Rounding Up 2009

I remember last year, around the same time of the year Tanuka and Aikataan had gone to India and my client had the annual shutdown. I am not a person who gets bored easily unless I am watching a very poorly made movie. So I found myself a lot of things to do: polish my meagre culinary skills, catch up on my reading, ensure that I watched Bollywood movies in the US before my family in India got to them, lose the incredible amount of adipose tissue built up near my belly and so on. And I also decided to move into blogging more actively.

So I started / revamped a bunch of sites, chief among which was this one. I discovered open source blogging and CMS and I was pulled in. In particular I loved WordPress and Joomla. And so began my journey with trying to do things by myself. Some time in March 2009 I began something as an experiment: Aquoid. It was intended to be an exercise in in building Mac-like themes across multiple platforms. A lofty goal, indeed.

Aquoid was slow off the blocks, mainly due to the intense pressure at work those days. I had a stretch where I was forced to work weekends for weeks together. So I toned down the goals a bit and focused on getting out one simple and clean theme for one platform. I had no idea at that time that I had sown the seeds for a fun ride. Suffusion came about and would have sunk without a trace if it weren’t for a crazy desire of mine to make it just a little bit better. That “little bit” became all-encompassing, and the journey from a simple, single-layout theme to one that can legitimately lay claim to being customizable is a story in itself.

Since this is my blog, I will let myself brag and point out a few nice reviews of the theme at wordpress.org. There are a lot of great themes out there and if you ask me for an honest opinion I wouldn’t hesitate to rate them above mine. But all the same it feels good to be the author of something that people in general like.

As I devoted more and more time to Suffusion, my personal blog started suffering from a lack of attention. If you notice here, I have had just about 1-2 posts a month for the last few months. I believe I have compensated by making my updates on Aquoid a lot more frequent, though writers’ block too has had a hand in the reduction of frequency.

But enough about blogging. Professionally I started off on a new project after almost two years on my previous one. Unfortunately this project keeps me away from home around 65% of the time. Thrown in some horrible weather and coach class travel each week and you have a grumpy and weary me.

2009 was an eventful year for me personally, too. I took a true vacation in a very long time when I spent 3 weeks in India attending the weddings of a couple of my cousins. I had forgotten what a humid Indian summer felt like, having stayed long enough in the Silicon Valley to be spoilt.

And then of course, there is Aikataan. He recently started school and is beginning to grapple with English, since we only converse in Bengali at home. It is funny and amusing to see him grow – he turned three during the middle of the year and plays games on the Wii with the skill of a veteran. While he doesn’t understand when he wins at Tennis or Bowling, he does know that he gets a cup if he does well at Mario Kart.