Phew!!! Presenting the website in iteration 1 2!

Last couple of weekends, I have put a lot of time into tweaking templates.  I wanted something with good typography and while maintaining some form of a relaxed layout but apparently, simplicity is the most difficult to achieve. In a display of geek bravado, I now have mirrors and dev sites running locally on my system and it looks like I have to build something on my own or at least modify this template a lot, which means I finally have to learn wordpress.

It’s funny how simple wordpress really is to configure and considering the resources available, it feels so simple to just create anything with it but the more you dig deep, the complicated it is. I have delayed the urge to master WP functions but it looks inevitable now. I want a more lucid layout, more space, more typesetting and most importantly, something really simple. I was surprised how difficult it is.

Hope you like this layout and stay tuned for more tweaks.

For a long time I had it in my mind that the fixed width layout was a complete waste of pixel space. Considering how large our screens have become/how many more pixels our screens can now accomodate, the center aligned blog layout was a bit stiffling. So, for more than a couple of yrs, I have been experimenting furiously to come up with a layout that not only fills up the space, but also gives me flexibility to add more fun stuff that I like to.

But it turns out, the days of flexible width sites are over and no one seems to be designing anymore full screen layouts except for custom apps. I feel cheated by not giving me enough space on a large screen to fill stuff instead forcing me to go scrolling but as IA points out, it seems that there are more advantages to having centered fixed width layouts. And these guys are serious. 

So now the work begins on a centered theme that I am going to write myself!

For once, real player is truly giving me what I want apart from taking away the whole of my RAM and starting up for no reason every time I turn on my system. The download video feature works amazingly and once you have configured where you want your video’s to sit, life a little less complicated.

The download speed is pretty neat and the interface is crisp. If you configure the player to start with your library as the default homepage and then navigate to a pre-set static browser, you end up saving a lot of time to quickly access the site you want to download videos from. Then, in one night’s work, you have enough video’s done to last a long time.

I have never been a fan of real player nor its compression. The player itself takes too much of space and the signature clutters up the start-up but this feature is really handy. Just set the file-type association to whatever player you are comfortable with eg. vlc or jet audio and then use the real browser only when you want to download music or video’s…

Cool App nevertheless.

It does everything. Mails from all accounts, news, blogs everything. Love this. Thanks to this, I understood the importance of RSS feeds. Please, all of you out there, subscribe to RSS… helps like crazy.

The new yahoo homepage that I have been hearing for a while now is finally out. It looks slick all right but I still don’t get why Yahoo doesn’t get rid of this congested look.

Have read a lot about comparisons of AOL and Yahoo home-pages prior to Google but I guess the days of reflecting the ‘company’s culture in your face’ is over. Yes, AOL is all about networking and Yahoo is all encompassing one-stop-portal to the world, but for a long time now the WEB-DIRECTORY used to get on my nerves. Yahoo should find a way to get around this.

But come what may, Google’s homepage ROCKS! There no-nonsense clutter free homepage and sensible search tools render it the most effective one in this date.

P.S: The new yahoo homepage does not work in Mozilla. So, please search for IE on your comp to check it out.