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Submitted by varun on Fri, 10/02/2006 - 7:33pm.

Sorry for the bland title. But could not think of anything else and in a way the boring title very well reflects my current state right now. No particular reason to blog except that a blog is supposed to be regularly updated journal. Nothing much going on in my life right now. Actually something is going on but hopefully I will be able to tell you about it in my next post.

I am helping a friend of mine in setting up a blog. He, like me, is using Drupal to power his blog. Probably the only reason I am helping him is because he has been delaying it for too long citing a busy schedule (somewhat true) and lack of technical expertise in configuring it (totally untrue). If I get his blog up and running he will have at least 1 excuse less.

It was only while helping him setup his blog from scratch that I realised that quickly setting up a simple blog in Drupal is not possible. Drupal is excellent for personal weblogs but only if you have some technical experience in this area and only if you are ready to put in a few dedicated hours to finetune the whole thing. However the Drupal community is working on making the installation experience easier for non-techies and hopefully in a few months it will be easier to setup a simple single-person Drupal blog.

So for now I would recommend that if all you need is a simple blog then WordPress or Serendipity is the way to go. If you need all the bells and whistles and you are an uber-geek who wants a very malleable tool to shape into the perfect blogging platform then go with Drupal.

I bought Malcolm Gladwell's Blink yesterday. I am still reading India Unbound so will not start reading Blink immediately. When I first chanced upon this book in the hands of a friend I quickly ignored it as one of those umpteen self-help books so popular nowadays. After reading a couple of Paulo Coelhos I decided that they were not my cup of tea and resolved to not read any more from that genre. But since Blink featured on many Top 10/100 book lists of 2005 maybe it is not such a bad book at all.

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Malcolm Gladwell

Submitted by Niyati (not verified) on Sat, 11/02/2006 - 3:21pm.

You may be pleasantly surprised.. I haven't read Blink but I have read The tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell and I really liked it... give it a try and let me know what you think..

Niyati

The Tipping Point also on my list

Submitted by varun on Mon, 13/02/2006 - 1:32pm.

Somehow I had never heard of The Tipping Point till I bought Blink. On Blink's cover Malcolm Gladwell was touted as the author of The Tipping Point. The Tipping Point also sounds like an interesting book and now that you have recommended it it is on my list of to-read books.

Will definitely let you know about Blink when I read it, though I don't think I will start reading it anytime for the next 2-3 weeks.

Good books I heard

Submitted by Shantanu (not verified) on Sun, 12/02/2006 - 5:01am.

Gladwell's books are good ones. I heard from a lot of people who have read them. I'd like to read some of his work as soon I get to it. Right now I am on a roll reading some very interesting collection that I came across (refer to my yahoo! 360 blog) recently.

First on my list is definitely "Blink" though. I read his write-up about this book on his site and I know for a fact that that would be something quite catchy to read. Let me know what you think when you are done with it.

Sure.

Submitted by varun on Mon, 13/02/2006 - 1:34pm.

Glad to hear that. Will blog about the book when I start reading it (or am done reading it).