The Dragonfly Page

I did it. I completed the long delayed ‘personal’ project I was working on. As I said, its a personal project and has nothing to do with my work. Its something I started around 6-8years back. I spend so much time over it that I thought I was never going to finish it, ever. I had refined and redesigned it more than 10-20 times, and explored new technologies each time I restarted it. But this time it was different, I promised myself that I am going to finish it before the end of 2010. And I did it. You can check it out here – The Dragonfly Page. (Access the site at http://www.thedragonflypage.com)

I think you got what I am talking about, its my personal website. The first time I built a site for myself was back in 2000. Internet was more like Disneyland to me, it amazed me and I wanted to be a part of it. HTML was way too simple back then. Just some tags, some images and some captions and I had my site. I hosted it in yahoo geocities. But geocities used to put a big banner (ad) on top of the site and all formatting I worked on for hours, simply went haywire.

Later when I was doing my undergrad, I started rebuilding it from scratch. I moved my domain to tripod.com which was referred to me by my friend Jayanth. In tripod, there used to be an option of choosing the ads to be displayed in popup windows, so that the page formatting remains intact. But I never got to finish the site due to various other reasons. I think the “site under construction” page is still there.

Even though I continued experimenting with various site designs and stuff during the years that followed, the next real effort was around 2006-2007 time period. I wanted to buy myself a domain and build a better site equipped with technologies like flash, java script etc. I completed almost all the graphics and page designs. Again, due to various reasons – laziness being the prime reason - I never got to publish it. But I kept all those graphics and most of the designs which I am using currently.

The logo I designed last time

This time it was different, I had access to many resources like a server to host the pages, all the tools to build a site etc and I didn’t want to waste them. But the main motivation came when I browsed through some of the recently updated sites of my colleagues and friends.

This time, I wanted to start and finish the work in one go. I didn’t explore any new technologies and I used my previous design as a starting point, used almost all the previous graphics and reduced the number of pages planned for the site. There are still a couple of more ideas I want to integrate to thedragonflypage. They will be incorporated when I roll out version 2.0, which I hope will be in the near future.

Hope you like the site and if you do, please leave your comments/suggestion here or through the feedback form.

Special thanks to THESITEWIZARD.COM from where I got the tutorials required for building my site.

My new blog - The Dragonfly's Wall

There was a time when I used to browse hours and hours for high definition wallpapers to decorate my desktop. I found it very frustrating sometimes to find good wallpapers that matches my style. But after I started photography as a serious hobby, I combined it with my photoshop skills to create wallpapers for my desktop. Recently I began thinking why couldn't I make them available to all those who are in search for better wallpapers. That thought resulted in my new blog - The Dragonfly's Wall.

 I hope you will like the wallpapers posted in my blog.

Archery – The art of perfection

“One day, Guru (teacher) Dronacharya decided to test his students in their skill of archery. He hung a wooden bird from the branch of a tree and then summoned his students. He asked the first one to aim for the bird's eye, but not shoot just yet. He then asked the student what the student could see. The student replied that he could see the garden, the tree, flowers, etc. Drona asked him to step aside and not shoot. He repeated the same process with a few other students. When it was Arjuna's turn, Arjuna told his Guru that the only thing he could see was the bird's eye. This satisfied the Guru and he allowed Arjuna to shoot the bird and his shot pierced the bird's eye.” – Excerpt from epic Mahabharata about the great warrior Arjuna which shows the power of focus and concentration.

I started archery just out of curiosity, but found myself attracted to it quite fast. One reason is the amount of focus required from the moment you take your bow till you release your arrow. Your mind needs to be calm and all you need to see is the golden circle at the centre of the target. Once you release your arrow, you know whether your form was good and you'll score an 'X' or whether you are going to score a 'M'.

Archery is the art of perfection. If the archer has got a perfect form and if the equipments are in the perfect condition, his shots will always hit the gold.