happy that they did it quickly. That's why I couldn't finish my 200th post that night. So I am finishing it now with the picture, 'After the rain' , which I snapped at dawn after it had been rainning whole night...



Hope you'll be with me and with this blog just like you had been.

Special thanks to : Anika, Atunu, Audity, Badhon, Bdblogs.com, Bdblogs.net, Bfob, Chayan, Diner, Dipu, Esha, Eshon, Hasin bhai, Himu bhai, Jyotirmoy, Kafi, Khaled, Koutuk, Llanin, Mezba bhai, Mehrin, Moon, Munaz bhai, Nowal, Rabab, Ragib bhai, Raquib bhai, Rezwan Bhai, Rikhi, Rubel bhai, Russel bhai, Shakia, Shantonu, Shaon, Sheetal, Shushmita, Tareq, Tasneem bhai, Tumpa, Upal, Zabir and Zafa bhai for their comments and inspirations from time to time.

Filed Under : Personal, 200th Post.

Hsc Result and some other facts...

Yesterday I was watching the news and the happy faces of students as well, with victory signs showing, happily posing infront of camera. Some were crying in joy. I liked to watch them. I always do. These people are the future of our country. The frustration that our politian's provide us from time to time, these students have the power to change them.


This year's result was better than all the previous ones, a boost with 63.92 percent of the examinees passing. The percentage was 59.16 in 2005, 47.74 in 2004, 38.43 in 2003, 27.09 in 2002, 28.41 in 2001 ( my passing year ) and 37.05 in 2000. Last year too saw a leap in the pass rate as it shot up to 59.16 from 47.74 in 2004.

But watching the students leaping in joy, I was also feeling pitty for them. Because they don't know what's infront of them. They don't know that they have to fight really hard from now on to get themselves admitted into a reputated university. Not all of them have the money to get themselves admitted into private uniersities. This year almost 7000 students got GPA 5 from science. But not all of them will even get the chance to sit for the admission test in BUET. So what is the benefit of getting this GPA 5 which will not even give you the assurance to get the chance to fight for a seat in BUET admission test?

BUET has the capacity to take admission tests for 4500 students. That surely indicates that the rest 2500 will be deprived. That's why I don't like this result system at all. In our times it was more fun. It was more exciting. And more over it was more informative. There were a merit list of 20 students. Every body was wondering who will be the first . There were speculations, rumors and so on. These students felt so special! Besides if someone weren't in the merit list then he got his marks. Total marks and also the marks of individual subjects. Then the admission process were easier. You can sort the students according to their marks. But now you can't. Because there's no such thing like marks. All you have is grade. If you get 100 in maths you'll recieve the same as someone who gets 80. How rediculous!!!

Now lets see what would happen if my results were published in this result system. My handwriting is just too bad. And that's why I couldn't score marks in subjects where literature ruled. But I had the oppurtunity to fill that gap by making higher score in Maths, Physics and subjects like these. Both in ssc and HSC I didn't get letter in Bangla and English. So if my results were published in this system I wouldn't get the chance to sit for the BUET admission test. But I passed the admission test!

In SSC my result was very good. I scored 100 in mathematics, I placed 19th from Dhaka board. (I don't want to brag, but these are the facts!). But if my results were published in GPA system then my 100 in maths wouldn't get any value. And my result would be moderate, although gpa 5 but with the help of 4th subjects. You should understand by now why I don't like this result system.


I am going to finish with another thing that made me upset. Yesterday while I was reading zafa bhai's post in Drishtipat about Fobana (Federation of Bangladesh Association of North America) 2006 festival, I found that as usual there were two groups among Bangladeshis. Isn't this just horrible! This things make us a laugh stock infront of others. We can't stay united. And this division is not only there. We are devided in every where. Among university teachers, there are grouping, even among justices!! How could you recieve justice from a judge who's biased! Sadly we have no unity among ourselves. And if we can't get ourselves united , we can't prosper. I'm finishing with a joke I heard, which relates this thing..

" A saint died so he was taken in heaven. Then god told him that he was so good in life that he can have a wish which will be granted. Then the saint told that he wanted to see the hell. So be it. So the god sent an angel to accompany the saint to tour the hell. The saint then found that in hell there were seperate rooms for persons of seperate countries. The rooms were sealed from outside so that they can't escape, and inside those houses they were punished for their sins. But soon the saint saw that one house don't have any roof, although it's sealed from the outside. Surprised, the saint asked the accompanying angel that why it is so. The angel explained, that this house is for bangladehis. So when a bangladeshi tried to escape climbing upwards from the roof, the rest of the bangladeshis pulled him down. So they don't require a roof for protection."

Indeed we are dragging ourselves down.
Filed Under : Ramblings, HSC result, Bangladesh, Bangladeshi.

What's around : September 06 , 2006

Now if you're reading this for the first time, it's my regular post What's around in which I try to share different links with you that seemed interesting to me. So check them out..

Here is a great list that puts together some of the most useful and most popular Wordpress plugins, if you don’t yet have wordpress, or don’t know what it is head over to wordpress.org, its a blogging software, which is quite popular. Enjoy the list.

Shahriar Nafees, the Bangladesh opening batsman, has been nominated for the ICC's Emerging-Player-of-the-Year award to be announced on October 23 in Mumbai. Last year Aftab ahmed was also nominated for the same award. The winner will be decided by voting by a 56-member ICC academy comprising the 10 Test captains, 18 members of the umpires and match referees panel and 28 legends of the game and members of the media.

Cerehinese papercutting is a unique artform, since paper was invented in China and has existed there for thousands of years. Common designs are animals, flowers and figures cut with scissors or a knife, mainly made to decorate. Here are some of paper cutting artworks. Don't miss them.

Iere've been using AVG antivirus as my antivirus for long time. The reason behind was it was free and it didn't use much resources like norton antivirus or macafee. I hated the last two because of their crappy speed and huge requirement of resources. I was happy with AVG and I was never infected during my use of this antivirus ( Thanks to my careful use also.). But here's a list of comperative performances of different antiviruses after being tested against 147,000+ virus tests. It looked like AVG wasn't the best but it's not so bad either. Check it out.

Terehere have been controversies about the presence of pesticides in soft drinks after a state of india has banned soft drinks in that province. Now the test results are out. And it seemed that Pepsi has pesticides almost three times the permissible limit. What was claimed by the New Delhi-based non-governmental organisation Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has now been supported by the National Test House (NTH), a central government laboratory. The test report also revealed that pesticide content in Coca Cola samples were within the permissible limit. I always preferred coke over pepsi but I liked seven up although it's from the pepsi factory. I wonder what's the scenario in our country where there's nothing about quality control!! But I also think that the presence of pesticides are related with the water used with these soft drinks. In that case coke might find itself just lucky!

"Merey cell phone was stolen last Friday. I had it disconnected and arranged to get a replacement. It had been set up with the excellent service from ShoZu to automatically upload all pictures taken with the phone to Flickr. So today, completely surprisingly, I find pictures on my Flickr account of the family of the person who took the phone. I'm not sure they knew what was happening"--Don't worry, my cell phone is alright. But isn't this story cool? Check out this unbeilable story here.

Filed Under : What's around, Links, Word Press.

Benefits of load shedding

I've been trying for the last two days to write this post. Not that I haven't had time. I tried. But he who's the subject of this post always interrupted. There's a saying that great people don't want publicity. They just stay behind the curtain and enrich mankind. Like the electric supply of bangladesh. Whenever I tried to write, bang there's a black out. I wonder how it knew! But hey technology has been doing wonders right? Anyway it's all started when I read Atunu's The midsummer night mis-dreams. He was digusted after experiencing a 5 hour long loadshedding. And after reading I started to write this post and the electricity went out! What an irony! But still I was thinking how lucky I am! I am living in a part of city which can't be called POSH but still we had only 2 hours of load shedding every day. (If you are living abroad or in a place where there's no such thing like black outs and shivering in horror reading about load sheddings let me tell you that we are so used to with this thing that we accepted it happily when electricity went out for an hour or two)

Anyway my point wasn't bragging about the fact that we had "only" two hours of load shedding every day. I actually wanted to point out the benefits associated with load shedding. You know there's always some silver lining behind the dark clouds. And there's always some super optimistic persons like me who'll come forward to point out those silver linings. Allow me to start :

1. When it's load shedding your electric meter stopped running for that time being. That obviously save you some bucks. We used to have 2 hours load shedding at night and one hour load shedding during the day. But the scenario is not so good everywhere. Like Atunu experienced a 5 hour long one. So on an average let's think that you have a 4 hour load shedding everyday. That means 4*100% / 24 = 16.67%. So you ended up a decent 16.67% savings over your electricity bill at the end of the month. Now since government is a total failure controlling the market price of necessary day to day products, this 16.67% savings would definitely help you a bit.

2. Load shedding mostly occurs during night. So When at night load shedding occurs everywhere went dark. It's obviously a blessings for the mischiefs. The longer time they get the more they can earn. And it'll definitely help to grow our GDP. Besides when the entire locality is covered under darkness, the clear sky with lots of shinning stars remains, as the most beautiful thing to watch. Where else could you get this oppurtunity?

3. When it's load shedding in you area, the power is used to enlight some other part of the city. And this great deed will definitely help you after death (Only if you believe in after life.)

4. As the load shedding continues to grow I came to know from newspapers that some people are offering generator connections. That is you can take connections to fans or lights from a generator monthly giving away some fees. This business will definitely decreases unemployment problem. And as employment rates increases it will help to eliminate the frustation of youths who were now engaged in druggs or hijacking or fundamentalism.

5. Last but not the least, I don't know whether this applies to all of you. But it surely applies for me. I am a type of person who can't sit idly doing nothing. So when during loadshedding I've nothing to do guess what I do? I start studying. :D

So don't blame anyone for load shedding anymore..

Filed Under : Personal, Load shedding, Satire.

Happy BlogDay 2006

Today is Blog Day. It was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. Every blogger celebrating this day posts a recommendation of 5 blogs. In this way all blog web surfers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new previously unknown blogs.

Now you may wonder why 31st of August is announced as blog day. Let's see,

31/08 = 3 1 o 8 = Blog

I first came to know about this day from Mezba bhai. So it's time to introduce five blogs that I follow frequently and all of them cheers me up..

Funz N Jokes: Munaz Bhai started this blog long ago. He shares funny pictures and jokes in this blogs most of which are hillarious.

Fun And Jokes with Morals.. : This blog is pretty new. Started from mid august this blog posts collected funny jokes with a moral based on that joke. The morals are funnier most of the times. You'll surely have fun reading it. But beware some jokes might be rated as adult.

বড়মণিদের কৌতুক: This blog is also a new one, newer than the previous one, run by Swadheen Mitra, author of the book বড়মণিদের কৌতুক . This blog is in Bangla and posts are created using unicode. Swadheen Mitra promised to post one or two bangla jokes every day. And according to him those jokes are really really dirty. So he set an age restriction of people over the age of 16. So if you've crossed you sweet 16 barrier you are authorized to view them.

Welcome to the World of Fakts : This one's another funny one by Swadheen Mitra. This blog is bilingual, German and English. Some of these facts are really very funny.

Joke of the day: Finally joke of the day from Askmen.com. Everyday a new funny joke from askmen..

Have fun reading those. But be aware as some contents might offend you. And don't blame me 'cause I told you already about it.

Filed Under : Blog day 2006.
Technorati Tag: Blog Day.

Back to dhaka

I am back, back to dhaka after a trip of 8 days. This tour was lots of fun. I travelled a lot, almost everyday. I went to jessore where abbu's now posted, but also visited jhinaidoho, magura, kushtia , meherpur and rajshahi. Rajshahi is my nanabari. So it was preplannaed that my mama, khala and ammus mama and khala will go to rajshahi from dhaka on friday , 25th august. And I with my father will join them from jessore on that day. Later we all will return to jessore together after visiting our relatives living in rajshahi and also the graves of elders who passed away and sleeping there peacefully. That was the basic plan. But thanks to khaleda zia and the age old custom of bangladeshi politics. Since it's the end of their ruling term it's the time for inauguration of unfinished or half finished structures for taking credit. Also it's the time for lying foundation stones for upcoming projects. For these reasons prime minister begum khaleda zia is now visiting all over the country and marking her names over the stones.

Now what related khaleda zia's tour with my travelling? The answer is that khaleda zia was scheduled to visit kushtia on 28th of august and jhinaidoho on 6th september. Both of these districts are under abba's juridiction and she was supposed to inaugurate 3 of his projects and would place foundation stone for 2 of his projects. That's why he had to tour these districts to make sure that everything is according to the respective project plan. So I accompanied him in those tours and while he was doing office works I wanderred around the country side. I'll write details about my trip later. I also had to write about my last jessore trip which I took at the end of may and about my lawachora trip at the beginning of may. How lazy I become!!

So I came back to dhaka at night on sunday, 27th august. But when we came back to dhaka we came to know that ammu's khala who met us at rajshahi then came with us to jessore and later returned with me to dhaka, her house has been robbed while we were travelling. But the silver lining behind the dark cloud is that since she had moved her ornaments and some other precious belongings to a realtive's house prior to leaving for rajshahi, so the bandits couldn't take them. They ransacked the house in search for those which results the following pictures...





Anyway over all the tour was great. And we had loads of fun. I'll write in details later. Before leaving I'll share a few links.

First, Click here to see top 10 most beautiful cellphones and then read here an amazing true story of ATM mistake which led to 700,000,000$ credited to an account.

Chao!

Filed Under : Personal, Robbery.

Leaving for jessore again...

I'm leaving for jessore again. Last time when I visited jessore on june 4th I visited khulna, jhinaidoho. But I didn't write any descriptions of my tour. I hope to write this one's and that one's together when I'll be back. I've a plan to visit kushtia, Rajshahi and also Bogra (only this one's for the first time). But I don't know whether it will be possible to visit all of them.
After my last visit I knew that there's edge facility available in Jessore so I'll be in touch through my Gmail.

Another thing is that I started jogging again. I used to do it with my father and uncle when I was a kid. But after school became busier day by day, I gave up. Now from last week I started it again because of the tummy that's getting bigger day by day. I have always been in the buliker side. And I hated that very much. And that's why I started jogging. I am almost 13kg overweight than the normal weight of an average person of my height. Which on the long run will increase the risk of heart attack and other coronnary diseases. And yeah reading horrific stories about heart attacks and seeing some of the victims, Shafi became health conscious. So I changed my routine, wake up around 5 am every morning and start to jog at 5.30 am. I walk for about 6-7 killometres. I tried to run first but running about half a killometre makes my breaths lost. And there's a rule of walking/jogging/running. It says "Run at a pace at which you can still hold a conversation." And so I obey the rules. I walk.

Apparently it's all the same. If the distance is same, then you'll burn the same amount of calories whether you run/walk/jog. But it will take definitely more time if you walk rather than run. That's why running is benefitial. And also it prolongs the breathing capacity and improves stamina. I wish someday I can run for an hour! I'll try to do it step by step.

Before starting to walk, I didn't have any idea how much health conscious people have become. I went to walk at chondrima uddyan where almost 1-2 thousands people walks jogs or do free hand excersizes. I saw a man who was like 4 times of me (of course by width not height :P) . He is so fat, that he can't sit properly! I liked it when I saw him trying to lose his weight. And no one's paying attention to how others are doing it, as long as they're working out then it's fine.

There's also an association of people called 'Probhate Chondrima.' They formed lines and do free hand excersizes following an instructor. Oneday I was late to go there and saw thay they've finished their excersize and was singing a song together. Isn't it nice? It's also a great way of socializing. I don't wanna join the group. I am happy with my walking but it'd be great to have one of such 'probhate chondrima' captioned T-shirt.

Anyway I have a bad news. As I've been preparing to leave, I found out that my canon powershot a 75 is malfunctioning. After searching i found out that it's due to one of canon's manufacturing fault. They've issued a statement saying that it'll be fixed free of cost. So lets see if it can be fixed. Atunu had experienced such thing already. So I saught his help. Wish me luck...

Filed Under : Personal, Jessore.

Shamsur rahman has passed away

The great poet Shamsur rahman has passed away today at 6.25pm(Innalillahi wa inna ilaihi rajiun). Dr. Iqbal, who was his physician for the last couple of weeks, announced this news at 7.00pm. According to the doctor the poet's blood pressure started falling from 3.00pm in the evening which ultimately was the reason for his death. He has been under life support machine for
the last couple of days.

Earlier his heart was having trouble functioning and other vital organs of his body like kidney, lever too were not working as well as they should. He had high blood sugar. He was admitted to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Hospital (BSMMUH). His blood pressure was constantly fluctuating and the level of oxygen fell alarmingly. Prime minister begum khaleda zia promised to give necessary supports for his treatment. But while poet's family wanted to take him abroad for better treatment the doctor's panel insisted to keep him here. But I think his condition was not well enough to fly him away. But his family wanted to take the risk. The poet wished to have his grave beside his grandmother's. So he'll be buried there.

He was born in Dhaka. Fourth of thirteen children, he studied at Pogos School from where he passed his matriculation in 1945.Later he took his I.A. From Dhaka College. Rahman started writing poetry after graduating from Dhaka College at the age of eighteen. Shamsur Rahman studied English literature at Dhaka University and received his B.A. in 1953.He also received his M.A. where he stood second in second division. He had a long career as a journalist and was the Editor of a national daily, Dainik Bangla and the weekly Bichitra.

I am finishing with one of my favorite poem by shamsur rahman, which is obviously shadhinota tumi.


Some parts of this post are from wikipedia and the poem is from nybangla

Filed Under : Shamsur Rahman.

What's around : August 16 , 2006

Now if you're reading this for the first time, it's my regular post What's around in which I try to share different links with you that seemed interesting to me. So check them out..

A man uses sword to fight off burglars. According to police, once the burglars were inside, they got into a fight with one of the residents who grabbed his roommates sword and started slashing the intruders. His feisty attack send the invaders running, but not before he wounded several. Shortly after Minneapolis police arrived, they were called by doctors at the hospital about the arrival of three people to the ER with severed fingers and lacerations. One had minor injuries and was treated and arrested. The other two were more seriously injured and were treated. They’ll be transported to the Hennepin County Jail when they are released by the hospital. Read the full story here.


T o celebrate 50 million downloads, of firefox the Oregon State Linux Users Group took back the sidewalk with an enormous painting on their campus quad. At 100 million, they took back the sky with a huge Firefox weather balloon. Now it's time to celebrate the 200 millionth download. So what could be done to beat the previous two?? Well, a 45,000+ square foot crop circle might do it. This past weekend, they descended on a field in beautiful Amity, Oregon for two days of plotting and stomping. By Sunday, over an acre of oats was emblazoned with the Firefox logo. To get the pictures, they pulled out the planes and the helicopters. Click here to see pictures of this massive event.


Ever wonder how your visitor's eye move over different sections of your webpage while visiting your webpage? Well a study has been made which observed 46 people for one hour as their eyes followed mock news websites and real multimedia content. During the study, researchers noticed a common pattern: The eyes most often fixated first in the upper left of the page, then hovered in that area before going left to right. Only after perusing the top portion of the page for some time did their eyes explore further down the page. The eye follows the page like this image below..


Of course, this pattern can vary. The image above is a simplistic representation of the most common eye-movement pattern researchers noticed across multiple homepage designs.. The graphic below shows the zones of importance they formulated from the Eyetrack data. While each site is different, you might look at your own website and see what content you have in which zones.


Read details here.

English premier league is going to start from this saturday, 19th august. I'm a die hard arsenal supporter. But my team's condition doesn't look too good this year as crucial players are leaving the teams allured by richer clubs like real madrid or chelsea. Although the team is quite competitive now but the inclusion of a center back and a left winger will be necessary to fulfill it's potential. Anyway here is a quick start guide of all the premiership clubs that you might need to take a look before the tournmanent starts.

Finally, would you like to have window's vista's original cds for free? Well it looks like Microsoft is giving away free Vista Cd's if you can answer a small quiz. If you can answer all the questions of the quiz perfectly then you'll be redirected to a page where you'll have to provide your address and details. Click here to take the quiz. The free offer is from microsoft india. But a funny thing I noticed upon successfully completing the quiz when it give me this message : "Congratualtions! You have got all the questions right. To have your gift couriered, please click on the button below and provide your details.". He he looked like the coder of that page was in such great hurry that he made the typo 'Congratualtions' while trying to type 'Congratulations'. Anyway if you don't know the answers of the quiz then don't worry. Here they are :

1.Vista
2.Clarity
3.November 2006
4.True
5.Aero
6.All
7.All
8.512

Have fun.

Filed Under : What's around, Firefox, Links, Vista.

Windows Live Writer and blogger beta

Microsoft launches a desktop blog editor Windows Live Writer (Still in beta though). The really interesting part is that, while geared for Windows Live Spaces users, Live Writer works with blog platforms like WordPress, Movable Type, LiveJournal and Blogger. Previously I tried performancing but didn't like it because they can't show blog preview. So always stuck with blogger's dashboard. But Windows Live Writer does it within a Microsoft Word-like environment.

Installation is pretty much easy. Just download the soft fromhere and install. You might need to install .NET framework if you don't have it yet. After installation give it your site URL and login info and it automagically does the rest. It downloads the site template and thus will be able to show how the post will look like in your blog.

Live Writer has the basic features you would expect of any blogging utility from WYSIWYG tools and spell check to the unique feature of inserting maps from Windows Live Local. It will automatically save drafts at your interval of choice, automatically check spelling before publishing and ping servers you tell it to when posts are published. There is one interesting section of the preferences pane though - plugins. Although the list is still empty but plugins means integration of user experience and customization from a huge array of users/programmers. Microsoft has released the API and an SDK for Windows Live Writer so you can expect to see some interesting plugins very soon. This plugins (extension in firefox) made firefox popular. It'll surely help WLW.

Now lets come to the best feature of windows live writer. It will provide bloggers with simple image editing and effects. When placing an image in a post you can easily do things like adding a drop shadow, adjusting brightness and contrast as well as sharpen, emboss and a few other image effects. It'll definitely be helpful for photoshop ignorants like me.

But there are some problems also. If you use the read more feature like I do, you can't see your total post preview in WLW instead you'll see upto the read more tag starts. Also I read that there's no way of stopping after you press the publish post button. But hopefully it's still in beta and they'll surely be updated time to time.

Now another interesting thing's that blogger also started to introduce a new beta blogger service. You can see it here. I always liked blogger because it gave me total freedom of messing up with the blogger template. Thus I can implement services that blogger failed to provide, in my own way. Like I did with the category feature or recent comments feature. Blogger beta will have these features built in, features like privacy, tags, drag and drop layout and easier inclusion of non-textual elements.

Blogger blogs can be public, private or read only by invitation. Posts can now be tagged. Drag and drop layout for both building your blog’s template and changing the position of elements will be possible. Perhaps the upgrade will also bring new stability to the service, as it goes down from time to time.

But what I've been thinking how the transformation will be made. From an existing blogger user to the new blogger platform. Let's see what they've in their mind. For some one like me with almost 200 posts the transformation is the biggest thing to worry. But let's hope for the best..

Chao.

Filed Under : Windows Live Writer, Blogger Beta, Web 2.0,Tech.

Written based on personal experience and also with the help from this review and this review.

Implement category in blogger

As I've mentioned before about introducing category feature, now let me tell you how I did this. When I found BLOGGER doesn't provide categories (aka TAGS) for its posts, I searched for tips and tricks to see whether someone's doing it or not. Then I found this post which told me about using the tagging feature of the social bookmarking site del.icio.us and to make this process faster using the post template feature of blogger. Post templates help users save time by pre-formatting the post editor. Anyway just follow the following steps to implement a categorized blogger blog :

Step 1: Create an account with del.icio.us.Click here to register for an account.

Step 2: Log into your blogger account. From the dashboard click settings. Now click formatting.

Step 3: At the bottom of this page you'll find the form for post template. Copy the following code and paste that in that form.

<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Filed Under</span> : <a target="_blank" rel="tag" href="http://del.icio.us/user_name/tag0">tag0</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="tag" href="http://del.icio.us/user_name/tag1">tag1</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="tag" href="http://del.icio.us/user_name/tag2">tag2</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="tag" href="http://del.icio.us/user_name/tag3">tag3</a>.<br />

Just change the user_name by your del.icio.us user name. My del.icio.us user name is Rajputro so I changed it to rajputro. Check the image :



Step 4: Click save settings to save.

Step 5: Now let me explain a few things on that piece of code. The target="_blank" portion will be used so that whenever someone clicks on any tag, list of posts associated with that tag will appear on the new page. So that the visitor doesn't need to leave your page.
Secondly the rel="tag" will work for technorati. Whenever technorati scans your blog it will automatically identify these tags or categories as technorati tags. So you don't need to specify technorati tags exclusively.

Step 6: Now start creating a post. You'll see in the post editor that the preceeding code is already there. Now write your post on top of that code. Make sure that the code appeared at the bottom of the post. Now if you are complete with writing your post, think about the keywords that will be best suited for the post. Now change the tag1, tag2, tag3 , tag4 tags in the code by your related tags for the post. For example, for this post I think the best tags would be : blogger, categories, del.icio.us. So I changed that code in the following way :

<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Filed Under</span> : <a target="_blank" rel="tag" href="http://del.icio.us/user_name/blogger">blogger</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="tag" href="http://del.icio.us/user_name/categories">categories</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="tag" href="http://del.icio.us/user_name/del.icio.us">del.icio.us</a>.<br />

You might've noticed that I used only 3tags so I deleted the 4th line. If you need more tags just add one. You can add as many tags as you think will be necessary to describe your post.

Step 7: Now publish your post. Go to the posts page. Now bookmark the page into del.icio.us and in the tag field of del.icio.us put the tags (for this post blogger, categories, del.icio.us ) you used in your posts. Make sure that those tags are separated by spaces not commas. To post quickly into del.icio.us you use browser buttons. Firefox users see this page to post directly to del.icio.us. Internet explorer users can take help from this page for the same purpose.

Step 8: Now you are almost done after posting the page into del.icio.us. All you need to do is to show the category list into your sidebar. Del.icio.us provides a feature called tagrolls that would provide in this purpose. Click here to configure your tagroll. Configure the colors and details (like cloud or list view, for example see this post) Now put the javascript code into your blogger sidebar.

Step 9: Now you are complete with the categorizing process. Have fun with your categorized blogger blog.

Update : The del.icio.us account you registerred must contain links from only your blog for which you're going to implement category. To share bookmarks you've to use another account.

Filed Under : Blogger, Category, del.icio.us,Tech.