Mission Statement

Why i Write

"Hello and welcome to nikhilzkingdom !!!". Thats what my earlier website screamed at the top of the front page. In that regard i must say "Hello and welcome BACK to nikhilzkingdom !!!".

My earlier site was a perfect example of "how not to design and maintain a web-site", but since it was my first attempt at one i am less embarrassed. Visitors to my site might rememember i had a section called "Barri Ollu" (which in my native language of Kannada means "All Crap"). The section was a big let down from a personal perspective since i barely wrote many articles for it. Time is a priceless commodity and the design restrictions of the site proved to be a huge burden in terms of adding fresh content to the site. Often over the past 6-8 months, thoughts flowed and expriences happened which i would have loved to have penned down. But adding even a single new article needed me to make changes to all pages in the site and upload them back up to the site. This preempted any attempts to write new stuff.

Given this situation and my hectic schedule in school with the masters program, thoughts of writing an article were often put away and as a result the "Barri Ollu" section suffered and consequently result hits to my site paled. Yes i did get hits from anxious computer science students of VTU with their usual quota of requests for projects, project reports and advice and as expected this peaked during exam time (if you dont believe me, check out the guestbook). But that wasnt the objective of my site. The site was meant to be a means for me to write, to stimulate thought, express my intellect, capture the shining moments of my life as they happen, record events i observe, patterns in life that i notice and rant about experiences i had. In short i believe it is a great way to articulate thoughts.

The advent of weblogs in its current state offers people such as me the opportunity to share my observations in a way they can be retrieved by anyone at any time. Being a computer science graduate, a blog (weblog) is perhaps considered a neccesity. A blog also seemed to be the most obvious solution to the problems i had. I toyed with idea of using an already designed public weblog site. This would have been a quick and dirty solution. But choosing a free weblog such as www.blogger.com would mean i would have to makde do with whatever (advertisments, crappy looking interface etc) they straddle your blog with for the free service they provide in exchange. Alternatively i could have chosen a moderatley priced blog site such as www.typepad.com which give you a nice looking interface and you pretty much get what you are paid for with a fair degree of ability to customize.But the lack of ability to fully customise the blog coupled with the idea that "designing and coding a blog for myself using any of the popular scripting langauages such as PHP,ASP should be pretty easy, given my computer science background" led to me designing my own weblog, admin interface and user interface. Besides the little bit of coding needed to design the site would be a good learning exprience apart from the fact that "Self Designed blog on personal website using PHP5" wont hurt my resume either!!!.

Even though blogging is fairly new to me, i have begun to appreciate that blogs may well change the lives of those that read it, but the historically significant effect of blogging will be on the individuals who blog.

Most blogs have ugly, un-intuitive interfaces and most carry caricatures of their authors, but my idea of putting up a personal picture is an attempt to break free from my usual introvert shy self and open up to the world and a picture conveys a lot about your character. The beauty of blogs is that it is a solution to all this pent-up communication that we have not been able to deliver.

I may write about items I see in other weblogs, but more and more I want to capture the shining and interesting moments of life as they happen. The blog is a effort to communicate my observations in a way that can be understood and be experienced easily. Constructive criticism is welcome and i will cheerfuly correct where i may have erred.

I hope you enjoy my website and weblog.

Nikhil V Shampur