This is an amazing speed painting of Johnny Debb as the infamous pirate Jack Sparrow, Captain Jack Sparrow! Really cool video. Found it on slices-of-life.com

As I mentioned last week, I won the Balkhis MarketLeverage contest. Shortly after, I submitted my name and address to MarketLeverage for the prize to be delivered at my place. And it was delivered in 3 days (including the Sunday)!! That came as a big surprise to me.

But what was even more surprising is that apart from the promised 50USD AMEX card, they even sent me a cool 2Gb USB pen drive! The pen that has a 2GBUSB drive concealed in it, was actually the fourth prize in the contest. Market Leverage really knows how to pamper their affiliates! (I know I’ve said this a couple of times already but they really are that good!). While most companies hand over defective stock as prizes, ML actually gave me something more! Probably that’s what sets them apart from all other affiliate networks. If you haven’t joined Market Leverage yet, do it now!.

Market Leverage allows you to custom choose campaigns from a wide range of categories. I’m lookin forward to puttin up a few of their ads in the near future. Do look out for the space below every post for some exciting offers. Thank you Market Leverage for the Card and the USB drive.

Psst: Signup to MarketLeverage using my referral link and I’ll be grateful!

I was all pumped up when I started my blog a few months ago. But the enthusiasm soon fizzled out when I realized that people around me didn’t know what a blog was! They didn’t know that a blog is updated very regularly. That it can be subscribed to! That it can be commented on! This post is for them.

So what is a weblog? Weblog, or more commonly known as a blog, is a site that has articles (news, views, reviews etc.) sorted and displayed in a chronological order. Whenever bloggers create new content, sometimes even as frequently as a couple of times a day, the old content is pushed down. The old content is seldom taken off.

Moreover, a blog has many advantages over a static webpage. As you see in my sidebar, posts can be categorized. Thus you can view posts according to their category, tags, authors (on multi-author blogs), month, year, etc.

Then, blogs can also be subscribed to. Every blog has it’s own subscription link. This is my subscription link. Subscribe using any browser (except the ancient IE6 ofcourse!) or via a feed reader like the Google Reader or Bloglines.

Another advantage of a blog is that you have to code it just once and not bother about HTML jargon ever again! Moreover, it is very easy to setup or create free blogs.

Thus to sum it up, a blog is a site where content comes before the bling. Bloggers don’t have to worry much about the design. Just a post title and content is all you need to make a new post. Bloggers interact with each other. They link to each other’s content. Good content is never thrown away. Rather it is ‘archived’.

I’ve always loved to see people obsessed with stacking up dominoes, hundreds of thousands of dominoes, come up with a great work of art. The real fun is in watching those dominoes go down. Here, just one golden rule of thumb applies – The more the merrier!!

About a week ago, I had mentioned about taking part in the Balkhis ML contest. The contest is finally over and what a contest it’s been. I actually won a $50 AMEX Card from Market Leverage!

The contest was pretty straight forward. Solve the daily clues, make comments on the blog. And that’s it. Sounds good on paper, doesn’t it? But take a look at the top commentators list. The winner ‘Enkay Blog’ posted a mammoth 243 comments during this past week! Out of those 243, he did almost 140 of them in the last 5 hours! That’s like a comment almost every two minutes! Sure deserved to win the Flip Mino. Congrats dude!

The second prize winner was Rakhshinda who had just 2 points more than me. Can you believe that! I lost an Ipod NANO by one point! But I’m happy atleast I get to keep the AMEX card. Now I can show my friends that I won an AMEX card from Market Leverage. Sure to generate a lot of envy. Now that my exams are over, I’m looking forward to getting to know Market Leverage better. I’ll write about that soon.

Thanks Syed Balkhi for having this great contest. I loved being a part of the comment war. Congrats to all the other winners – Enkay Blog, Rakhshinda and Tyna. Thank you Market Leverage for the card.

Happy Birthday!

Today is my Birthday! Turned 20 today. Feels good to be out of my teens. I’ve walked on the surface of this planet for 2 decades now. Feels really empowering when yo put it that way! haha

But there is another reason to celebrate too! I wrote my first blog post on the 17th of June 2007. That’s exactly one year ago! So technically even my blog celebrates it’s birthday today! Happy Blogiversary, blog! My blog is finally one year old! Regular readers might remember before I had this domain, this site was called angad.co.nr. The URL still links here, but the blog has come a long way since then. It has had it’s share of ups n downs.

Over the past year, there have been times when I’ve written just 2 posts in a month and there have been times when I’ve had 14,513 pageviews in a single day! It’s been a roller coaster ride all year long. The top three posts sorted according to their total pageviews are:

1. Calvin n Hobbes – those lovely schooldays!!!(64,982 views)
2. Heard of tricks at snooker, but ping-pong?? (49,773 views)
3. Calvin and Hobbes – Compilacion numero tres(47,494 views)

As a birthday present for this blog, I’ve designed a new theme for it! The new light blue theme is much more spaced out than it’s predecessor. The theme is yet to get it’s ads. But they’ll come soon. Hope you like it!

As I’m in the middle of my 2nd year Engineering exams, this birthday will most probably be spent buried into books. But exams end on the 19th. We’ll have a blast then! Here are some of today’s pics. My sis made me a really cute card. The shiny orange thing that the bear is holding is actually a cute lil card. It has a few adjectives that describe me – witty, cute, loving, wise, comp addict, funny, sweet, gentle soul, tech whiz, patient and lastly ‘lazy bones’!! Yup, that describes me to the core. She knows me really well and comes up with lovely cards every birthday! Then there’s the cake waiting to be cut.