An Unquiet Mind

22 Comments

• Gauri wrote:

  Dec 8, 2009 at 6:24 PM

  a nice post that touches all aspects of online pres­ence quite objec­tively.. i have been mulling over using Twit­ter since the past few weeks, see­ing you and few oth­ers dis­cuss microblog­ging so often.
  it has been quite infor­ma­tive to keep in touch with your ‘unquiet mind’ for i come across top­ics i may not have oth­er­wise.. for eg. the post on envi­ron­men­tal­ism as reli­gion was grt, espe­cially the michael crich­ton link.. so was the cri­tique on depres­sion.. more on tht later, for my thoughts were not quite in line with your dis­agree­ment but never got the time to respond clearly..
  too long a com­ment in the world of microblog­ging, no?
  so i sign off
  • Mahendra wrote:

    Dec 8, 2009 at 6:55 PM

    Dear Gauri, not at all a long com­ment, and this is not a micro-blog! (The other Gauri also keeps delet­ing long com­ments, what is it with you Gauris?)

    Thank you for your feed­back. Would love to hear your thoughts, as always, includ­ing on the depres­sion post.

    If you ever join Twit­ter, you know where to find me.
• Vikas Gupta wrote:

  Dec 9, 2009 at 8:12 AM

  A nice year end sum­mary post! She­faly has pro­tected her blog now btw; I had even sent her a mail on that but she did not reply!

  Thank you for all the blog­ging help to date. I look for­ward to bug­ging you more. I under­stand the biggest chal­lenge must be self-hosting and shift­ing the blogs. I have spent so much time in research­ing for a web host (I’m with 3 year plan Host­ga­tor now; I have become a web host­ing expert, kind of) and set­ting up dummy blogs and doing trial shift­ing and doing man­ual WP instal­la­tions (Still uncom­fort­able with PHP my admin area). I am finally shift­ing to self-hosting within 72 hours (will try ads too later).

  Even I do not like the idea of a blogroll now but I will always have peo­ple who link to me (it helps PR though you hardly get any vis­i­tors) on my blogroll and other blog­gers like you whom I like.

  A com­ment reply sub­scrip­tion plu­gin here please if possible.

  Please elab­o­rate the ‘once bit­ten twice shy’ thing about the net­work blogs like Desipun­dit. Would you rec­om­mend stay­ing away from them and not writ­ing for them? Why? I’m sure you have some insight to offer (or give the link to the post if you have writ­ten on this earlier).

  BTW you are get­ting your PR back . I just checked a few days ago and both your blogs were PR 3!
  • Mahendra wrote:

    Dec 9, 2009 at 9:46 AM

    Hi Vikas, thanks, and you’re welcome!

    All the best with your migration.

    The com­ment­ing sys­tem I pre­fer (Dis­qus) didn’t inte­grate well with this theme. I might change the theme in the near future, which will allow Dis­qus and com­ment sub­scrip­tion. Thanks for let­ting me know about this! (Mean­while, if you use Back­Type, you don’t need blogs to do anything).

    I am not rec­om­mend­ing stay­ing away from net­work blogs at all, instead I’m ask­ing for advice in this mat­ter. I am hes­i­tant (shy) because my ear­lier efforts at Indian Mutiny have dis­ap­peared (bitten).

    I don’t check PR at all…so thanks again for let­ting me know.
    • Vikas Gupta wrote:

      Dec 10, 2009 at 10:09 AM

      I’ve migrated!

      I am strug­gling with tech issues just the same and am bug­ging you in the rel­e­vant post now.

      You can use pager­ankalert for auto­mated noti­fi­ca­tion (a nice service).
• Dottie wrote:

  Dec 10, 2009 at 2:45 AM

  A nice sum­mary. Although I have enjoyed your polit­i­cal posts (even though I may not agree with you!) Look­ing for­ward to read­ing more great posts in 2010!
  • Mahendra wrote:

    Dec 10, 2009 at 8:46 AM

    Hi Dot­tie, Thanks for the feed­back!
• mystic_life wrote:

  Dec 12, 2009 at 9:50 AM

  I have always enjoyed read­ing your blog. While your movie posts were enjoy­able, I do find your Indian pol­i­tics posts intro­spec­tive and valu­able, at least to me. We all lead our lives and weigh in when we think it’s impor­tant. By being able to artic­u­late our views, oth­ers can see where we stand, and stand with us, and change things. Please don’t think your writ­ing in this regard is a waste.

  Yes, I have always found blogrolls to be waste­ful, but that’s just me Great post, as always.
  • Mahendra wrote:

    Dec 14, 2009 at 10:19 AM

    Havah, thank you for your feed­back. I really didn’t know you found my pol­i­tics posts valu­able! I am grate­ful to you for let­ting me know.
• Priyank wrote:

  Dec 12, 2009 at 10:44 PM

  Hello Mahen­dra,

  Your post (this one for instance) some­times sur­prise me. They are writ­ten with a seem­ingly emo­tional thought but the deliv­ery is quite ratio­nal­ized. I don’t know how you do it.

  Blogroll does mean dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. To me its a list of all weather blog friends. I link to them with­out expect­ing a rec­i­p­ro­ca­tion and I think its nice to do so esp if it is not occu­py­ing pre­cious real estate on the blog. Some peo­ple add a sep­a­rate page called ‘Links’. In my spo­radic blog­ging times, blogroll pro­vides me a min­i­mal list of peo­ple to visit. It must be noted that I have an extreme dis­dain for ‘back scratch­ing’.

  cheers,
  Priyank.
  PS: I don’t quite get this microblog­ging thing, I have to read more about it.
  • Mahendra wrote:

    Dec 14, 2009 at 10:29 AM

    Dear Priyank,

    If I may take it as a com­pli­ment, this is one of the best com­pli­ments I’ve received for this blog. Because, it reflects the blog tagline: rea­son and emo­tion, shaken and stirred!

    I am actu­ally curi­ous to under­stand what you exactly mean. Is it that ratio­nal­ized writ­ing often lacks emo­tion and vice versa?

    Thanks for shar­ing your thoughts on blogrolls. What I am sure it means to me is that these are links I rec­om­mend to my read­ers. And if the blog is aban­doned or not updated reg­u­larly, it doesn’t fit. I’m still unde­cided how to change it.
• Nita wrote:

  Dec 14, 2009 at 12:52 PM

  Mahen­dra, I had read this post before but you had so many ques­tions that I didn’t know what to answer! Today, with a lit­tle more time I will try and answer some of your ques­tions. Actu­ally I am hav­ing trou­ble divid­ing time for online activ­i­ties too, par­tic­u­larly because I have started a sec­ond blog which I intend to mon­e­tize and I have also recently joined FB. Not that I do much on FB, but I joined it because I have a whole group of school and col­lege friends whom I find it eas­ier to keep in touch with via FB.
  About the blogroll, I think as the name sug­gests it’s an impor­tant part of a blog. It doesn’t mat­ter if the blog­gers engage with you or not.Thats what I feel any­way. I agree with Priyank. There were a lot of blogs I had linked to with­out expect­ing any rec­i­p­ro­ca­tion at all. I just thought that any reader who came to my blog might find it inter­est­ing.
  I have avoided social net­work­ing because I have no time. Twit­ter sounds tempt­ing but I know I can­not do jus­tice to it. At first I was reluc­tant to even go on FB.
  I miss my old blog­ging friends. You too used to be more reg­u­lar, in com­ment­ing too, but its okay I under­stand why you are busy now! A lot of other blog­gers that you men­tioned and more have stopped blog­ging. I think the gen­eral shelf life of a blog is 1–3 years. After that peo­ple seem to stop. I have lived through sev­eral blog cycles! Maybe one day I will stop too, who knows!
  A good post Mahendra.
  • Mahendra wrote:

    Dec 15, 2009 at 4:46 PM

    Dear Nita, thank you for tak­ing the time to share your thoughts!

    Actu­ally, I only asked two ques­tions in my post: about blogrolls & blog net­works! But I under­stand you con­sider respond­ing to my thoughts, not just ques­tions, and I really appre­ci­ate that.

    I am inclin­ing towards updat­ing and retain­ing my blogroll based on the feedback.

    You are a now a vet­eran blog­ger, Nita, and con­grat­u­la­tions for that. You are right — 2/3 years is the aver­age shelf-life. You have now jumped into a pro­fes­sional blog as well, so good luck with that and with Face­book.
• Nita wrote:

  Dec 14, 2009 at 12:57 PM

  P.S. I was part of Mutiny once too, in my first year of blog­ging. I liked those peo­ple but wanted to con­cen­trate on my own blog and so I left. That’s where I met one of my old­est blog­ging friends pre­rna. She was not on mutiny but she was a com­m­men­ta­tor there once. Over­all I have no regrets about my mutiny expe­ri­ence but over­all I found it was tak­ing too much time away from my own blog. I didn’t think it helped me in my read­ers either because over­all my blog became suc­cess­ful very slowly. Most of my reg­u­lar read­ers came from other blog­gers or from google search.
  • Mahendra wrote:

    Dec 15, 2009 at 4:50 PM

    I knew you were a part of Mutiny, but didn’t know you met Pre­rna there! Cool.

    Thanks for shar­ing your expe­ri­ence. I won­der how one becomes a DesiPun­dit con­trib­u­tor, mem­ber, or a Desi­Crit­ics one. I notice these tags and badges on blogs, but haven’t really spent time learn­ing about them much. I was aware of Indiblog­ger and hence have its badge here now. Won­der if and how all this really works.

    Your blog’s suc­cess is a shin­ing exam­ple of a focused blog topic with reg­u­lar posts, exten­sive research and engage­ment with read­ers. Key ingre­di­ents for any aspir­ing blogger!
• Dev wrote:

  Dec 16, 2009 at 5:14 AM

  Mahen­dra, con­grat­u­la­tions for your achieve­ments in Blo­gos­phere this year. You have writ­ten very high qual­ity posts on your blog. Unfor­tu­nately, since you moved out of word­press, it’s been a chal­lenge for me to keep up with your blog reg­u­larly. Because I use blog surfer to read blogs and your blog posts dont appear there. Some­times I read your posts on my own and think of com­ing back to them later, but then I for­get.:)
  Regard­ing blogroll, I know what you mean. I had issues with it too, hence I removed it long back. I mean one can always fol­low blogs through surfer or blog reader. Also, not hav­ing blogroll makes one not only free to visit other blogs, with­out mak­ing any com­mit­ment with them, but also makes you free to stop vis­it­ing some blogs with­out com­ing across rude.
  But then I also sort of agree with what Nita wrote regard­ing hav­ing a blogroll. So, I guess you have to take call on that.
  • Mahendra wrote:

    Dec 16, 2009 at 8:25 AM

    Dev,

    Thank you. As I’ve often men­tioned in my posts, I have you to thank for urg­ing me to take up the Films Meme that was the high­light of the year!

    It is sur­pris­ing you don’t use RSS Feed Read­ers. Using WP.com’s blog surfer, you don’t get any blog out­side WP.com — whether it is on Blog­ger, Type­pad, Tum­blr, Pos­ter­ous, and mil­lions of self-hosted blogs like mine. But thanks for read­ing and vis­it­ing in any case!

    Yes, I noticed you did not have a blogroll since I started fol­low­ing your blog. With­out any com­mit­ment, you’ve enjoyed blogroll-free bach­e­lor­hood, eh?
    • Dev wrote:

      Dec 16, 2009 at 8:34 AM

      ya that’s my blogroll free bach­e­lor­hood.;)
      Yes, your film meme was the best amongst all blogers who attempted it. I will check that page again some­time soon, once I resume my movie watch­ing spree, some­thing which has been on hold since few months now.
      Ok, let me now check this RSS feed thingy and will come back to bug you in case I can­not fix it myself.
      • Mahendra wrote:

        Dec 16, 2009 at 8:36 AM

        Sure, help with RSS — any­time!
• A Six-year Non-ceremony « Gaizabonts wrote:

  Dec 28, 2009 at 3:10 PM

  […] could blame it on Twit­ter, but, Mahen­dra, wrote recently wrote about “Blog­ging High­lights of 2009, Chal­lenges & Thoughts for 2010”, in which he puts me in a list of folks who are “fairly reg­u­lar at blog­ging as well as online […]
• asuph wrote:

  Jan 12, 2010 at 11:34 AM

  Saw this post some­time back, but read it end to end just today.

  I don’t know what bal­ance you’re talk­ing about, because my blog­ging has suf­fered tremen­dously in last year, and I had to resort to writ­ing ser­ial fic­tion, at arbi­trary sched­ule, to keep it alive. And my blog read­ing has also suf­fered. And I feel I’m spend­ing way too much time on twitter.

  Hope­fully, 2010 will change some of that. I’d def­i­nitely like to get my blog back to its ‘cre­ative’ side, rather than analytical/missives side. Inshallah!

  Any­ways, enough about me. I can’t claim to be a reg­u­lar reader of Skep­ticgeek, any­more, but per­son­ally, I’m happy with the way you’ve grown as a writer, from what­ever I read here. Your ana­lyt­i­cal skills, and abil­ity to put com­plex things in a way that lay­man will under­stand the gist, has always been your forte, but to do that con­sis­tently, and at a fren­zied pace, is amazing.

  Wow at the no of arti­cles on MUO. That’s a result of great writ­ing discipline.

  On blogrolls, I never took them seri­ously. It was more of my way of pass­ing onto oth­ers blogs that I liked. But I believe in plug­ging con­tent rather than sites, so if I really like a post, I favorite it, or tweet about it, or post on FB and so on. To me it does not mat­ter how ‘alive’ the blog is. The pointer is based on past record. I don’t know how much of traf­fic really comes down those paths. Cur­sory glance at blog stats, in the past, have told me not much. And in the age of the real-time web, it’s going to be that much more irrelevant.

  On blog­ging com­mu­ni­ties, in past I’ve been on Sulekha and then Dud Sea Scrawls, and I’ve mixed feel­ings about them, as far as writ­ing is con­cerned. Traffic/reach is another thing, but then I’ve writ­ten too much about that already.

  Any­ways, I’m sure this is the longest com­ment so far , by far. And it is rival­ing the blog, so I’ll stop.

  Wish you best in the new year. Hope to see and read a few more qual­ity posts here as always. Rest are mile­stones that are prob­a­bly more rel­e­vant to you.

  Hope to be more active as a reader and engage in mean­ing­ful discussions.

  Amen to that.

  Keep writ­ing, engaging.

  cheers,
  asuph
  • Mahendra wrote:

    Jan 15, 2010 at 9:17 AM

    Dear Asuph,

    I must con­fess that I have not been fol­low­ing your fic­tion writ­ing and Kanda Batata, so was unaware of the impact of Twit­ter on your blog­ging. Inte­grat­ing RSS & Twit­ter for infor­ma­tion dis­cov­ery, and blog­ging & Twit­ter for shar­ing our thoughts seems to be the challenge.

    All the best for get­ting back to your cre­ative work!

    Thanks for shar­ing your views on the Blogroll. I have decided to remove it alto­gether. I do keep shar­ing inter­est­ing posts from my Twit­ter account (includ­ing of those blog­gers who don’t tweet). The blogroll doesn’t make much sense in the real-time trend we’re mov­ing towards.

    I had never heard of Dud Sea Scrawls. You’ve spent more time on the web than me, and espe­cially more so with writ­ing at a great num­ber of sites. I have always refrained from invest­ing my time writ­ing else­where, be it book/movie reviews or what­ever. Many of my blog­ger friends have spent time writ­ing reviews and con­tribut­ing UGC to sites like Ama­zon, MouthShut, Shelfari/Good Reads, and so on. Being the ego­ist skep­tic, I have never been inclined to give away my thoughts or writ­ing for free to sites since they are ulti­mately busi­nesses who can do as they please with that con­tent. I pre­fer own­ing my con­tent. Since I’ve never aspired to be “pop­u­lar”, it has worked well for me so far.

    Thank you for tak­ing the time to read and com­ment. It is very pre­cious and means a lot to me!