I've been tagged!

I got tagged by Bellur RK and now I have to respond. But this set of questions is interesting and calls for quite some thought on my blogging. Anyway, here goes...

1. Are you happy/ satisfied with your blog, with its content and look?

For the moment, I suppose I am OK - but I am not completely satisfied with my blog - look or contentwise.

Lookwise:
I keep looking for new themes as I am pretty lazy to do HTML by myself. Blogspot beta was on and so I decided to use that. But some Kannada unicode fonts don't show up well in Firefox. Well, a lazy guy can't have it all! What else can I say?

Contentwise:
I have used my blog more as a tool to verbalize my thoughts. It has given me quite some practice - and so I have gone from typing up rants in 5 minutes to taking some serious time to write a single piece. As I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts, a blog post was intended to create a brain-dump of that moment. But nowadays I am trying to actually think about something and then write it as opposed to reacting to things that happen around me. For example, my posts on traffic in Bangalore were invariably posted after I got delayed in a traffic jam. I want to go from this reactive stage to a stage where I actually research a particular topic and then do a write up on it.

So, the answer is that I am satisfied with a blog post just after I've posted it - but when I re-read it after a couple of weeks, I go ..."I should have probably written that differently".

I am satisfied also because now, I have a personal soap box to hold forth on things that have caught my fancy. This satisfaction becomes happiness when I see comments on some of my posts from people I had never known before. It is really gratifying to see that some smart people are interested in what I write.

2. Does your family know about your blog?

Yes. If I particularly like a post I've written (or on other blogs as well), I make sure I get my wife and parents to read that and get their feedback. And I won't stop till they say that they've liked the piece ;)

3. Do you feel embarrassed to let your friends know about your blog or you just consider it as a private thing?

I don't feel embarrassed to let my friends know about my blog. But yes, I consider it as a kind of private thing. If somebody comes across my blog, I welcome that and then it is public. It is private in the sens that I don't advertise my blog with friends.

4. Did blogs cause positive changes in your thoughts?

I had written before - but not as much and definitely not with such regularity. As others have mentioned, blog posts are very effective in organizing and verbalizing thoughts. I like to read a good post as much as the next guy and so strive to write in such a way that my thoughts seem organized. :) So you could say that my blog posting has caused some positive changes in my thoughts. Now, everytime I encounter something, I think - "hmm.. should I blog about this?" and this is probably more than twice a day. But the frequency of my posts is something different - but the fact that my thoughts get slightly better organized upon reflection is a welcome change.

Other blogs (I haven't created a blog roll of mine yet) have also caused good changes. The words of the good saint tyAgarAja are made to echo in my ears when I read them. "endaro mahAnubhAvulu andariki mA vandamulu".

5. Do you only open the blogs of those who comment on your blog or you love to go and discover more by yourself?

No. In fact, I look at many blogs and comment on a few of them. And I may or may not get comments from those blogs I comment on. My comments are different from my blogs. It is far easier to comment than write a good post.

During my initial blogging phase (3 years ago), I was looking at new blogs. Now just keeping up with the ones I know (at least 20) is a difficult task - even with RSS/Atom. So I don't go looking for new blogs unless they get highlighted in a place I visit regularly.

6. What does visitors counter mean to you? Do you care about putting it in your blog?

I do have a visitor counter on my blog. It lets me rate myself - more the hits on a particular piece, better (or more controversial) the post.

7. Did you try to imagine your fellow bloggers and give them real pictures?

I have not met any fellow blogger in person. And I don't have any (probably just 1 or 2) pictures on my blog either.

8. Do you think there is a real benefit for blogging?

Of course! Otherwise it wouldn't be as popular and this post wouldn't get typed either! Interaction with other human beings and minds is a fundamental trait for all of us and blogging is a very good way to do that. Some blog posts are therapeutic in nature too!

Before blogging, one had to basically look at readers' mails to the editor in the newspapers to understand what *real* people thought on issues and even there you could see some regulars! Blogging, otoh, provides each person with a way to communicate his/her ideas to the wide world. What could be cooler than this?

9. Do you think that bloggers’ society is isolated from real world or interacts with events?

No. Bloggers can't write in a vacuum. Bloggers write in the real world too! They react to events in the real world!

10. Does criticism annoy you or do you feel it’s a normal thing?

No. Everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion. Criticism, as long it is constructive and educative, is welcome. Otherwise I try to tolerate it. Fortunately (or otherwise), I have not been subjected to criticism on my blog. I suppose my blog has to mature more.

11. Do you fear some political blogs and avoid them ?

I don't fear political blogs. But I avoid them ;)

Actually, I read a few political blogs on India and the US. Extreme left leaning (as well as extremely right leaning) blogs amuse me - but I don't frequent them.

12. Did you get shocked by the arrest of some bloggers?

No. People, who also happen to have blogged, get arrested. Even if they hadn't blogged, most of those arrested would have been eventually arrested. So... I suppose I should say I am not shocked.

13. Did you think about what will happen to your blog after you die?

Actually I have. It will be an interesting thing. A blog with no new posts. Like an online museum to the thoughts of a person. In the future, somebody could look for my blog and probably think "What primitive thoughts!" or "This guy should've been born now" or "This guy had way too much time on his hands" ;)

14. What do you like to hear? What’s the song you might like to put a link to in your blog?

I like good music and a wide variety of it. Carnatic music used to be my favorite - and probably still is - but with a lot lesser intensity than before. I would like an instrumental AlApana (flute/veena/violin) of one of several ragas like kalyANi, shankarAbharaNa, tODi... As I kept writing names of these rAgas, I saw that I like a rAga depending on my mood. Though I used to like vocal music, I am not a big fan of the current brood of singers - they murder the sAhitya and sing with absolutely no bhAva. Let me leave that as the topic for a separate post.

OK, I suppose I have answered all the questions to get me off the tagged hook. Anybody who reads this, is welcome to answer these questions in their blog.