29-Sep-2006
I have been a bit away from the internet for quite a while. That is because I was a bit busy at my work place, and last weekend I went on a extended-weekend vacation.
I have nothing much to show other than an obscure mention of pages on Rubik's Cube, that I happened to have stumbled across. There are even pages on algorithms to be used to solve the cube, like this one.
19-Sep-2006
A long time since I blogged. Hence I thought, I should complete the SQL Basics Primer series I am running at my blog, Splat!
Here are the links to all the four parts of the primer:
06-Sep-2006
Well, I have been working on some pixel art projects. I have uploaded it to the DeviantArt. You could check my page at DeviantArt to see the older ones. The new ones are:
For some great pieces of work in Pixel Art, give a visit to www.PixelJoint.com.
25-Aug-2006
Nothing much to update, other than the fact that I have again, done some changes site wide. Made the theme uniform except for the Project Little pages because I want to keep that in seperate theme. The About page has been update a bit.
Also, I have been able to add another post to my blog, Splat!, as a continuation to the series of SQL Basics Primer I had started earlier.
08-Aug-2006
Recently I have been reading the Google Advertising Tools by Harold Davis. It gives a lot of information and I found the ones that mattered to me, I already knew. But from a perspective of a new entrant, it gives it all in one place - and that is good.
He speaks of how much content should be present to have a moderately trafficked website when the content is of medium quality. He says that, to start of there should be about 100 pages – each page about 300 words. And one should add, on an average, one page per day.
Yes, it can be quite an effort, and content is a kind of commodity that does not grow on trees. One has to put in some effort. Talking of writing, I found a good article at A List Apart. A quote from that:
- Write for a single reader rather than an audience. Speak to him in an appropriate tone, and treat him as a real person.
- Tell your reader what he wants to know, even if it bores you to tell him.
- Provide as much context as possible.
- Anticipate and answer your reader’s questions.
- Take your reader on an interesting and well-considered journey into the web.
- Respect the time your reader chooses to spend with you. Treat him fairly.
04-Aug-2006
I was able to give the PL/SQL examination that was required for a OCA certification. Oracle PL/SQL Developer Certified Associate requries two exams to be taken. One that deals with SQL (that I had taken almost a year back), and another that I took today, that pertains to PL/SQL. I guess I will be sharing some basics here and also in my blog, Splat!
For more information on Oracle Certification in the Developer path, you can check out the following Oracle page.
03-Aug-2006
Harold Davis, the author of Google Advertising Tools, says:
"Here's what you need at a minimum to have a site drawing respectable numbers at the end of one year:
- 100 pages of quality content 'in the can' to start with
- On average, one new page of quality content a day every day of for a year (each page about 300 words)"
Ha! No wonder I do not get good traffic to my site. All my web presense (these Google Pages, my blog Splat! and my article website WiseTome.com) put together do not have the '100 pages of quality content in the can.
The only way I think I will be able to create quality content is in the field of World Building. But setting up of all these webpresenses and managing them itself takes out most of my time.
Well, I need to think of something.
01-Aug-2006
Encountered a goldmine blog when I was looking around at one of the AJAX articles in A List Apart. I would better mark it here so I can go through it in the future: ajaxian
Meanwhile, I have also started to post a series, that would form a SQL Basic Primer at my blog Splat!. These are the two articles I have come up with till now:
26-Jul-2006
About a week from now I will be giving the second exam for Oracle Certification that will be on PL/SQL at a local PROMETRICS testing center. It reminds me of the days before the semester exams during my under-graduation.
21-Jul-2006
The begining of this year, I went on a vacation. I had taken some pictures using a Digital Camera. That was a thing of past until recently when I went throuh it again, and passed it on to Rocky Knuckles who put it on his Google Pages.
You can check it out in Readers GALéRIUM. Just scroll down until you find "Beautiful holiday photos/ Copyright Mahesh Bhat/" and there are few of the photos.
20-Jul-2006
After my initial outburst at the Government of India 'controlling' the access to Blogger hosted blogs, I went around the Blogsphere and try to get some bearing.
Put it up in a quick and fast blog post of my own: Indian Government 'Ban' Blogger Hosted Blogs
18-Jul-2006
I finally made up my mind and put down the Chaos And Order Roleplaying Forums. I put an announcement in the forums and also a post in the Chaos And Order blog. As said there, it does not mean the end of the Chaos And Order universe - just that I do not have time to moderate those forums to run adventures.
I would be back to redesigning the universe based on the feed back I got from the forum roleplaying. I have got a lot of things chalked up in my mind, and that would come up as blog posts on Splat! and Chaos And Order - The Blog. I have been working on lot many things and I have not been able to invest time in the forums, and this is the reason for the decision.
14-Jul-2006
Had been wondering on where the net is going with all this lot of useless information being published. I learned today that I am not alone. Again, an article from A List Apart, Fame Fatale, has gone into my Google Notebooks.
An article from there that is worth mentioning, in case one felt depressed after reading 'Fame Fatale' is Why Are You Here?
How To Write A Better Weblog - This one I mention here, though I have read it long back for those who intent to do better at their Blogging.
12-Jul-2006
Not much to show, but quite a lot of effort has gone into WiseTome. A new Logo and Title has been designed and it now looks good with the overall layout of WiseTome. Check it out at www.WiseTome.com.
During the effort at getting some intial traffic to WiseTome, I have learnt quite a bit about search engines. I have also posted a blog entry: SEO, Spiders and Sitemaps.
And the next update is regarding these Google Pages itself. I n0ticed that the Archive page was growing unmanagably large and hence I split it into quarters and neatly filed them up using at the News Archive page. I also did the same to the Project Little page and split them into several pages. Doing these things I noticed and really learnt the use of Content Management Systems.
As you can see in these Google Pages, I have not given attention to all the layout uniformity and such things. I just want to have a record and let my friends and acqaintances know about what I am up to. But I would definetly not use this approach while designing other sites that are not personal in nature.