Well in my case, I tend to save myself the trouble of writing something and instead, when I have some free time I fiddle with the blog’s theme. Call it stupid if you like, but that’s the way it goes for me. A lazy Saturday made even lazier by the doctor’s pills was spent in searching for a new look for my blog. At least it will remove the cobwebs, if not shoo away the spiders from my site. The 8 legged creatures will be back soon as I’ll inevitably go back to my busy life.

Speaking of life, there’s been a sort of revolution. Gone are the days when I moseyed over to the office after waking up just in time.  Now I need to wake up at least 2 hours before I’m expected at my workplace, thanks to my new abode. Yes, I’ve finally moved closer to the city and closer to civilization. And although I have joined the horde of commuters who travel… actually, they just stuff themselves into the local train and hope that merciful Lord will somehow push them out of the tin when they reach their destination. It’s a small price to pay for the convenience that you get by staying closer to the city. For one, you won’t die of hunger. Ever. There’s always some or the other eatery that’s open for a Sunday dinner.

Ah, dinner. That reminds me of the beans that I cooked (burnt would be a better word) today. Yup, yours truly is now trying his hand at cooking food. Don’t laugh or I’ll shove a spoonful into your mouth. Safe to say, I won’t be assisting Sanjeev Kapoor on his show any time in the near future. But at least I can survive for a few days even if all restaurants go on an indefinite strike.

Okay, I think that should be enough for today. After a month, I’ve finally managed to clear the cobwebs from my site and make a blog post. That should set me up for about 2 weeks of busy-ness (is that a word?). And lest I forget, I also need to write an article for The Final 3rd. Don’t want that site to become a carbon copy of mine, crying out for attention while weeping in a corner.

We’ve got contributors from all over India, yours truly included. Check it out!

That is all.

The Final 3rd

Follow The Final 3rd on Twitter!

Oh, and the backgrounds are all a part of my little photography collection, so no infringements there, for a change.

And another thing – this site looks the way it is meant to look, if you use Firefox/Opera. I have not bothered to make it compatible with Internet Explorer, sorry. So if you’re still stuck with IE, do yourself a favour and get Firefox!

• The site is no longer ‘just a blog’. I wanted to make it a platform for all my future endeavours. The scope for expansion through a blog is limited, in my opinion.
• There are 3 additional sections now, namely Art, Digital Art and Photography. Earlier I used to publish all of my creations in posts under a category. But this time I decided that it would be better to allocate a separate page where I can showcase them. It could have been possible through WordPress, but I decided against it.
• The site is no longer based entirely on WordPress. I wanted to design something that had my unique imprint on it. Designing a WordPress theme was too cumbersome and hardly left a lot of room for experimentation.
• The blog now uses a custom theme, matching perfectly with the look of the rest of the site. That was probably the second most difficult part.
• The most difficult part was deciding on the layout, colours and such. I borrowed ideas and resources from other websites that I had seen and admired, tweaked them, added lots of my own inputs and conjured up something that looks like this.

And most importantly, now I can call this site another one of my own creations. It’s an altogether different feeling to make something from scratch and then watch it running flawlessly (almost).

And before I forget, I’ve also lost most of the links in my blogroll so if any of you were on my list, do tell me so I can add you back! And if you were not on my list earlier, you can be now!

Oh, and another thing. The site is still in BETA, so if you spot any odd behaviour or if something looks out of place, do notify me through the comments or through e-mail.

Cheers!

The past few weeks have been quite an experience. My website went down for 3 whole days. When it finally came back online, the site was looking utterly messed up, with outdated versions of installed plugins and themes. There was no sign of the theme I had tweaked to suit my needs. Instead, I was greeted with a look that I had discarded quite some time ago. I had also lost an entire month’s worth of posts, customizations and settings.

The reason for this unplanned time-travel into the past was that my hosting provider had restored the latest backup he had of my site – which was a month and few days old. And yours truly never backed up his site once, placing all his blogging eggs into one digital basket. Unfortunately my basket err… website was one of the several thousands of websites that were floored by a 0-day vulnerability discovered in HyperVM and duly exploited by malicious minds. You can read more about it here.

Anyways, the damage had been done. I felt that the loss was too much and the blog would never be the same again. So I decided to archive it and start afresh. What followed was a frantic few days deciding what to do and how to do it. After a bit of inspiration and its implementation, this is the new face of aBHi 24×7.

That’s it for now. Explore and see how the site feels like. I’ll be detailing and explaining the logic behind the changes in a subsequent post shortly.

I also plan to add an image gallery and import photos from my Flickr account into it. And if that’s not enough, I’ll even tweak the theme, perhaps replacing the messy desk with my own mess.

I’m a little busy these days in building another site for me and my two partners-in-crime. That means this theme will take a little more time to be completed. I’ll start posting regularly as soon as I complete my pending tasks. Until then, sayonara and stay safe!

Ah, the irony of it all.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. In my case, it was more like ‘When you can’t whack something off the web, get off your lazy arse and make it yourself’. And the result is there to behold – a 5-minute effort that would make Picasso turn in his grave.

Nice, sharp and to-the-point.