Posts from — June 2003

Now you see it, now you don’t!

That’s how the template of this blog (hosted on Blog*Spot and obviously powered by Blogger) has been behaving in the past few days.

It all started when Blogger took that momentous step towards moving all its users over to Dano. I was surprised to see the Dano interface on my non-Dano blog and took me a few moments to realize that Blogger had started the migration.

All seemed good. I tried to post an entry on Friday morning. Thats when I realized something was amiss because I just could not publish my blog. So, I tried to find the error details and saw that my template had disappeared completely. The template box was empty… nice and clean!

There have been times in the past when the template has looked funny. But that has been when the folks at Blogger were probably doing some routine maintenance work. But this time the template had disappeared completely. Even so, I waited half a day for it to re-appear as magically as it had vanished! But being a Muggle, magic was obviously out of the question!

So I went to Control and lodged a complaint quoting the error I was getting while publishing the blog and explaining that my template had vanished into thin air of the cyberspace. But it has been more than 72 hours since I entered my complaint and the status of the complaint still shows “Unreviewed” which is just a euphemism for “nobody has given a shit’s worth of attention to the complaint“.

So today, I built up my blog’s template from an old backup that I had kept. (foresightedness at its shining best!). But only a few minutes after that, my template disappeared again! If this is what the new Dano experience is all about… spare me folks! I’ll move over to Movable Type (which I’m going to do in about a month’s time, anyways!).

I advise all you Blogger users to take backups of your templates immediately and keep taking backups when you make any changes to the template. I believe even Anita had a scary experience, a couple of weeks back, when her template vanished. So… chant the backup mantra to be safe!

So it was template rebuilding time for me today. And while I was at it, I made a few changes to the template…

I added a dotted line between posts to act as a divider since it was often confusing to differentiate between posts on my blog.

I changed the “New Post” indicator which indicates that a blog has nad a new entry posted to it (duh!). The new indicator is tinier and not-so-distracting as the last one I was using.

And the most important update I made was the addition of the Sideblog. You can see it just below on the zonkboard on the right hand column. Sideblog is a tiny blog just like the one they have on… ummm… Metafilter for example. I’ll be using the Sideblog to make announcements and/or to post some special links or… errr…. well, ok! I haven’t thought of a use for it yet. But it’s a nice tool and I’ll put it to good use! :-)

Well, that’s about it for the moment!

The Box Office Oracle is supposed to be your “one-stop film prognosticator“. You can just put in the info of a Hollywood film you’ve always dreamt of making, i.e. the title, the actors, the director, the budget, etc. and the BOO (Box Office Oracle) will tell you exactly how much money your film will make or whether your film stands a chance at the Oscars. It also predicts which critics will gush over your film and which ones will skewer it!

Sounds like cool fun! :-)

I tried my hand at it and this is what I got…

A Greater Threat (PG-13)
(Courtroom Drama/Mystery/Thriller)
Starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer
Also Featuring Willem Dafoe, Joaquin Phoenix, Kathy Bates, and Emily Watson
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay by M. Night Shyamalan and Frances Walsh

Projected Budget Range: $30-39 Million
Planned Release Date: June

Projected Box Office Receipts:
$12.34 million (Opening Weekend)
$73.36 million (Total Domestic Gross)

Chance of getting Oscar Nomination: 13%
Chance of winning at least one Oscar: 4%

Critic Most Likely to Praise: Chris Gore, Film Threat
Critic Most Likely to Skewer: Desson Howe, Washington Post

[link via Metafilter]

RIAA Prepares To Sue Hundreds Of File Sharers

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) have today (June 26th) begun gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits against individual computer users who are illegally offering to “share” substantial amounts of copyrighted music over peer-to-peer networks.

To gather evidence against P2P users who make illegal downloading possible, the RIAA will be using software that scans the public directories available to any user of a peer-to-peer network. These directories, which allow users to find the material they are looking for, list all the files that other users of the network are currently offering to distribute. When the software finds a user who is offering to distribute copyrighted music files, it downloads some of the infringing files, along with the date and time it accessed the files.

Draconian, I say!!

The Ministry of Magic is spreading its tentacles!!! It must be stopped!!

Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinh says that the India-China pact signed in Beijing is a win-win for India as well as China.

Sinha said the border agreement has “recognised” the Nathu la Pass in Sikkim as a “border pass” between the two countries.

For the full-text of the agreement, click here.

So you’ve just received a junk email encouraging you to visit a website for some irresistible pornography or to consolidate your debts! Well, it’s time to oblige the people who fill your mailbox with spam. Let FriedSPAM visit their sites for you — about a million times! After all, you are only doing what the spammers are asking you to do.
[link via Metafilter]