After so many years, it’s boring!!!

The first time I used the internet was in the year….well I don’t remember exactly but it was definitely not before 1999. At that time I was amazed by the capabilities of the internet. In fact, that was the time when the public was getting used to the idea of sending each other emails and chatting, etc. The first thing I did after connecting to the internet for the first time was to visit the website of my favourite TV show as a kid – Shaktimaan. I had no idea what to do once I reached the website so I simply closed it and went on to create my first email id. Since I didn’t have regular access to the net, that id was ultimately lost in space.

The next time I visited the internet was during the period when Gmail could be accessed only by invitations. My brother sent me an invitation so using that as an excuse I was re-introduced to the internet. Slowly and steadily I began to enjoy using the internet regularly. It had many new things to offer and I was hooked to most of them, except (thankfully) porn. The rest of the internet (which was clean) was enough to provide me enough entertainment for many days, weeks, months….well you get the idea.

Then in 2008 I began to use the internet in a big manner, because that was the time I finally got full control over my family computer I joined some communities, made some friends overseas, and luckily one of them managed to get me a very good job online, which is presently funding most of my needs. So yeah, being on the internet was FUN! Email, Orkut/Facebook, Online games, An online job, Discussion forums….I was doing a lot on the net.

But now, after all these years, I’m slowly starting to get tired of the internet. Of course, I still need it for some critical things like news, results, etc., but other than that, I’m not getting that “FUN” by being online these days – it’s just become some sort of a habit and thus life goes on…think about it – updating status on orkut/facebook, sending innumerable messages to friends daily, updating this useless blog, all these activities are becoming tiring by the day. But since it’s a habit, I’m finding it difficult to stop. I know deep within that there’s no more fun in doing all these things but I don’t know why I’m not quitting!

Whew! That’s another useless post done!

This Wallpaper Makes A Good Point!

Today I found a very interesting wallpaper for my desktop. I’m sure there are hundreds of wallpapers like this one with even quirkier words, but I liked this one very much and it sure serves a very good purpose of promoting Linux. I’ve been a Linux user for only a year and I’m simply in love with it. It’s super-fast and never crashes unless the user does something stupid. Add to that its zero-cost and maximum security, and you have a very good reason for abadoning Windows. But of course, nothing is perfect in this world and the same applies to Linux too. There is very limited support for gaming in Linux and although there are some software available to play Windows’ games on Linux, the most effective ones are paid software, based on a monthly subscription That’s the only reason I haven’t deleted Windows 7 from my hard drive till now.

Ok, coming back to the wallpaper, it is indeed very clever, isn’t it? Okay, Windows and its creator William Gates have made life easier for millions of people and have helped them adapt to computers very soon, but the story ends there. Once you begin to use Windows regularly, you can detect many problems with it – with each piece of software that you install, your computer becomes slower and unresponsive. And if you don’t have enough system resources, you can end up with a dead-slow PC which simply refuses to obey your commands. And on top of that, the average Windows user needs to format his hard drive every two months or so, just because a virus had crept in from somewhere and jammed all his data. So basically the user is paying thousands of rupees just to get a weak software which is prone to attacks even by an amateur cracker! Wow, writing all that makes me feel like a Windows basher. That’s not entirely true. While I don’t exactly like Windows, I don’t hate it either. It does help out in my gaming after all…!!!

So what’s the point of this post? Nothing. I just loved that wallpaper and wrote some nonsense about Windows, most of which is true. Happy?

Chetan Bhagat Vs 3 Idiots

I’ve read Chetan Bhagat’s debut novel “Five Point Someone” (FPS) twice and have seen the film “3 Idiots” (3I) seven times till now, so I think I’m well qualified to make a few comments on the tussle that’s going on between Mr.Bhagat and the creators of 3I. Of course, a lot of people who are more intelligent than me are making more sensible comments all over the internet and out in the open world, but hey, I’ve paid to host this useless piece of junk so I can fill it with whatever I want!

First of all, let me admit that I loved the movie much more than the novel. Why? Because it was not entirely based on the novel. Had it been like the movie “Hello” which was adapted from Mr.Bhagat’s second novel “One Night @ The Call Center”(ON@CC), then it would definitely have become a dud, because movies based on books are always liable to fail miserably if they “adapt” too much! But 3I is different. It has proved to be more entertaining and hilarious than the book. And one must really appreciate that fact.

So where did the tussle start? It started when the film-makers refused to give Mr.Bhagat credit at the beginning of the movie. Instead they put his name in the closing credits, that too after around a hundred names had appeared on screen. No one sticks around in the theater to view so many credits, so this effectively means that the people who saw the movie but didn’t read the book will never have seen on-screen that the story was “inspired” from another source.And now Mr.Bhagat and the film crew have started a duel-of-sorts on this matter. The film crew maintains that only 5% of the movie was based on the book and that’s why they chose not to put his name in the beginning. But Mr.Bhagat and thousands of his fans feel that more than 70% of the movie was based on the book and thus an opening credit is required.

I’m not exactly a “fan” of Mr.Bhagat’s books – I’ve read two of his books so far and have only started reading the remaining two, but I don’t “enjoy” his style of writing. The stories he tells are somewhat intriguing but the overall feel of reading his books isn’t very satisfactory. I started reading his books only to see why people make a fuss about them and with each book I end up being disappointed. My brother’s review of FPS (click here) gives a more accurate description about this. But the point here is not to talk about Mr.Bhagat’s writing stlye, but about his right to be credited. I’ve seen the movie, read the book, but am in no position to compare them both – I didn’t watch the movie to calculate what percent of the book made up the movie – I saw the movie only for some entertainment, and that I got; plenty of it.

Ok it’s about time I gave my final worthless comment about this – I feel that Mr.Bhagat should be credited, but not in the opening credits. If he was credited at the beginning of the closing credits, that would be perfect. Come to think of it, even J.K.Rowling is never credited in the beginning of the Harry Potter movies. Her name appears after about 30-40 seconds in the closing credits! Anyway let’s not make too many comparisions here. I just think the movie’s script has modified enough from the book to keep its opening credits to itself. For that “x%” of inspiration from the book, the pole position of the closing credits should be given to Mr.Bhagat. There! I’ve said what I wanted to. Now let’s see what change it brings about in the world!!!

Yappy New Ear!!!

I vaguely remember ringing in the year 2000. It was a new millennium and people were very excited by the turn of events during that period of time. I don’t remember much about the Y2K scare as I was too young then, but it became a topic of ridicule a few days after Jan 1. Since then a whole decade has passed and how!

The world has become an even smaller place with breathtaking developments each year and we’ve become so used to them that we can’t imagine how the world was before the year 2000. As for me I find it hard to believe that I spent my childhood without internet! If I remember correctly, the first time I ever got to use the internet was somewhere in 2001 and that was only to create my first email id!

Apart from the internet a number of technological innovations have taken place across the globe in this past decade and it’s amazing how fast everyone has adopted to these changes. Of course in the process we have made our planet a dangerous place to live on, but life goes on!

Okay enough about the past. How about the future? Too early to think about it…I think I’ll concentrate on the present for now. I’ve already gotten a shaky start this year but hopefully things will pick up as the days go by. I remember, exactly one year ago, I started blogging “regularly” on blogspot. Regularly meant posting useless, nonsense stuff everyday. Well I’m thinking of doing something similar now, but I plan to put some sense in my posts now and then. And you, my dear invisible visitor, if you’re planning on following my blog (most unlikely!) then I have to say that you’re lucky to have so much time to waste – I suggest you to put it to some better use!

Wow that’s enough scribbling for a year. I’d better go now. Have a happy new year everyone!

Trap17 Free Webhosting – Get into the trap!

I should have made this post long ago. It’s not an advertisement – rather, it’s my way of saying “Thank You” to the company which helped me in getting my first websites online, no matter how crappy they are! This post is all about Trap17 – a web-hosting company that provides free and paid hosting services to its customers. Let me clear up on the paid services first. The rates are the cheapest available and the service is the best available! For as low as $2 per month, you can get 1GB of disk space and 10GB of bandwidth – now who can offer that much at such a low price?! And talking about domains, each domain gets free Google Apps setup and also free ID protection so that your whois record remains private. On popular registrar sites like GoDaddy, one has to shell down a fee for ID protection, unless you’re purchasing in bulk.

Now coming to the best part. Trap17 also provides the same hosting packages for free! The catch is that you have to be an active participant in their forums (the link above leads directly to the forums). This concept is known as post-to-host, which means you have to do some posting to earn your hosting. That my sound quite a cumbersome task to do, but it’s really easy and you can get yourselves a domain ($9.99) with basic hosting ($1.95) in less than a fortnight. (If you don’t spam, that is!) The trap17 forums is pretty large and has a category for everyone. You can talk about anything you like and as long as it makes sense and is useful, you will get credited for it. Here’s how trap17 works:

1) Sign up at the Trap17 forums with a genuine e-mail address.

2) With the same e-mail address, sign up at XistoSupport, which is the place where you buy your hosting. Trap17 is a part of the Xisto network. It’s important that you sign up with the same e-mail address at both sites because….read below!

3) The next step is to simply make some quality posts in the forums. The principle is Quality over Quantity. That means it doesn’t matter how many posts you make, but how good those posts are. There’s a script called the myCENT script which runs in the forum every hour or so. It analyzes the quality of your posts in that period of time and accordingly awards some virtual money to your account, in the form of US Cents. Once you have 100 cents in your account, it gets converted into a dollar and is transferred to your billing account in Xisto. Now do you understand why you have to use the same e-mail address?

You can earn anything between $0.01-$5.00 per post based on how good it is. I generally get $0.30 for a six-lined paragraph and on an average I get $3 per day.

4) Once you have enough dollars in your Xisto account, you can place your order for a domain+hosting. Just select the payment option as “myCENT” in the order page and you’ll get your domain/hosting for free! Now isn’t that simple?

Don’t let the name fool you – it’s anything but a trap! The site’s been online since five years and is one of the few post2host sites left in the business. It has given me five domains already and you’re reading this blog courtesy of trap17. I’ve been there since June ‘09 and as you can see from the picture to the left, I’ve made quite a few posts there!!! I spend 15-30 minutes on an average over there and feel that it’s time well-spent. In the future I hope to become a paid customer of trap17. That way I will be supporting them and continue to get quality hosting.

And if you’re having any doubts about downtime, etc then erase those doubts from your mind. I’ve never seen this domain (or the others for that matter) experience downtime from the day it was registered. That supports the 99.9% uptime claim. The best part is that they don’t put any ads on your site unlike many other free webhosting sites.

So stop running after phony sites which promise lots of features for very little – just come on to trap17 and get some quality hosting for free!

Lockerz – the new “in-thing”!

Some websites are like designer clothes – they come in and go out of fashion every few months! One of the websites that is very much “in” right now is Lockerz.com, which offers attractive prizes for doing almost nothing. Well the users do have to log in daily and and answer a poll/question and for that they are rewarded by points (dubbed as “PTZ” by the site). Ordinary users earn 2 PTZ each for these actions, while a special category of users, who make up the “Z-List”, earn double. For getting onto this list the user has to invite 20 other people to join Lockerz. Anyway, this goes on for a while and when the user has certain number of PTZ, he can redeem them for some prizes/gifts/whatever!

Currently this site has an invitation-based sign-up process, and since users get 2 PTZ for each sign-up, many forums and sites have sprung up offering Lockerz invites! They’re practically everywhere!!! The site does appear to be legit and is hugely popular, but the picture isn’t all that rosy – the prizes are available only for a few days once every two months or so. The last time they opened the shop was on October 15 and till now it has been closed. More than a million members are eagerly waiting for it to open again. As for me, I can relax for another six months as I have to accumulate PTZ for my dream gift – the PS3.

Since a lot of other people are doing it, I might very well do it too – so hear me out ye stranger who has stumbled onto my blog! If you’re looking for a Lockerz invite drop me a word and I’ll send it to you. Hmm I think that should do!!!

Making Money Online – a distant dream?

Why did I start this post with a screen shot of the bux.to website? Is this some kind of advertisement or something?!! Well the bux.to website doesn’t need any advertisements as it gets tons of new users on its own. So why did I put this up here? I think the title of the post ought to tell you something about it!

I’m not saying that bux.to is a scam site. No one can truly say whether it’s a scam or not, because it’s been on for such a long time and it ends up on almost everyone’s list of “Money-making websites”. I’ve had bitter experiences with bux.to but anyway let’s put that away for now; enough said about bux.to!!!

About 14 months ago, I set out on a quest to find out a way to make some money using the Internet. Until then, all I knew about this was that there were a lot of sites which promised huge amounts of money just for 2 hours of work per day, or something like that. And there was enough proof to show that these sites were all fraudulent and only trapped innocent people looking to make a quick buck. Well I wasn’t going to fall for anything like that, but I sure did waste a lot of time trying to look for some legitimate sites which allowed users to make money.

Most people like me stumble onto sites like bux.to everyday and are immediately tempted by what they see – promise of a huge amount of income every month, all for a mere 10 minutes of work everyday. But what they do not see is that the calculations that these sites take into consideration are highly inaccurate, and the average user can never achieve stats as projected in the site. There is of course, an easy way to get money off these sites, and that is to give them your money, in order to get some from them! So the user is paying to get back his own money and maybe a few dollars more, and in the midst of all this a lot of precious time is lost – what a futile exercise…

But thanks to Google Adsense, there has been a glimmer of hope for these money hunters. But once again, they are taken in by success stories where someone earns a six-figure amount (in US $) every month, using only Google Adsense. Now a person who reads something like that is bound to dream of achieving that target himself and thus sets out to create his own Adsense account. But the excitement wanes when that person realizes that there is still the job of attracting visitors to his site so that some of them may click on the ads. For that the site has to have some quality content. And what is quality content? Beats me. There are millions of people all over the world searching for the answer to that question. They all have websites, and some of them have some stunning designs, but most of them are void of anything that can be termed as “quality content”.

So this path is closed too. Then where should the hunters turn to? Where should they look in the web of the world wide web? Sadly that answer is too long and too complex to write/understand. The few experienced hunters who have found some booty may/may not share some of their well-guarded secrets, but it depends on how patient and how skilled the newbie hunter is, in making his moves. I have been on this quest for over a year and am pleased to report that I have indeed found some success after wasting a lot of time and bandwidth (oh my dear, precious bandwidth!). I didn’t earn much, but I did earn something and I did it on my own – that’s why I’m pleased. I’m not willing to share my secret now, one of the reasons being that no one reads this blog yet (!!!), but I will surely write more on this topic when and where suitable. But know this – you can make money off the internet, but it won’t be a quick process. Be patient and look carefully, and you will indeed find a way. All the best!

Barrister Parvateesam

Yesterday, I got hold of the book “బారిష్టర్ పార్వతీశం” (Barrister Parvateesam), for which I had been searching for a long while. I first read the book as part of my Class X Telugu course, but that was just an abridged version of only the first book (the original story was divided into three books, and the one I bought is the unabridged compilation of all three).

Almost everyone who read the book during school days had a good time with it because it was so funny, and we wanted to read more of the story, i.e., to get the remaining two books. But it was not possible because there were the public exams to attend to, and the two years after Class X too were hectic and no one had time to even read the daily newspaper!

I finally managed to find time out of my empty schedule to hunt for the book and I was really delighted upon having found it at last. But the timing could not have been worse – I have board exams again in a month and if I sit down with this novel now, I can be sure to pile up a host of backlogs like I did in the first year!!! I’m certainly not looking forward to that so I’m trying to resist my temptation and have now put it away safely. But I wanted to express my delight somehow and that’s the reason I’m putting out those feelings over here!!

If I’m not wrong this book was written in 1924 and since then it has survived through the ages and still remains in everyone’s memories as a hilarious tale of a simple fellow who runs away to England from his native village in Andhra Pradesh, India to pursue law. His many misadventures may seem too simple for people of this generation but those who know what it was like in those pre-Independence Days will relate to the funny situations and can truly sense the humour in it. That doesn’t mean today’s generation cannot enjoy it – it truly is a must read for all people who love Telugu humour.

I actually was planning to post the book up here because I read somewhere that all printed work before the 1930s (or was it ’20s?) is acceptable to be distributed freely all over the world. But then I did not want to take a risk, and besides, I’m not a huge fan of e-books and believe that holding the actual book in your hand and reading it whenever/wherever/however you like is the best way to enjoy it completely. So if you get a chance, go get this book ASAP!!!

Piece Of Junk On The Internet

Aditya Rayaprolu