Change of Address... thewhisperingpages

Blogging is a pheomenon that came into this cyber world few years ago. But its popularity and acceptance has never before been this high. I clearly remember, in my schooldays, many of us tried to create our own websites. Crude and lacking in aesthetics; nevertheless proud to say I have one. Almost all of them were hosted on free webhosting sites such as geocities and freeservers. But they were difficult to maintain and improve. Unless you were a geek in web designing your website would have hardly got any hits.

Then came blogs and blogging. This gave the ordinary netizen a chance to tell the world what he thinks; ALOUD. Ever since I came to know about blogs, I wanted one of my own. But the lazy fellow that I am, kept postponing it. Also, the forum that cetafi.net gave me to post my articles and poems, mellowed the need. The alumni' site cetafi.net have visitors only from the alumni community and, to a very small extent, present CETians. So when the reservation issue resurfaced after a decade-and-a-half of slumber, I needed a bigger forum to air my views. I decided to create my own blog.

The decision was easy to take. Choosing blospot was easier. But what was difficult was getting the URL of my choice. I had quite a few names in my mind. Alas, smarter netizens had already taken them. Time was running out, as I wanted to express my views immediately; before the issue fades from public. That was how I had to settle for lend-me-ur-ears as my blog address. I dont like using chat lingo or SMS text styles in my blog. Then why did I use "ur" instead of "your"? Reason is simple. The smart netizens I spoke about earlier, had used up these names too. So "lendmeyourears" and "lend-me-your-ears" were unavailable. Had to settle for "ur". The name never satisfied me. It served the need, but I was always on the lookout for better ones.

I dont exactly remeber when "whispering pages" came to my mind, certainly 2-3 months ago. Today when I got the spare time, I decided to change the address once and for all. Blogspot wasnt co-operative enough, though. It told me (again) that there are smarter people in this world. "whisperingpages" was unavailable. I hadnt expected this to happen (I should have!!!). My arsenal was empty. Tried making up new names. None impressed me. That's when I thought, why not add "the"? I tried "thewhisperingpages" and thankfully blogspot agreed (just in case you didn't understand, it's the whispering pages without the blanks). And so, here it is; the new address for my psychic musings.. http://thewhisperingpages.blogspot.com

I had tried quite a few of the new features in blogger2, which is the new version, in my old blog itself. I changed the template to "Harbour", adjusted font colurs and sizes, added a bottom scroll (disclaimer) and also a counter (the six monkeys hanging below). I did cheat on that counter. I had given a starting value around 40, a conservative estimate of the number of people that would have visited my old blog. But as I added the posts from the old blog later and also changed settings many number of times thereafter, the count increased quickly with each refresh; I being solely responsible. The articles from the old blog have been added here with their original date and time settings. To view the responses to each, you will have to view the old blog.

The Last Ink-Drop : TIME magazine's person-of-the-year for 2006 is "you", the common man who has been able to influence government decisions, change policies and rules and shape the future s/he wants it to be. Blogs and the internet have been his main tools for this crusade. I continue mine.