Swallowing

While I was coming to the office today, I nearly fell asleep twice. This is getting dangerous. Dozing off during a CNG journey is in no way danger-free. But I just can't get to bed early, and I just can't eliminate the morning sleepyness. The long term slumber elimination campaign is showing its side effects, and I am not sure what I should be doing next.

I had two points in mind, which I am supposed to write about now. But Alas! I can't remember one point. The other day I had a conversation with two other colleagues of mine. I forgot the context (actually the memory cell that has that information is currently out of reach), but I brought out this issue that "never in my life I have used the word Alas during a conversation". It's one of those written English words.

I just saw the html code for the blogger template today. I think I'll paste it in Frontpage and try and make some modifications. It's been a while since I last played around with web designing. Once I was a devoted "easy way" web designer. lol....calling myself a webdesigner is like calling "Kapil Dev a great footballer". Okay, that was an outrageous analogy, but the point is clear! I am a telecomm research dude, not a webbie.

There's a proverb in Bangla.."Onurodhe dheki gela". It means, doing something really big just because someone else requested. It also means doing something which is quite difficult to do. Such things are usually done only for one's own benefits, but still the person is doing it for someone else. I once did that.

There's always a peril of bringing up new ideas. If you think of a new concept, chances are high that you will be the one selected to implement that idea. Does this harm creativity at work? Maybe yes, or maybe not. It's not the issue here. I was an AOP of the DALNet chat channel #Beatles. To the people who never ventured instant relay chatting, these might sound like gibberish (including the relay chatting word).

Anyways, Mirc is a software, through which you can chat with unknown people sitting in front of computers in random places. You put up a hash in front of a name to express it as a "room", or a "channel". #Beatles was a place for Beatlefans, and although the room remained empty for most of part of the day (not too many beatlefans, and fewer irc addict beatlefans), I'd stay there. This way I got to know some people who ran the channel, and eventually I became a part of the administration (after almost 3 years hanging out). So I was an "Auto Operator". I could be distinguished from a regular user via an @ sign in front of my precious nick, DeAd_MaN_RoLliN. Yeah that was how I wrote it in Dalnet, later on. By the way, DALNet is one of the many IRC servers that one can connect to, via mirc. I have this thing for details, and I don't often care whether too many details would drive any potential readers away. After all, this is blog, and the primary reason behind blogging is "self satisfaction". A great way to rationalize, aint' it? :p

So oneday I asked the owner of the channel "Hey man, your's is an old channel, why there's no homepage?". And bingo! After a few days, he asked me "I know you can do it. Why don't you make a site for us?". I was like "eeeek!". I barely knew anything about web designing at that time. I just knew a few tags, and had the experience of running Frontpage a few times (the one that came with Win 98).

So I swallowed the dheki, and started brushing up on my web designing skills(!). The rest was history (a pathetic one, though). I came up with a barebones html website, with a few gifs and vector images ,and some midi tunes. I wonder how many people would know about Midis unless they're using midi supported cellphones. But I love midi files.

I stopped visiting irc a long time ago, but I still keep in touch with some of the people I met through Irc. Infact some of the people I met through IRC are very good friends of mine. Pathetic, but IRC had a deep impact on my life, as it is today. Yesterday, it was IRC. Today it's forums, IMs and orkut! The media has changed, but the things didn't. Online buddies still meet up, and they still become friends.

One of the better things of today's world.

Can someone even believe that my first download speed was 200 bytes/sec?

I learnt to add flash buttons, using Dreamweaver. But I never got into java scripts and flash. I think 2 years have passed since the last update. Maybe I'll give the site an overhaul. I felt like doing it every now and then, but something prevented me from doing that. It remains as an emblem of a long gone past. Time is standing still there. Who am I to disturbe the peace of the images and texts that lie there?

By the way, I finally remember what I was supposed to write about. But I think I'll write about them later.

1. Birthday

2. Departure