Order and Anarchy

Over here, I talked about my plan to migrate this blog to some other place and/or platform. For this purpose, I’ve already tried a number of options and I’ve come to the conclusion that the best thing is to have paid hosting, which affords the opportunity to play around with the blogging platform as much and howsoever one desires, besides providing filesystem access. In other words, everything that I want!! And as far as the platform is concerned, I’ve found Wordpress to be a charm; although Movable Type is quite good too, but I found its setup quite a task. Infact compared to Movable Type, I’d say Drupal is much better and easier to handle.

Anyways, till the time when we have a paid hosting platform, I’ve found Wordpress.com to be quite good and am currently in the process of importing my posts over there. But there’s a glitch there too – that so far, I’ve not found any way to import all the comments I have over here, meaning that if I decide to run the blog from Wordpress.com, comments till now wouldn’t be available over there ....well, let’s see.

Ramadan Mubarak to all of you out there. May the holy month brings with it all the tidings and blessings that are there for this world to grab.

As with last year, this year too, a dedicated Ramadan blog is being activated (rather continued from last year) that will contain everything related to this holy month in pictures and in words, that will cover the Ramadan theme from around the world and that will share and mix an immense array of the beautiful universal Ramadan activities and rituals as carried out in different cultures.

I welcome you all to visit Ramadan Kareem and immerse yourselves in the amazing journey through the holy month as experienced by bloggers from a multitude of nationalities, cultures and backgrounds but sharing a unique and distinct urge to make out the most of the month’s beauties!!

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.
– Alexander Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

Of late, I’ve seriously started thinking on the lines of migrating my blog. It’s only due to the reason that I’ve been facing some problems relating to my current host ; first of all, since I don’t have filesystem access, it’s been impossible for me to upgrade my blog software. Secondly, due to the same problem, It’s now become quite difficult for me to deal with the level of spam that my comments field are attracting and sitting and looking at each spam comment and moderating it manually has become quite tedious.

I have thought of a plan that envisages a progressive growth of this blog in the months to come. However, I think I’ll have to stick to free hosts for the time being, which, I understand isn’t a very good idea but definitely this issue has to be dealt with in due course; but again, I’ll have to rely on such hosts for some time!!

Looking for a host also created an urge to look for another platform for my blog and after testing Subtext, Nucleus, Drupal and obviously Wordpress (which has been my platform of choice till now), I’ve settled for Drupal, although there is a major issue of migrating my current posts to Drupal, as the solutions that I’ve been able to find again assume access to the site’s filesystem ....

Well, it’s still and idea and let’s see how it fares in due course.

Today, without electricity and sweating out on my drawing sofa, I had a chance to think on the afflictions that are faced by common Pakistanis in their daily lives….I then wanted to drill down to the reasons of the various issues faced by us, the common people of this country, and a verse in Urdu came to my mind that sums up each and every ill. Here it goes:

Yes, I know I’ve been away since quite a long time now….but couldn’t help it. No no….let me accept it that apart from the usual business of life that did infact get intensified, there was also a bit of laziness on my part.

However, all this matter of absences from the scene is about to end. My semester final exams are starting from Monday, which is the day after tomorrow. The exams will end by 15th of this month. So I hope of returning afresh after my exams .

It was Eid day today in Pakistan except for the North West Frontier Province, which had celebrated Eid earlier. It’s been with usual fervour and warmth that Eid has been celebrated here with people greeting each other and children enjoying the bounties of eidi. Obviously, the centre point of all greetings has been siwayyan.

Eid Mubarak to everyone out there. May this Eid bring with it the most happiness, bliss and peace and the best of what life has to offer. May we all revel in the showers of Allah’s Blessings that come our way this Eid and always.