Winston Rand, He Was A Pretty Good Guy

This post was due for a long time. But somehow I was eluding it. Because I was not ready to accept the fact that Winston is not there with us anymore. And even when I was writing this, my heart was still not ready to accept that hard truth. That's why even though Winston passed away on June 28th last year, it's now, after almost 9 months that I have sat down to write about him. And even now the wound seems fresh and tears fills my eyes.

Winston Rand was an acquaintance and a fellow blogger. I came across his blog Nobody Asked, his The Center For Artificial Indifference while searching on Google. He was one of the most down-to-earth person I have ever seen. Winston had a very good sense of humor. And maybe that was why when I first read on his blog about the news of his passing away I simply refused to believe it. It was last December while I was going through his blog after a long time did I realize that Winston was not going to write anymore.

Winston first introduced himself to his readers as:

I live in the Nashville TN area with two blondes: one is the cuddliest cocker spaniel you’ll ever meet; the other, the love-of-my-life, and a REAL writer, claims most days to be my spouse; for purposes of this present body of work, I’ll refer to the former as “Dog” and the latter as “Roomie”.

Ironically, the last post on his blog was written by Roomie herself. She did the brave task of telling the world about it's great loss, about her great loss.

Winston's favorite song was "The Rainbow Connection," by Kermit the Frog, as well as a bluegrass version of Rocky Top. Winston…he was a "pretty good guy." This is how he wanted everyone to remember him. It's almost unbelievable how we get attached to a person through his writing. Otherwise why would I cry for Winston Rand living in Nashville TN whom I only knew through his blog! But like many others, I love Winston, as a blogger, as a friend, but above all as a human being.

Dear Readers, this is an earnest request from me. I want you to send your heartfelt condolences to Roomie and her family. Her lost is unrecoverable, but we can and would pray for her, her family, and for Winston, that his soul may rest in peace.

Everyone, please repeat this out loud. WINSTON RAND…HE WAS A PRETTY GOOD GUY.

Make Money Online With Shareasale

Before Diwali I had joined Shareasale as an experiment. It was my first venture into the world of affiliate marketing. I joined for the Snorg Tees' program, but have enrolled in atleast 10-12 programs since then. And till date I have made thousands from Shareasale.

Now first you should understand what's so special about Shareasale than any other affiliate network that I am suggesting shareasale.com, and not just any other affiliate program. ShareASale was founded in 2000 by Brian Littleton, and to date has over 2,600 merchant programs hosted on its network platform. ShareASale's affiliate network is an Adware free network - they do not accept any affiliate who used Adware or similar software products (desktop software) to place ads. The network's stance against Adware and other unethical business practices in the affiliate marketing industry was recognized by the industry. The founder Brian Littleton received in August, 2006 the "AFP Fair Practice Award" and in January 2007 the "Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award" for "Affiliate Marketing Advocate" at the Affiliate Summit West 2007 industry tradeshow and expo.

Shareasale offers three kind of programs, Pay-Per-Lead, Pay-Per-Sale and Pay-Per-Click. Once you get your first payment, minimum of which can be as low as $50, you become qualified to join the Pay-Per-Click programs listed under Shareasale. They offer timely payments, easy joining of programs, an easy user interface for sharing link codes and lots of other nifty features which are absent in other affiliate sites.

And the best part is that you can run Shareasale ads along with Adsense. So in these tough times of recession, I would suggest you not to rely only on your Adsense/Adbrite PPC ads, instead join the Shareasale affiliate network and start making money.

Blooming Love

Sometimes the support from a stranger works miracles, she was a miracle. She still is. R used to work in a domestic Call Center in Calcutta near AJC Bose Road. A meritorious student, her ambitions were soon marred by the socio-political structure of our country after she passed out. So we were sailing in the same boat, although I would say that she was a much better struggler than I was. And she never fell short off optimism, atleast not for me.

It was a late night at home. Everyone was asleep except for me. I was still recovering from that accident which almost killed me. I was watching a movie on Cable when my phone buzzed. It was an SMS from Indiatimes chat. I had registered there feeling bored with life and nothing else to do, my computer was broke after an unfortunate power surge.

It was R's first SMS for me. She wanted to be my friend. And since then I never had to turn back to anyone else for friendship, love and solace. She was always there for me, always. At times for me, she even forgot her own self!

Her introduction was short, sweet and crisp. And it never took me time to sweep her off her feet with my inborn charm of a true Libran *ahem* Slowly one thing came to the other and we never knew when, but we fell madly in love with eachother.

We used to meet near Forum Shopping Mall, it was the most convenient place for her as it was a 10 minutes walk from her workplace. And moreover we had a place to sit on a crescent shaped marble chair so that we could get lost in eachother's eyes.

R and I mainly used to talk over the phone, we hardly used go out together. Reason being, she had her office, and I was not used to dating or hanging out with someone. Come to think of it now I think it was a blunder, the times we shared could have been much better. And she deserved a lot more than that.

It was because of R that I became an SMS junkie, I still have an incredible text-ing speed of 70 wpm. Mostly we used to chat during late nights, when the whole world was asleep. The world dreamt in their sleep, we dreamt lying awake.

I still remember that night. It was one of the most memorable night for me. I was waiting for her SMS and all the while twisting and turning in my bed. All of a sudden a gust of cold breeze hit me hard on my face. My bedroom is on the 4th floor and it has 2 big windows in it just next to my bed. The windows open to the houses nearby, but those houses are at a distance. And in between there are lots of greens. No, I don't mean we have a money making press here, I mean trees, plain simple green tress. So during the monsoon I enjoyed watching rain from my bedroom.

Later that night all hell broke loose. It started raining cats and dogs, and it seemed that that night the cats and dogs were having the fight of their lives. But I was too lazy to get out of my bed to close the windows. So the occasional gust of wind which brought in the monsoon shower through the window drenched me from head to toe, but I paid no heed to it. Rather I was secretly enjoying it while hiding under my quilt.

Monsoon can bring the poet and the lover inside you. The poet because the virgin nature, bathed, offers you her body to write on, to write upon. Lover, because the dampness of the monsoon brings with it a sense of warmth. You want to snuggle up close with some someone for warmth, you want to hide your face behind her ears and hold her fragrance forever inside you. And you can take my word for it, during monsoon, the lover is not romantic, the monsoon love can be pretty wild.

That night when we finally started chatting it was still raining, and in that ambiance we forgot the concept of time and that she would have to go to her office the next morning. We played a little game of textual Antakshari. She would write a song and send it to me, I would write a song and send it to her. Childish, isn't it? Yes, there is a kid hiding somewhere inside her which only I can find.

That night, I would not say I was in heaven, but wherever I was I never wanted to come back to reality.

[If you like this story then consider subscribing to The Chronicles of R. It would help you to remain updated about the latest happening here.]

Clay Shirky At Web 2.0 Expo, NY

In this video Clay Shirky explains why this abundance of information is quite natural. According to him, "it's not information overload. It's filter failure".

Finally It's Official, I Am A Geek

Finally it's official, I am a geek. I knew it from the bottom of my heart. But now even Guy Kawasaki say so, and so does Alltop.

It's been another feat for R and me. I have been included in the Geeks section of Alltop. Yes, now I share the same roof with Chris Pirillo, actually make it the same web-page. The Chronicles of R was included in their aggregation on 19th of this month. And this is the second triumph this year, the first one being accepted as an author in Technorati. Didn't I tell you about it? My bad. On 8th of this very same month, I was inducted as an author in Technorati.

Thanks Nononina for including The Chronicles of R in Alltop. Now before you dirty minds start rolling your eyes, Nononina is the company that owns Alltop. And Guy Kawasaki is a part of it.

By the way, how have you been lately? Yes you, my Constant Reader. How's life treating you now a days? I don't hear much from you now. Say something, anything. Don't be offended by the comment moderation message, it's done for spammers who leave messages like Buy Cheap Cialis or something more creative like [link][link][link][link] on The Chronicles of R. It's not for you. So do leave me a message or a comment. Both me and R would love you to share your thoughts and views with us.

You see, R and I are on a journey of love. And we want you to be a part of it. Not just for a day, or a month, or a year. We want you to be with us forever. So come along and join us in this journey of a lifetime together.

Jab We Met

In the backdrop of the Vidyasagar Setu, the sky had painted itself with myriad colors. Yellow, pink, brick red and finally blue. It looked like a chameleon, trying to hide itself within the arms of night.

It was a summer evening in 2003, I was standing on the terrace of our apartment. My final year exams were over for good, although the results were not declared by then. The college said it would take another 2-3 weeks, and maybe another 3-4 years to actually get the Pass Certificate. Calcutta University *sigh*.

We had recently shifted to this apartment. New place, new people. And finally, not only I had my own bedroom but a bed to sleep on. Over the past couple of years I got too tired of sleeping on the floor of the living room.

I was searching, like everyone else of my age then, for a job. Whoever lives here would know that that's one thing which is hard to come by in Calcutta. Although then I never had high hopes for myself, what can I possibly get with only a BSc degree to boast about! Fine, I had some fancy Tech certifications below my belt, and a 6 months experience as a faculty for a group of students hungry to learn C/C++ with the most boring eyes I had ever seen in my life. But those are simply nothing. No one wants to see what you actually knew, they always wanted some fancy degrees. So the search was on, and while admiring the beauty of the summer evening, the nagging feeling was still there at the back of my mind.

After a few days I did get a job. It was with a franchisee of ICICI bank personal loans division. But right out of grad school, I was not pretty sure how long would I be able to survive with this. Nonetheless I gave it a try, and failed! Miserably. I could not convert a single lead. And after a week or so one fine day, while I was returning to office to report to my manager about my yet another day of failure, I had a major accident. You see, I was not quite used to traveling by buses. But I had to, and that day while getting down from the bus I twisted my ankle and fell out of the bus. I would have nearly got run over by it had it been no for the fellow passengers hollers. The moment they saw me disappear below the bus they started shouting for the driver to stop the bus, and so he did, thankfully.

I could not go back to office, I could not even walk. Called up for emergency, and when I went back home I was feeling frustrated. With myself, with the world, with everything. And as a result I went into hibernation for the next 2 weeks, sitting back at home, pondering over what had happened.

That was when I met R for the first time.

30+ Free High Resolution Wallpapers

Many a times I have tried to find good nature wallpapers but could not find them at a single place. So I have compiled here a collection of 30+ high resolution wallpapers for your desktop. These are of course my personal favorites. Do write to me about what other types of wallpapers you would like to see and I would definitely try to compile them in some other list.








And while you are downloading these wallpapers, also have a look at the 40+ Beautiful Blogger Templates. They are handpicked from various sources and have most of them are Adsense ready templates.







You can also have a look at the 10 Stunning Examples of Slow Shutter Photography, they are simply amazing. Although it took me quite a while to search them from various sources.













If you like these wallpapers, then please help me by giving this article a Stumble or by spreading the word using the Share button below.







Consider subscribing to my RSS feed to keep yourself updated about the new happening in the world of me and R.

Google Was Down, Like It Or Not

Hacked or not, Google was down. When I came online today, I got a 302 error while trying to access my Gmail account. It aroused my suspicion as just a few minutes back a reader came over to my site searching for the string "gmail site down" and landed up on the 32 Things To Do When Your ISP Is Down. When I search in Google myself about any news, I came up with some interesting facts.

Google was down. All/most of their services were down including Google search. Engadget had a whole article dedicated to it, quite unusual of them though cause they don't cover something like this.

Then I went to GigaOm and found out some more interesting facts. Apparently someone has hijacked the Google Domain, and something called SoGo Search is showing up instead. The picture above is from the GigaOm site. At 3:11PM PST GigaOm reported this, and it continued for quite sometime. Ad of now 4:15AM PST, I am still facing problems with Gmail and some other Google services including Orkut. Larry Magid was on the local CBS radio talking about the Google’s great vanishing trick.

Although Google continues to claim that it was just the result of a DNS problem, what baffles me is as to why a DNS change would point some users like Om to another site? And along with this we face the age old question, what if the Big Daddy Google goes down for some reason, what do we do then? Over the past decade we have come to depend on Google for almost everything, what if Google ceases to exist tomorrow? If anything new comes up, I'll keep you updated. You can subscribe to The Chronicles of R to receive those updates on your email or as an RSS feed.

[Pic Coutsey : GigaOm]

32 Things To Do When Your ISP Is Down

Every now and then out ISP seem to drop dead for no reason at all. This list is for things to do during those unimaginable times.

1. Open the curtains to see if anything has changed over the past 2 years.
2. Re-introduce yourself to your immediate family.
3. You mean there's something else to do?
4. Steal WiFi from your neighbor.
5. Play single player mode.
6. Get that kidney transplant you've been putting off.
7. Slit your wrists with broken AOL trial disks.
8. Start talking to your girlfriend again.
9. Call friends to see if their ISP is working.
10. Create your own IM bot to converse with.
11. Plot out your revenge for the ISP.
12. Run in circles, screaming hysterically about the end of the world.
13. Open up the ol' pinging .bat file!
14. Take a shower and scrape off mold/fern from body.
15. Go through your web cache to see if you missed anything.
16. Switch to TV.
17. Twiddle your thumbs.
18. Go to the bathroom (of course!).
19. Hang yourself with network cables.
20. Load up the zsnes emulator and play chrono trigger and earthbound for hours.
21. Smack your modem against the wall.
22. Smash your head on the keyboard until it restores.
23. Get a black rooster paint a pentacle with his blood and do some invocations.
24. Go out to buy another pallet of Mountain Dew for the year ahead.
25. Host a LAN game with hopes of people joining.
26. Write your lists on paper.
27. Bet on horses; wake up the gerbil.
28. Go to Starbucks and Login to T-Mobile.
29. Pray to the Dark Gods that it will be fixed.
30. Try dialing in every 10 minutes, just in case its back up.
31. Threaten your ISP with an impeachment vote.
32. Dial 911.

Update : If you liked this post then I am sure you would also like the 42 Things Real Men Do. It's by Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid. Be sure to check it out too.

Had a good laugh? Well, then why don't you make me smile by sharing this on your favorite site using the Add This button below! And you can also subscribe to The Chronicles of R while you are at it. So that you can keep yourself updated about many more laughs like this to come.

Stock Market Terms - Redefined

CEO : Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO : Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET : A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET : A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry.

VALUE INVESTING : The art of buying low and selling lower.

BROKER : What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR : Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST : Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT : When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER : A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION : The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW : The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO : What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS : What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR : Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT : An archaic word no longer in use.

The 25 Random Things Meme

This is the 25 things meme that is taking rounds of the internet for quite some time now. Yes, I have put a THE in front of it as it had become so popular that a search in Google would reveal 1,460,000 results, so we should put some respect to it. So without further ado here are the 25 random things about me that you were better off not knowing.

1. I can read, write and speak fluently in 3 languages. In fact I speak English and Hindi way better than Bengali, which is my mother tongue.

2. I am scared of ghosts, noisy firecrackers and thunder.

3. My right foot is slightly smaller than the left one due to an accident during my childhood days. Although it's invisible to the naked eye.

4. My sunsign is Libra whereas my moonsign is Gemini.

5. I used to be an amateur palmist.

6. My favorite season is monsoon.

7. I had taken courses in singing from a Guru for for almost 3 months. Then I sort of got bored of Rabindrasangeet.

8. I have a secret crush on Kareena Kapoor. Okay, now it's not a secret anymore.

9. Although I love to say that I am an open book, more often than not people have complained that I am the most difficult read.

10. I am hypersensitive and a bit too emotional. I still cry seeing the lamest movies in the theater.

11. My favorite subject since my school days is Computer Science. I always wanted to be a Computer Engineer.

12. My first computer was rechristened by R as Celu. It was a Celeron 1.2 GHz.

13. I am a divorcee.

14. I have taken professional training in Kyukoshikan form of Karate for almost 2 years when I was in school.

15. I have been to all the metros in India except for Mumbai.

16. I don't forgive, neither do I forget.

17. I am a self-confessed chauvinist and egoist.

18. I am an ardent fan of WWE.

19. I am a born loner.

20. I hate to be left alone. I want myself to be surrounded by friends.

21. Yes, my left ear is pierced. It's not a falsetto.

22. I feel fascinated by nature, women, words and technology.

23. I consider myself to be a love-sick puppy.

24. My favorite food is Biriyani and Meetha-Dahi.

25. I hate lizards and liars. I consider them fall in the same rank.

15 Reasons Why I Won't Follow You On Twitter

Many people complain that I don't follow them on Twitter when they start following me. Here's why :

1. You have the photo of a duck on your Twitter profile! How lame is that. What reason you might have not showing your face? You don't look good? I don't really care, I am not here to date you. And you know what, it just makes me feel that you are not too serious about social media. Doing it for fun then, eh? Well, then you gotta be really interesting for me to follow you.

2. You don't have a bio on your profile. Now how am I supposed to know what you do, why you are here and why should I follow you at all? I guess you were either living under the rock and thus had nothing to write, or you do something that's not interesting to you and so you thought that I would not be interested in it either, or maybe you are simply too lazy to write anything at all but want to start building on your leads directly. In any case, thank you but I am not interested.

3. Although this is not mandatory, but don't you think you should spice up your Twitter background a little bit? But then, it's fine with me if you use the default theme in case you are interesting enough and this is not an absolute must.

4. You are following 12,437 people out of which only 403 people are following you. Are you nuts! You must be really desperate to follow those many people without them following you. What reason do you have, huh? Selling something aren't you? Thank you but I am not interested.

5. Your Twitter account is 2 months old and you have only 32 Tweets. You want to make friends and you don't want to say anything! Sorry, but I don't want to play the role of a guru-disciple. I am not here to preach anything. So thank you but I would not follow you. Although a hundred-dollar bill would be a nice way to change my mind.

6. In your bio you say you are a thinker, and all you update about is how are you feeling and how is the weather and what not, except anything to indicate you are a thinker. Chances are that you don't know your role as a thinker, or maybe you are too bored to think anymore. Fine, I am not asking you not to mix you personal life with your professional life here, but all I am asking is give me some value input along with that for Pete's sake!

7. You login to Twitter at 7PM CST everyday and then you start bombarding your followers with information. Sorry buddy, information overload. Give me time to digest, I don't want to follow a bot who is an encyclopedia of the information superhighway who keeps on vomiting bouts of information like undigested food for 2 hours daily. If I really feel that the information you give me are indeed useful, at the most I would subscribe to your Twitter feed using a FeedReader, but I still won't follow you.

8. You are too infrequent on Twitter. Thank you but I am not interested. Even @abevigoda does not forget to Tweet everyday pronouncing that he is alive.

9. You don't join in any conversation. If you are a Twitteratti I can understand. But if you are not, chances are that I would not follow you. Please understand that you are not here to give a sales pitch. Even sales is not selling anymore, remember!

10. I start to follow you, and you send me an @reply pointing me towards your website or your product. I already know what you do from your bio, that's the first thing I would do before following you, remember? I feel bugged when the first @reply coming from you sounds again like a sales pitch.

11. You spam me with DM. Stop it, do you think I would fall for that? That's harassment. I would either block you, or if you are a team then probably I would report it to Twitter to get all your accounts banned.

12. Be knowledgeable, you should know what you are talking about. I am not asking you to be the next Einstein, but if you claim to be a social media expert and then tell me that "Chris Brogan is a very good actor and son of Hollywood actor James Brolin" and Tribes is uninteresting because you don't like "Indian folklore as it is too boring to me as I am too busy raising up Social Media experts", then I would not only unfollow you but also block you.

13. You are a fake account. If it's for fun, I would be too happy to follow you. I follow lot's of fake accounts like @abevigoda, @BadPeggyOlson, @God, even @darthvader. But if you are impersonating someone to sell your product then chances are I would not only unfollow you, but I would also give your id to that poor soul you are impersonating so that he/she blocks you. To sell your product you don't need to impersonate anyone, first learn how to sell yourself, the rest would fall into line all by themselves.

14. Your Tweets are plain and simply boring. Try to be interesting, please. There are thousand others in your profession who would provide me with the same information that you give me everyday, and be interesting at the same time. So why should I follow you?

15. And while I am writing this, I got an email that someone had started to follow me on Twitter. In the someone's bio it's written that he loves jQuery. You love jQuery! And you wrote that in your Twitter bio? I mean you are so much in love with jQuery that your whole life revolves around it? I mean fine, earlier I had put ahead #6, but I guess you have taken it too seriously and have thus become far too descriptive.

Bottomline, try to be innovative or I won't follow you. Okay, a hundred-dollar bill would do fine, but not for too long, and surely not for everyone. If you like this post then you can follow me on Twitter @rajtilak.

Pussies : Love 'em, Hate 'em, But You Can't Ignore 'em

If you found this video funny, I mean if you found this video really funny, why not help me share it with others? You should subscribe to the RSS feed while you're at it. You know, so you don't miss anything.

Jay Leno Humor On The Credit Crunch

1. The US has made a new weapon that destroys people but keeps the building standing. Its called the stock market.

2. Do you have any idea how cheap stocks are? Wall Street is now being called Wal Mart Street.

3. What's the difference between a pigeon and a London investment banker? The pigeon can still make a deposit on a BMW.

4. What's the difference between a guy who lost everything in Las Vegas and an investment banker? A tie.

5. The problem with investment bank balance sheet is that on the left side nothing's right and on the right side nothing's left.

6. I want to warn people from Nigeria who might be watching our show, if you get any e mails from Washington asking for money, it's a scam. Don't fall for it.

7. Bush was asked about the credit crunch. He said it was his favorite candy bar.

8. The rescue bill was about 450 pages. President Bush's copy is even thicker. They had to include pictures.

9. President Bush's response was to meet some small business owners in San Antonio last week. The small business owners are General Motors, General Electric and Century 21.

10. What worries me most about the credit crunch is that if one of my check is returned stamped 'insufficient funds', I would not know whether that refers to mine or the bank's.

The Great Indian HR Trick

Any professional who works in a Blue Chip company in India would have experienced a real time practical joke played on them. This joke usually translates in the form of “HR initiatives”. It comes as a yearly/bi-yearly/five yearly list of “Dos and Don’ts” with a few bullet points spammed with full vigor on company mails, company walls (not the Facebook wall – the real concrete wall), company intranet, transportation and most evil – as a wall paper on your ancient company monitor!

The most laughed at initiatives often echoes the same ideas

1. Acknowledge top talent.
2. Open conversations with the board and the CXOs (CEO, COO, CFO and those types).
3. 360 degree appraisal.
4. High performers openly announced for others to see.
5. Weekend sports sessions with other people in office (Work Life balance).
6. One part time psychiatrist who rarely gets a visitor.
7. Intranet site with a few CEO snaps (planting trees, watching a fashion show, cutting ribbons), jokes, “How to lose weight” and “How to fill up your appraisal form”.
8. Intranet profile 1: What is your birthday? What is your favorite color? Veg/Non Veg? – A 25 point questionnaire.
9. Intranet profile 2: “Does your boss treat you well?” Usually the boss has a link to his subordinates’ pages – Password tweak and all. Boss is Boss after all. So much for 360 degrees.

Results are usually the top talent which leaves within a year, a few spam mails and hate mails at the CXO level, downright bashing of the below 25 creed and “What do you losers think of yourselves”, unhappy HR which seems to have an attrition problem themselves.
Great Indian HR Trick

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Presentations & Slid ebook magic

[This is a guest post by Kiran S Pillai. Kiran works with a startup, www.lordsofodds.com at Pune. He is an engineer by profession and generally trips on number of things around him. Get a sneak peak of the trip on his Twitter page @kiranspillai. “Marketing” is one word you could get if you ask him too much on what he does at his job. Kiran blogs at Tending to>>east.]

New Adsense Feature

Google has introduced a new feature in Adsense. It has come up with Adsense for Domains. Adsense for domains allows publishers with unused domains to help users reach relevant information by presenting content on the domains.

Many of us have often typed domains into our address bar or followed expired links leading to sites with no content. Adsense for Domains would let you cash in on that parked domain you had bought once but could not decide what to do with it. With Adsense for Domains, instead of an "under construction" page or 404 error, it would feature links, search results, advertisements and other content from Adsense. And the best part is that Adsense for Domains is using semantic technology targeted to the domain name. Bottomline, you earn revenue when users interact with the ads on your parked domain now filled with ads from Adsense for Domains.

You don't need a separate account for Adsense for Domains, if you have a valid Adsense account then you are already entitled for that. All you need to do is log on to your Adsense account, click on Adsense Setup, and under the Get Ads tab you would find a link to Adsense for Domains.

To get started with Adsense for Domains, you can check out their setup instruction page. You can also search through their Help Forums. So go ahead and try earning some more cash from Adsense.

Heart Of The Hills

When we ventured into the heart of the hills in the Lake District that I understood for the very first time what Wordsworth had really meant or implied in his Ode to Immortality. Why he had seen God in Nature, why he had felt that there was something beyond the surface of things and that God or the universal spirit shone through Nature; why Keats had written 'Beauty is truth and truth, beauty, that is all ye know and all ye need to know', why Shelley had implored the Westwind to inspire him, why Coleridge could conjure up a Christobel and a magical atmosphere in the dark woods.

If you could ever see, and feel, and drink in the sheer beauty of this place, you too would believe that it would change you, it would affect your very soul. Just to imagine that these great masters lived here for long periods of time, and walked by that shimmering water, and trod on that soft grass and brushed by those lacy leaves, and sun-kissed flowers every day, is incredible. The beauty of this place is almost 'painful' at times; and I, to my utter amazement, found tears in my eyes. I had never known that there could be so many shades of green, so many shades of blue and so many hues of brown and gold. The days I spent there, were days in paradise. Blue skies with little puffy white clouds, floating, casting their shadows on the clear blue waters of the lakes, a bright golden sun, and a deliciously cool breeze. If there is a Paradise, this is where I have come closest to it.

My aunt's friend, who drove us there and has traveled around the world and come here several times, said that she had seen much countryside in many parts of the world, including in India and USA, but in her opinion, the wondrous beauty of the Lake District is unsurpassed. There is some strange power in this place. We climbed up a hill through the woods and by a small stream, I reached the top first, and stood behind a copse of trees, from that height, I could see the whole countryside around, spread like a rich oriental carpet all around. It was all so breathtakingly beautiful! it cant be described and it cannot even be absorbed from photographs, however professionally taken.

That moment, I did not want to go back. I did not want to go back to people, to THINGS. I realized in that moment what was meant by, the futility of art, the futility of material pleasures, of the material existence, why some people become hermits, why nature is worshipped, why they say that 'the best things in life are free', why they say that a power called God exists. There is no art in the world that can match the perfection of nature, the beauty of nature is incomparable, full stop.

There are various climatic, locational and incidental factors, not to mention that England has the money and resources to maintain this place, which has made the Lake Districts one the worlds hottest tourist spots. But the point is that IT IS WHAT IT IS! And it is not man-made paradise, it is natural. I may have to leave this country, but I have left my heart behind. If one can fall in love with a place, I think I have.

[This is a guest post. The author, Madhurima Gupta, who was a student of English Literature in Jadavpur University, is now working as a successful animator. These are excerpts from email and letter which she wrote during her visit to England.]

How To Hide The Blogger Nav-Bar

Many of us, including me, find the Blogger Nav-Bar quite aesthetically incorrect. It just sits there without a purpose, and most of the time you cannot even blend it with the color of your template. So I had hid my Blogger Nav-Bar a long time back. In case you would like to do the same, here's how you can do it on your own Blogspot blog:

Go over to your Blogger Dashboard, click on the Layout section and go to Edit HTML. Now before you do anything, first backup your template by clicking on Download Full Template. Trust me, this is a very useful step we often miss.

Then inside your template code, find this line:

</b:skin>

For Firefox users, you can press Ctrl+F and bring up the Search bar and search for it easily. Once you have found this piece of code, simply add the following before the tag.

#navbar-iframe{
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none
}

Save your template and then you are good to go. Now when you or someone else would view your blog, the Nav-Bar would not be visible. Wasn't it simple?

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And Loneliness

Dim lights,
Low music, and
Loneliness.

Whisper of the
Leafs
In solitude.

The clouds,
The dark clouds
Move on aimlessly.

Magical spells
Of monsoon Showers.
And a feeling
of
Warmth.

And loneliness,
Sweet
Loneliness.

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