I dont know what I was doing but I tried to upgrade Nucleus CMS software yesterday. I thought it was going to be just easy. Phew! man, it took me three hours yesterday and I lost all – I lost the contents, I lost the skins, I lost the settings. I lost all. Only smart thing I did was to take a backup before the screw-up. But I learnt that restore works only for the same version, not for upgrades. What a disappointing upgrade! Today I did a clean install and inserted only the blog entries. I had only one image in the blog entry and I lost it. I have to still redo the site CSS, templates and skins (though I like the default design and I might keep it). If I try to remove the logo, the whole menu and navigation items disappear. Probably I have to read owner’s manual before making changes. I dont have that much free time now-a-days, so it might take a while, before I get the site to look like how I want.

After more than a decade, Indian cricket team is in Pakistan. Any thing between Pak and India evokes lots of emotions on both sides, some good and mostly bad. However, with all the recent white-flag-waving between leaders of two countries, this time people seem to have matured.

When the game goes, both sides are damn good; yes, for a change even Indian players play well. Last Saturday, Indians scored victory and yesterday Pakistanis won the match. Both games were full of high energy. Such games pump up adrenaline, even for a casual spectator like me.

However, there is one unpleasant point – not for players, not for viewers but for TEN sports which got exclusive distribution rights for any cricket match in Pakistan. Now Indian courts have ruled that the game be shown free in the national television. Though viewers would be glad, it hurts business and brings down the confidence of the business community. Hopefully even this will be resolved amicably.

I registered in a social networking site called, Ryze. Registration is free. Within few hours of creating my website, I got couple of entries in my guest book. Hopefully my networking will increase in the coming months.

I came across a new search engine named, Vivisimo. It just don’t provide the search results, rather it groups them in categories. I am yet to test the effectiveness of this categorizing, but it seems an interesting concept.

Joel on software, a blog on software management is available in Tamil. Actually it is the only Indian language that JoS is translated to. I am proud and at the same time surprised. I guess we Tamil guys are pretty known for software knowledge. You can read the blog in Tamil here.

I have installed Mambo server and made some changes to the default settings. I should admit that I like the way Mambo is designed. It is highly flexible, though there are still some room for improvement. But there is enough of documentation found in the net that it is easy to find your way around.

Through a blog entry I got this article about writing a good resume. A good read.

I have been playing with an open source content management system – Mambo server. So far I like its flexibility and features. Only concern has been speed – I don’t know if Mambo is slow or my web server or my network. Anyway the power of Mambo is appealing. Will test some more and then roll the balls.

Little less than half a century ago, at this day, we became a republic. In the beginning, we struggled with huge population, partition, poverty and so many other issues. Corruption has been and still a major issue. And due to situational factors, India choose a socialist path. However for the past couple of years, a strategic move has been happening in the Indian economical system – from Nehru’s socialist to fruit-bearing capitalist system. With economical boom, there is talk of development in every area of the country. Added to it, today, prime men of the country – prime-minister and president – are visionaries. (Does it has to do something with their bachelorhood?) It has never happened before. Hope people and politicians will capitalize this opportunity and take the country to a developed country status by 2020 as laid out by Abdul Kalam, our president.

Oflate Indians are brimming with pride about their fast growing economy. We should be, for it has grown by an incredible rate of 8%. And if the financial predictions are anything to be true, it will grow on par with that of Japan and Australia, even more than that of European Union. For the first time that I can remember, our debts to the world lenders, like IMF, are paid fully. The confidence is so much that our PM announced that India will set up a fund towards world poverty elimination. Some sort of miracle is happening in India.

Of all these growths, what I am proud of the ruling politicians is, about foreign policy. Even China wants to be a friend with us. Unbelivable, but true. Hats off to Vajpayee, the moderate man in the otherwise right-wing party, for taking these bold initiatives.

I wish a very happy year ahead to all the readers of the blog.