Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Moving On!



So that's it, Undulations have lived a whole year on blogger, and it's time to leave - I've decided to move Undulations to a whole new platform. Though Blogger has never been particularly bad to me, nor had it been a messy platform to blog on; over the months, it turned out to me that it was caught in an ugly middle ground.

Blogger was a fairly simple platform to work with, without too many configuration options or customisations to worry about. At the same time, it had most of the basic features like post scheduling, elementary analytics, a fair level of customisations and more. Interesting as it may seem, but it didn't really make the cut for me - In fact, I was looking for the best of either world. I either wanted extensive customisations, plug-ins and analytics; or wanted a simple easy-go solution that I would want to post like I do on Twitter or Facebook.

For at least 6 months now, I had my eyes on Wordpress. All the tech-blogs that I had worked on where Wordpress-based, so I was already familiar with the platform. It was quite a beast of a platform, with a plethora of features, themes, customization options, widgets and more; and by itself stood as a very viable option to switch to.

And then, Tumblr caught my attention. If blogging on Blogger had been a piece of cake, Tumblr would be a cup of fruit-juice; the experience was as simple as blogging could get, almost similar to posting a tweet. There was quite enough customizations too (though you had to accomplish everything by hand-coding HTML, there was no visual editing support like on Blogger), and some really amazing themes.

For a couple of days, I was forked between these two platforms; I was struggling to choose between simplicity and power. At the end, I went for the latter, a choice driven mainly by three factors:
  • Tumblr offered a much more robust experience on mobile, be it via an app or via the website. Since most of the post I churn out would be done on my phone, this was important.
  • Tumblr performed slightly better than Wordpress on slower connections. My connection was inherently slow, and I had had quite my share of frustrations with Wordpress due to his.
  • And finally, for a personal blog, so much power as Wordpress entitled me was unnecessary. All I needed was the ability for minimal customizations, and to add a few widgets, such as my Facebook and Twitter profiles - this, I could accomplish even on Tumblr, though I had to dig through raw HTML for that.
So, I finally chose Tumblr over Wordpress, and started experimenting with its features since a month ago. Now, I've finalized with the experiments, am happy with what I have, and am ready for the switch. Catch me now on http://undulations.tumblr.com if you happen to be a fan of my senseless ramblings.

So here we are, with what stands seemingly as the last post on my very first blog - Adieu, Blogger, it's been a nice ride with you. See you folks, for the rest of the ride on the brand new Undulations!

Monday, February 21, 2011

Voids

What is emptiness?
An illusion conjured by a weak mind to shield out its weaknesses, a byproduct of a numb heart that fights off further scars, or the inescapable dungeon that you randomly fall in?

More importantly, how real is the feeling of emptiness; how more real is it, than the purported real world that's little more than a bunch of colours and sounds; or how less?

These are the questions that a heart lost deep in the tunnels of emptiness churns out to keep itself occupied, half-sure it can't really find an answer. It doesn't need an answer, though; all it needs is an obsession to feed itself, and a thought that feeds on it. All it needs is to fill some voids.

As it wonders, the question grows, fuelled by itself, blotting out anything else. It grows to fill out the long-formed voids, wipes the wiry cobwebs and whirs the gears of free thought back to life. It grows, filling the empty spaces.

Where is the emptiness? Had it been real?