Chilligavva

Most wordpress themes (nearly all of them) display comments in an ascending order. That is the first comment is on top and the latest at the bottom of the page. If you are anything like me and want to dig into the latest comment right away, you would prefer a reverse ordering of comments. This is a preferred approach in popular blogs, as otherwise you have to literally scroll down zillions of comments, to finally reach the latest..

While achieving this in PHP is childs play, accessing a couple of functions in WP took some hunt and peck approach. I finally managed to locate the important functions that would get us the desired look.

A local Hindu organisation in Chennai has lodged a police complaint against actress Shriya, who starred opposite Rajnikanth [Images] in the Tamil blockbuster, Sivaji-The Boss, objecting to the outfit (in the picture) worn by her during the 175th day celebration of the film.In a complaint, the Hindu Makkal Katchi (HMK) alleged that Shriya's outfit had 'offended Hindu culture,' police said.

If there was one phrase about India that I would ban, it would be the use of "offended Hindu culture". A close second would be the phrase "it was all there in the Vedas" It is always amusing to note that the target is always some rich glamorous actress who can pay them off. Its at times like this, that my aversion for organized groups hits an all time high. What Hindu culture? Are these guys brave enough to ban all movies having superstar Rajni where the heroines are depicted in skimpy costumes that are contrary to Hindu culture? You would see the organization members actually drooling and queuing up. They would even defend the movie saying that the costumes are as close to temple sculptures [Read near naked] as possible ...

Childhood consisted of celebrating Sankranti with much awaited pomp and fervour. It all began with washing the house with water, and wiping the floors with a rag, the night before "bhogie" (2 days before Sankranti). It would then be followed by drawing of muggus with ground rice paste at every threshold and room corners. We children were scolded and asked not to step on any of the house "muggus" till it was dry.

I had met Desh Kapoor via Mybloglog. We then became twitter followers. I visited his blog, Drishtikone and was very impressed. A couple of days back, I had tweeted about a song I heard called Gumshuda Chain. In response, Desh pointed me to a really really cool site called songza.com I WAS BLOWN AWAY by the site, and we ended up e-mailing each other. In the course of my conversation I sent him a logo I had created in mid December, when I saw his site. Artisitically, I just had to. His site has a really cool name called "Drishtikone", which in sanskrit means "Viewpoint", and literally means "eye corner".. I liked the name of the blog, and the content, a lot, and was inspired into creating a logo. Yesterday, I told him so and sent him a couple of logos to use for his portal and twitter page. This evening, I was looking at my page’s stat counter when I noticed some in-traffic from his blog. Wondering what the hoo ha was about, i reached ...

This is a cute and funny video of Bill Gates’ last day at Microsoft.. The video really has a good sense of humour. I couldnt help but feel sorry for Bill Gates though.. Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip

Human Statue of Liberty at camp Dodge, Iowa. I happened to Stumble onto it..

For whatever reason, an 89 year old photo taken in Iowa is making its way around the internet. Many people who see the picture find it hard to believe it’s real. Mike Vogt, curator for the Gold Star Military Museum at Camp Dodge, says they received dozens of e-mails last week questioning if it’s a doctored image. Vogt says, in fact, it’s a real photo called "The Human Statue of Liberty." The photo was taken in August 1918 by Arthur Mole. Vogt says Mole and another photographer, John D. Thomas, traveled the country taking photos of soldiers who were grouped together to form various "patriotic" patterns. Over 18,000 soldiers were used in the Camp Dodge photo that was taken from an 80 foot high tower. Mole and Thomas went to great lengths to make sure the human statue was proportionally correct. "It’s an interesting exercise in survey and mathematic techniques to have the photographer perched in an 80 foot high tower and have all the soldiers fall in exactly where they needed to be,"

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I was wandering in my favorite Graphics program [Serif Photoplus 6.0], when I started playing around without any aim, and ended up with this.. Enjoy..

Its that time of the new year when one year draws to a close, and another chapter in our lives begin. At this point I have to look back once, and take stock of what happened to me this past one year.. Personally:

• Have grown older, wiser and fatter.
• Made a couple of more friends.
• Witnessed my son's first violin and piano recitals [a cute maestro in the making]
• Missed being away from my family in India.

As a blogger:

• My website design got a honorable mention in CSS Import
• Increased my Technorati ranking from a mere single digit to around 90..
• Increased my feed readers from single digit to around an average of 11.. [something even i didnt expect..]
• Learnt more about myself
• Figured out nuances of social networks
• Made some interesting online friends

As an onlooker

• Saw lots of violence around.. [Wars, Natural disasters, lots of shootouts -Omaha, Virginia, Colorado etc., West Bengal, Benazir ]
• Am enjoying the US pre-election round ups at Iowa
• Getting concerned about global economy
• Upset about the lack of purpose in social networks

As a photographer Two of my photos got picked up for schmap travel guides, namely Minneapolis and Omaha Joslyn Museum...