Entries from December 2006 ↓

It is hope in this wider sense which enabled my father to build, from scratch, one of India’s largest modern enterprises. His was an undertaking powered by hard work, initiative, self-belief but, above all else, the capacity, as he would often say, “to dream with your eyes wide open”. - Anil D Ambani

AshwinR.com turns one year! Happy Birthday to my Blog! The first year of my blogging was fantastic. I loved every minute of it, honestly. A review of my first year in blogging…

A PR 5 Blog

AshwinR.com is a Page Rank 5 blog. I know that Getting up to PR 5 is no big deal… even achieving PR 6 is fairly easy, it’s just a matter of time. Anything more than PR 6 is hard work. But it’s good to have a PR 5 as that itself creates a brand and sounds nice as well. I’m looking for PR 6 by the end of this year.

Now for some stats. I have currently 104 posts and 3,444 comments, contained within 24 categories with Akismet catching 18,930 spam comments (and counting). The RSS readers is hovering around 115 readers (see the FeedBurner count in the sidebar) and some 30 odd subscribed via email. The total Page Views is over 295K (see Stat counter in the bottom of the page). I’m looking for 1 million page views by the end of 2007.

4 figure Blogger

The total money that I made with Adsense alone in this year till now is $1341. I’m going to repeat what most of the bloggers say: “I didn’t expect to make this much money from this blog“. It took almost five months to pull off my first $100 (the threshold required to get payment from Adsense), after that there was no looking back! I know this money is peanuts, but still I take pride of my blog revenues as I put in a lot of effort.

For the following year, 2007 I have $3500 as the revenue target. I’m going to diversify my earning model and look beyond AdSense. And hopefully in the year 2008, I’ll be a 6 figure blogger.

Blogging Lessons

One thing that I can tell from my experience is that hard work never fails to bear fruits. In some way or the other you’ll be rewarded. Never care about any other thing like SEO, CTMs and CTRs, traffic, comments, etc.. work hard and things will fall in place automatically. Similarly there’s no short cut to success also. You reap what you sow. I can tell that this blog has average success, only because I didn’t work hard.

The second thing is never wait for things to happen. I know a lot of bloggers having so much potential and talent wasting away by not having a paid hosting and web domain. They wait for their first pay-check to get paid hosting. I also did the same thing. I transferred the posts from my old blog to this place. Google found out duplicate content and this blog was penalized. I lost traffic because of that. Traffic is everything in online success. It’s so difficult to pull up the audience and make them engaged to your show. You need to be proactive. Register a domain and get a paid hosting now! More Read: Importance of Paid Hosting and Domain name

The third thing what I have learnt is simple. Keep providing value. Give, give and keep giving till you start to receive what you wanted (traffic,sales, money or whatever you expect). You need to have your site established. For that you have to blog with unique content (or interesting concepts). Then it’ll be a matter of time before you achieve what you want. There’s no shortcut to success. Hard work will reward you one day.

Do what you like doing

Most of the posts takes me at least 5-6 hours to write and get it posted here. Sometimes I’ll write it in paper and again type back here. Not to forget the research that goes behind most of the posts. Some posts take days together to get on board! This is a lot of hard work which many people shy way from. But never ever I found myself in a situation regretting for what I did. I have spend 6-7 hours on a stretch for certain posts, blogging from Dubai (when I don’t have laptop, separate PC-which is used by 4-5 other people, spending time after office hours when the PC is free) and in a not-so-good environment to blog as well… but I never felt the heat of hard work. I did what I liked doing. Blogging taught me that hard work can also be pleasurable.

Looking ahead…
This blog is going to sport a new look and theme soon! I actually planned that along with this post, but it got postponed and I wanted everything to be running fine and didn’t want to act in haste. A theme change is overdue here as was a theme made for browsing at 800*600 resolutions plus I wanted a newer and a better theme. I might also go for a paid theme, once I get decent revenues from this blog.

Other than that, you can expect me to post a lot more regularly (note that it might be frequently) and at the end of next year, this place will have over 275 posts. I’ll continue to concentrate on movie reviews. It’ll be a lot more different from what you see in other places with movie lists and honest reviews.

Soon, I’ll be adding in the “Best of AshwinR.com” or the popular posts list that featured in this site. I’ll be adding in 6-8 posts in that. Is there any of my posts, that you would like to see there? And is there any changes that you would like to see here, any areas that you want me to blog on or is there any suggestions which can make this blog better? Just leave a comment. Each and every feedback go a long way in improving this blog!

I just want to do what I like - providing value with every blog post, without any other motives like wannabe “Pro Blogger”, money, FeedBurner’s RSS readers stats, Technorati or Alexa Traffic Ranks, etc.. Well, I’ll make sure that your time is well spend after visiting this site!

Seasons Greetings! Happy New Year, 2007 to all and may we all have a wonderful New Year. “May You Live In Interesting Times!“

Many people want to know the prices of laptops before they hit the stores to have a clear idea on what to buy. So I thought it would be of good use if I post about the prices of laptops in Dubai. I had scanned the price list that the shop had. These are the latest December 2006 prices. I’ll update this post with the price list of another shop if there’s any difference in the price.

Here is the prices of various models of Notebooks / Laptops in Dubai. The list has the 106 models with the model number, specifications, Brand and the price. The brands include Acer, Asus, HP / Compaq, Dell, LG, Fujitsu Siemens, IBM / Lenovo, Panasonic, Packard Bell and Toshiba.

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BSNL marked the year 2007 as the ‘Year of broadband’. Good for us!

They have made a slew of changes to be implemented from the New Year day itself including giving speeds upto 2 mbps! These type of speeds were never heard of before in India. Other ISPs haven’t announced their plans but it should be good news for the customers who were fooled all this time. I’m looking for free Wi-Fi network in major cities across India, like what Singapore did.

I made it a point not to curse BSNL after they announced unlimited plans earlier this year. But still these sarkari logs take time to announce the plans and things officially.

Highlights of the ‘bonanza’
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Everyone wants to be rich and I’m no exception.

Being rich and wealthy is relative. I might be satisfied with one level of financial independence, but the same level might not be satisfying for you. For me being rich is more than just be financially independent.

I don’t want to be rich only to laugh all the way to bank, or want people to respect me or get a good girl (as my wife) only that I’m rich.

I must have some things done in my life, for which I need some money. I got this idea from this blog entry: Why do you want to be rich? Read the ending quotes of this entry to know why I it’s good for every single to have a goal like this.

So here goes the list as to why I want to be rich in my life…(the list might grow as need arises) I’ll review this list once in every 6 months and strike out the goals as and when I achieve this goal.

I feel, unless you have motives as to why you want to be rich, you’ll never be as wealthy as you wanted and always dreamt off. By writing down the motives (in your journal, etc..) and publishing it (as I have done here) makes you feel uneasy and work towards your financial goal plus you know what to do with the money when you’re rich.

The secret funda to become rich is that you should never be happy with what you have unless and until you’re financial goal is achieved.

Last Friday I watched Dhoom 2 at the Grand Cinemas at Al Ghurair City, Dubai. We had a good time and I can’ forget that night as it was my first movie at Dubai.

The Midnight Show!

We went to the 12 midnight show (it was a holiday on Saturday)! For the first time, I’ve watched a movie so late, taking into the account, the innumerable movie I watched in my PC as well. We wanted to have a ride and roam around the place, and we started by 10:30 PM. We had tea in a restaurant at Bur Dubai (no where near to the Cinema).

Then we headed to the mall. That place has many things like Apartments, a shopping mall, Cinemas etc. The cinemas is in the 2nd floor of the building. It has a “floor type” car parking, where we park cars in “various levels”. I have read about this concept many times and is planned in Chennai also, but this was the time where I experienced it. I always thought it would be how difficult it would be for the cars to “navigate” around, but the system worked like a charm.

Other than that, the Cinemas are like our Cinemas back home only. Only that they have a four LCD TVs for the trailers of the movies that’ re showing / coming soon at the cinemas. The ticket price ranges from Dhs 20 to Dhs 30 in Dubai Cinemas. That’s around Rs. 250 to Rs. 365. It’s an irony that I felt that paying anything more than Rs. 50 for a movie is not worth when I was in Chennai. Of course, once if I get my lappy and net connection, then can watch movies and have DVDs for free.

Dhoom 2 Disappoints

Dhoom 2 was a big let down for me. I expected so much from movie was desperate to watch it. They’ve paid more attention to cheap publicity, costumes and girls. There’re are so much goofs in the movie. Most of them could have been avoided. The double role of Bipasa can’t be explained in any possible way. I still have no clue what was the purpose in that move. None of the scenes in the movie has any logic.. and don’t get carried away by the action scenes that you see in the trailers.. they look childish in the movie.

What did Aishwarya do?

All that she did worth talking about is that she’s a great ramp walker. I can still remember those two scenes. Other than that..this is the worst performance by Aishwarya. Period. I admit I like drooling over girls, but not everyone can look good glamourous. Looking good and being glamorous is totally different. People like Catherine Zeta-Jones can be glamorous and she’s great normally as well. Others like Penelope Cruz & Aiswarya are beautiful but they wont look good in half naked costumes. Aiswarya seemed take on this role as a change from those period movie types and try to show others that she can be glamorous and cool in modern roles too. Sadly, it just backfired and her ventures at trying to be hot were just pathetic. She seemed not to be interested in kissing also!

An interview with the cast!

I saw this review at IMDb and likked it very much. So thought of sharing it here.

Hritik:- I’m a clever thief Mr. A, who always love to steel priceless things around the world, though neither do I know nor does the director know what I do with those loot. I love to use futuristic sci-fi gadgets in all my operations, But please don’t sit and wonder where I get funded for it. Well the story of the movie is “Humnnnn……AAAAAAA…Actually it’s……..Humnnnnn……….Wait I’ll ask the director, probably he would be knowing it”

Abhishek:- Well I loved the movie, Coz Ash loved it. As far as my role goes, I’m a intelligent cop whose job is to stop Mr. A and arrest him. I have some super natural powers where in I can stay for hours together under water in a Water glider and then pop out of water from no where and kill all the Roughs. I also have to take care of my pregnant wife, Oh no, I’m not speaking of Ash, it’s too early to think of that, Rather I was speaking of Rimi sen who plays the role of exasperating spouse of mine in the movie.

Uday Chopra:- I’m a portraying a role of a assistant cop who is guaranteed to irk you with his deadly PJ’s and broken English. I have put every effort to act well, and I have faith that one day I’ll act like Sharukh Khan (The Interviewer Faints). Till then daddy please give me roles in your movies. Bolo Papaji Ki Jai.

Aishwarya:- So like I play the role of Sunaihri, a supposedly wise and ultra sexy thief to whom even a stud like Hritik can drool for. Like, I loved acting with Abhishek. Like I wear all this micro mini skirts, long enough to cover my overacting and short enough to avoid obstructing you guys perverted views. Like, you guys will forget your popcorn looking at my Ultra gorgeous 36-24-36 curves, just the way I forgot how to act, in this movie. Also I smooch in the movie along with Hrithik, to check out how much green Abhishek can get.

Bipasha:- Hi I’m Bipasha Basu. Bule tho Nahin Mujhe. Nobody has a clue what I’m doing in this movie. Even John Abraham is trying to figure it out, and in the process of finding it out he’s losing all his Hairs. My role in the movie is to wear a two piece (Bikini) and walk along the shores of Brazilian Sea, and make Uday dream of him having kids with me.

You can see the full review by Sreeraj Arasa here: Waste some buck only if you are a avid Hritik Fan or if you want to see the sexy Aish.

It’s a pity that I saw the movie in the 12 midnight show spoiling my sleep patterns.. even though the time other than the movie was well spent.

All that Dhoom has is good acting and dancing by Hrithik, 2-3 action sequence (which didn’t impress me, Dhoom action sequences was way better), no plot whatsoever, Aishwarya - Hrithik kissing scene (which is lame), 2X zoom on Bipasha’s bikini, Uday’s boring and irritating one liners (how can anyone find it funny?), good locales at the Brazil and Namibia Desert. Hrithik Roshan is the only good thing in this movie… I was disappointed. After seeing the trailers, I thought it would match up to the standards set up Dhoom.

6/10
Dhoom 2 @ IMDb

We’re planning to see Kabul Express on December, 15th at Ajman (35-40 Kms from Dubai). I’ll write about the movie and our visit if it’s worth your time.