Created on Mon Sep 03, 2007 1:34 pm with 5 blog posts
Thought Overflow II is named after my main blog Thought Overflow ( www.gurdit.com/blog/ ). Instead of burdening my main blog with posts about Frihost or Web Design, which my friends don't particularly like reading, I suppose I'll rant/rave/(other) here.
It's been a while since I've been on the public forums of Frihost. I mostly restrict myself to the Staff sections or to the Frihost Support Forums. So, I have the feeling that a lot of people on Frihost don't really know me much now.
Just the other day, I logged into the Frihost IRC Channel. Apart from the usual lingerers (Rvec, Max and a couple of other people) (ok, well, maybe I shouldn't just call them lingerers), there was another user online. I'm not sure he recognized me, but I believe I gave him the impression that I was a girl 
. Oh well, that's life.
I remember there was a time when I used to post very actively and furiously in the Discuss World News forum, where we used to have mammoth debates that sometimes required an Admin or Moderator to come in and stop the sparring and send people back to their corners. No sooner would one debate get old and stop receiving replies than another would start up, and the game would begin again. I've seen my share of extremely rebellious users, some of whom have been banned either directly or indirectly by me. I've also seen my share of Frihosters who have had extraordinary posts. Quite a few Frihosters have also been quite intimate and actively communicated with me. Lately, I feel myself quite disconnected from it all, and I miss it.
Oh well, anyway, here I still am, still loving Frihost as a free host, and still wishing it all the best. This is in no way a retirement post, but just a small update on my whereabouts.
I think it will be interesting to see how many Frihosters will read and reply to this blog post. How about it folks? How many of you know or still remember me? And to those of who you don't, here's your chance to ask me questions about myself. Go for it! The First Official Frihost Writing Contest (refer previous blog entries) is now done.
It was quite a success for me personally because even though it had a small number of entries, the quality was good. As you probably know, that contest was hosted at mathiaus' site, because it was related to Harry Potter, and we couldn't host it on Frihost due to Bondings' lack of time.
A lot of users have asked for the contest to become more open, and that is my intention as well. All future contests will not be completely open, but certainly not as restrictive as the last one.
The writing contest will also not be hosted on the frihost.com domain for now. I shall host it on a domain I recently registered - www.broadkast.net which is hosted by Frihost. The contest shall be available at www.frihost.broadkast.net , however, we first need to code it all in.
We are looking for anyone who has ANY experience whatsoever with PHP, CSS, XHTML, MySQL or even just IDEAS for implementation.
We plan to distribute the code as Open Source over sourceforge.net once we complete coding it, so that other sites could also take part in it.
If you want to help, register at : www.frihost.broadkast.net/forums/
Note that you can register at any time if you think you can be of any help whatsoever. There are no time limits 
In the meantime, I am considering the possibility and the feasiblity of temporarily running the Writing Contest here on the forums. Will keep you updated. Idiocy 1:
A few months back, I made a Wordpress theme, and offered it for sponsorship on Digitalpoint forums. I had a Paypal account, and I got around 140$ deposited into it. Imagine my horror, one fine day, when it tells me that unless I verify my account, it will not let me spend more than 100$ from my account! Was any of this mentioned before I signed up and got loads of cash (yes, 140$ is loads of cash to me, thank you very much) transferred into it? HELL NO!... but having no choice, I decided to live with it. I'll hopefully get a credit card within the next couple of years, and I don't really see myself spending money online before that. All I really need to spend online is for the renewal of my domain(s).
By the way, at one point of time, I wanted to register a new domain, and I really wanted to register at this registrar (whose name, surprisingly, I have forgotten!) who were giving really good prices. But ultimately, due to the fact that they didn't accept payment through Paypal, I had to register at Namecheap. (And at this point, I should probably mention... Namecheap is one of the best places to register... they're reliable, easy to use, and recommended by Bondings 
)
Idiocy 2
A few weeks back, my prized Sony MDR21 earphones conked off on me. I loved those little babies. They gave me a rich, crisp output and cut out a lot of outside noise, making me fall even more in love with music than I already was. I needed new earphones. This time, I decided to try some passive noise-cancelling earphones (in-the-ear or canalphones, depending on what you want to call them). After consulting with my friend, Animal (who moderates this forum and is also a bit of an audiophile, with 3 pairs of earphones, one of which apparently cost him around 130$ or more), I settled on a pair of Sennheiser CX300 which are available at a good price on ebay.com. That's good news, because ebay lets me pay with Paypal, unlike Amazon.com. After speaking to my dad, I decided to go for it. I register at ebay.in (localized ebay site), and when I try to ask the seller a question, imagine my horror (or disgust, if you will), when it says "We need to verify your account. Please give us your credit card details). Clowns! If I had a credit card, why would I want to use Paypal? 
So now, once again, things are at a standstill. I'm back to square one... having to locate someone with an ebay account willing to order for me, and then I can pay them back. Bah! A couple of weeks back, I had announced The First Ever Official Frihost Writing Contest. I was sceptical of the participation considering that the contest was going to be about the last Harry Potter book in the series. So I ran a Pre-launch Poll to try and get an idea of how many people were willing to participate.
According to the poll, 12 people were willing to participate, which is quite a respectable number for a contest like this. Unfortunately, however, the actual participation level has been much lower than expected. The original deadline for submitting entries was September 10, but unless some more interest is shown, I will be forced to cancel the contest altogether.
So if you've been interested in this contest but haven't done anything about it yet, I must say that this is the time to do something. If you have been blissfully ignorant about this contest, and would like some more time to make a good entry, let me know, and I will have the deadline extended.
By the way, the first 5 entries to be submitted will get a bonus of 2 points added to their overall score! So enter now! The number 3 appears to have an affinity for me today.
- With this post, this becomes my 3rd blog. (I have a couple on my own website, which I do post quite regularly in).
- When I post this post, it will become the 3rd post to ever be posted in the history of Frihost Blogs (unless someone else hits "Submit" before me)
- Also, recently, I became the third highest poster on Frihost. (woo-hoo)... of course, this "achievement" goes unnoticed as non-staff now do not have a link to the Memberlist.
I didn't think I'd be using Frihost Blogs even when it launched, but here I am. What is my opinion of Frihost blogs?
- It's nowhere near as fun/customizable as my Wordpress blogs.
- The moderation of blog posts is likely to cause a headache for moderators, as we will have to be less strict about "post quality", I suppose.
- At the same time, if too many users start blogging on Frihost, staff won't have enough time to look through all blog posts to make sure that none of them are offensive/not fit to be on Frihost.
- However, one cannot refute the fact that Frihost Blogs will work in favour of creating more of the "community" atmosphere that Frihost is trying to create.
- Like Bondings said in his inaugural post, each post has the potential to reach thousands of members, and is likely to definitely be more popular than your other blogs.
- Giving same points as posts makes it far too easy to get points/FRIH$.
To put it simply, I believe that the Blogs are going to become quite a popular feature here on Frihost. And moderation issues aside, I suppose I'm quite looking forward to them as well.
Good luck, Frihost Blogs!
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