Veera Sundar » Personal

We’re on Google+ and Facebook

Veera — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:24:44 +0000

I’ve been using Google Friend Connect tool in this blog for my readers to join this site. But, last November, Google announced that they will be shutting down Friend Connect and recommended site owners to create a Google+ page, instead.

So, there it is: Google+ page for this blog.

There were 148 subscribers joined this site through Friend Connect. I have already sent out a newsletter to all of them, asking to add my blog to their circle. But, I highly doubt that how many of them have a Google+ profile already. So, I expect, the adoption would be little slow.

Anyway, If you are already in Google+, don’t forget to add my blog to your circle. Also, I’ve setup a Facebook page too!

Thanks for reading. :)

Looking back and forward

Veera — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:06:50 +0000

The time sure flies! Yet another December 31′st and ‘Happy New year’ wishes everywhere. What else would be the right time to stop and look back?

As I did last year, here’s a retrospection of things that I did in the past one year.

Last year resolutions:

~~Release the new website I am working on~~ – I did release it, around last March or April, I think. Though I didn’t made any BIG attempts to market it as I knew there are lots of things to be done before putting it on the line of fire.
Learn a new language – ha.ha! this one became a sticky point in my every new year resolutions (like how people have ‘reduce weight’ in their list but fail to do so). Seriously, didn’t have any reasons to go beyond the languages that I already knew. I did learn few frameworks and new techniques but that won’t fall under ‘Learning a new Language’. Isn’t it?
~~Network with more people in my field~~ – Well, I was able to interact with some great people and I’m hoping to do so in the coming years too!

New year resolutions:

Time for setting new goals.

Release treesk.com – I’m currently working hard on this and my plan is to release it in another few months and make it as a successful product.
Get a new job – if I fail in my first resolution, obviously the next step would be to find a new job.
Improve my skills in photography.

Important events for veerasundar.com/blog:

My blog performed really well in terms of traffic. For the past four months, it was consistently hitting 40K page views/month and the total number of page views has crossed 800, 000 (compared to 400,00 page views last year).
Adsense earning was comparatively good. Received the Google check twice last year. And, some ad offers were renewed.
Google Friend connect subscribers grew to 144 (compared to 69 last year).

Traffic stats for 2011:

From WordPress.com stats plug-in:

From Google Analytics – stats for past 1 year:

Happy new year!

So, that’s it for now. As an end note, I’m wishing everyone a happy and eventful new year. May all your wishes come true!

Need your input

Veera — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:29:46 +0000

Hi Friends! Need your help for a survey.

We are currently evaluating an idea to work on. We have created a set of questions to identify the market and potential value of our idea.

Can you spend 10 minutes of your time to take this survey?

Thanks in advance!

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.

Design changes

Veera — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 05:30:36 +0000

Just a quick note to let you know that the design of this blog has been changed a bit. If you are using a wide screen monitor (> 1100 pixels), you would notice that the blog title has been moved towards the left, leaving more space for the post content.

Floating the title left caused a broken layout in resolution that are less than 1100 pixels. The title was displayed on top of the content, because of the absolute positioning. But, thanks to media queries, the layout is now adopts itself to all monitors.

@media all and (min-width:1100px){
.custom #header{border:none;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100px;}
}

And, there’s space for the social buttons too, which I shamelessly copied from my own home page.

So, what do you think?

PS: If you are reading this post in an reader, never mind!

San Francisco

Veera — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:00:02 +0000

It’s my first trip to United States (or to any foreign country for that matter) and I was kinda excited to be here. Having spent the first three weekends in my hotel room and haven’t got a chance to take out my Nikon, I was eagerly waiting for an outing.

So, we planned a trip to San Francisco, which is close to San Jose and can be reachable by public commute. Including myself, there were five guys in the group. Our main aim was to go to Golden gate bridge (and of course, to take lots and lots of photos!).

On a sunny Saturday morning, as decided to start at 7:30, we started at 9. I didn’t have any jacket with me and I was getting severe warnings from folks who had already visited SFO that I’m going to freeze to an ice. At first I didn’t believe any of those warnings (typical software engineer who ignores all the warnings!) mainly because the sun was out and shining like a… sun (duh!) in San Jose and I hoped even SFO would be having same climate.

We went to the Karina rail station and boarded the Mountain View train. From there our plan was to catch the Cal train to SFO. It took almost an hour to reach Mountain view and we had around 20 minutes of waiting time before the Cal train comes. It was 10 in the morning but still it felt like the mid day. Who cares to wear jacket in this heat?

Mountain view station

At 10.20, the Cal train reached mountain view. We got into it and went to the upper deck of it. Train wasn’t crowded at all. All this time, I was just wondering again and again at how well the public commute system works well. There was automated ticket vending machines, clean platforms, trains reaching the station at correct time, patient driver who waits till the last passenger get in/out of the train, prompt station name announcements and the list goes on..

While you were reading the above paragraph, our Cal train reached San Francisco. When we stepped out of the Cal train in SFO, it was 11:30 am. We walked out of the train station and directly opposite to the station there were several buses waiting. We got into one after making sure that the bus goes to Pier 39.

Unfortunately, the bus we took was not taking the direct route to Pier 39. It was going around almost all the places in SFO and we got a cheap city tour for 2 bucks. On the way, we saw a group of old men, riding the bicycles in the middle of the road – naked! And, I said to myself “WELCOME to AMERICA!”.

After an hour or so, we finally reached our spot – Pier 39. It’s the host of several tourist attractions, including an aquarium, ferry ride, wax museum and sea food hotels.

Entering Pier 39

After reaching Pier 39, I was slightly started to feel the chill, but still I was hopeful that I wouldn’t need a jacket. We decided to go in a ferry that takes us below the Golden gate bridge and around the Alcatraz island (remember The Rock) for $25. We bought the tickets and had to wait for thirty minutes before the ferry starts. And my Nikon didn’t fail to capture the surroundings in the mean time.

boats at Pier 39

And then started the ferry ride. The moment we left the shore, the climate immediately turned from mild cold to ‘damn, it’s cold!’. For the first time, I felt I should have carried a jacket.

Anyway, the ferry ride was so awesome. When we reached the bottom of Golden Gate bridge, everyone on the ferry were shivering like a dunkards but never missed to photograph the gigantic structure in front of them.

Golden gate surrounded by the fog

In the ferry they were narrating the history of San Francisco and the mystery of the Alcatraz prison. I hardly get to listen to that, thanks to the fog and the noise out there. Anyway, we returned back to shore after an hour of ferry ride.

Foggie skylines of San Francisco

Our next plan was to take the city tour in a double decker bus. This tour would take us around the streets of San Francisco till the Golden Gate bridge and will return to Pier 39.

Taking a bus ride in San Francisco is exciting mainly because of roads of SFO. Wanna know why? Just look below and you’ll understand.

roads in San Francisco

Finally we reached the Golden gate bridge (again) and accomplished our mission by posing for a group photo (thanks to the foreigner who took this one!)

Mission accomplished

Veera Sundar » Personal

We’re on Google+ and Facebook

Related Posts

Looking back and forward

Last year resolutions:

New year resolutions:

Important events for veerasundar.com/blog:

Traffic stats for 2011:

Happy new year!

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Need your input

Related Posts

Design changes

Related Posts

San Francisco

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