There’s a whole class of recent switchers who define ‘Apple fanboy’ as ‘anyone who’s been an enthusiastic Mac user since before I switched to the Mac’.

John Gruber at Daring Fireball reminds us (while talking of his Yankee loyalty) of his classic line made in reference to Mark Cuban’s reluctance to call himself a fanboy. Having bought a Mac myself recently, I completely relate and see much truth in Gruber’s words. I can extend it further and say, the same about Obama fans. Why are we so reluctant to adopt the fanboy tag? It doesn’t always mean blind loyalty.

• The obvious, an elegant simple minimalist design that I always aspired to but never implemented.
• The front page is distraction-free, scroll-bar free, no sidebar widgets, and has only two images (’contractual’ obligations) totaling to approx. 15kb and five most recent posts. The Twitter update keeps it dynamic.
• The homepage displays only post titles and contrary to some opinions, I think this is a feature, not a bug. It disciplines me to write precise headlines that conveys what exactly the post is about. More on this later.
• The menubar displays links to pages containing content that would otherwise be featured on the sidebar in other blogs. I can lose ‘Contact’ too but not many people know what ‘Colophon’ means.
• The number of comments on each post are displayed in small(er) font size within parenthesis. Without specifically mentioning what this number means, it is still abundantly clear.
• Clicking on Next Page displays not 5 posts as WordPress would default to but 10 thus keeping the front page distinct. Likewise for search results, category and day/month/year listings. The number of displayed links can be easily changed.
• I love how the archive page has shaped up. I freely admit that Chetan’s archive page provided the inspiration. The archives are presented by recent popular posts, popular tags, categories, by year and month, and yes, even a ‘Feeling Lucky’ option without hogging too much real estate. Use of clouds makes it easier. The page is topped with a simple search box that gets ‘focused’ at page load. This feature is provided by code written by Chetan. See the Colophon page for list of plugins I use
• The now-embarrassing About page is gone. But not exactly.
• The single post page, like the Front Page, is distraction-free and focuses on the content. All metadata is presented at the end of the post in smaller font. The date format is hyperlinked to their corresponding archive pages; thanks to code also by Chetan.I like threaded comments by WordPress so modding the theme for them was not difficult.
• Limited or no ads. I couldn’t resist not inserting Adsense since they do generate some revenue; enough to make hosting free and then some. Regular readers will see only one ad block; actually none if you read the post within 2 days of its date of publication. I use Who Sees Ads plugin to adjust settings.

That covers most of the features I like. Hopefully this affection for minimalism will last and let me focus more on writing, which I’m told, this blog needs. As a fierce proponent of minimalism, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said it best, Less is More.

What do you like best about this new theme? Or even what do you not like?

Update: In addition to MacHeist’s offer, nearly 100 developers are offering 20% discount on their wares. If only I had waited couple of days to purchase MarsEdit from which this blog is being written. Sigh!

Considering there are only 13 MNS legislators (out of 288) in the new-elected Maharashtra Assembly, how much sense, politically speaking, does it make to get one-third of your caucus suspended? MNS is partnering with Cong-NCP to quelch BJP-SS’s political clout. With 4 less legislators in the Assembly, hasn’t their power already diminished and haven’t they lost leverage within their alliance? This, of course, is regardless of the four constituencies that will basically be unrepresented in the Assembly for four year because their elected representative decided to act like animals on their first day. Unfortunately, considering Indian politics, this will in fact be counted as an achievement come election time. How else can you explain electing MNS candidates who have a one-point agenda? Perhaps those constituencies deserve them and hence will be unrepresented for the next four years.

Lekhni recently revised her theme and went for the magazine look. However, I went the opposite way. Websites/blogs by Dustin Curtis and Chetan Kunte provided the inspiration. I looked for a single-column theme and surprisingly there aren’t many. Minimalism, I notice, is not a popular choice for bloggers. Even the ones I found had widgets hidden away in the footer but I finally found this one and it suited my needs perfectly. Thanks in particular to Chetan and Curdriceaurora for their feedback on font types and sizes. For feed readers who don’t want to step out (although you should), it looks like this:

New Minimalist Design

That’s it. That’s the entire front page. With only 5 recent posts with just their post titles. You’ve to click on the titles to read the content. The menubar on the top takes you to the pages and the Twitter update is displayed below that.

Initial reactions from Twitter have been mixed but I really love this minimalist look so it will stay for a while. I’m still tinkering and cleaning up and will write more on the changes/features soon.

[Via kottke.org.] Amen. Like Jason, I have piles of books left to read; most of which are review copies sent in by publishers for my Urban Planning blog. Since I’m on their mailing list now, they send in the copies without even asking and so the pile keeps growing. And I always mean to get around to reading them. I start a book but lose interest so have quite a few with bookmarks stuffed in them at different intervals.

When I flew to Chicago last weekend, I finally got around to reading Who Turned Out the Lights: Your Guide to the Energy Crisis and I’ll post my review soon. But unless, I have to read a dead-tree book now, I rarely do and most of my reading is done online. Even the scholarly journal articles are read online complete with annotations and notes in Adobe Professional. Only when I have to interactive with the content manually, as we did for a house plan that we were looking at that I decided to print it out. This is by no means only from an environmental perspective. If you detach yourself from the emotional and nostalgic feeling of reading paper books, there is little reason to persist with paper books. It is just that I find reading and storing from paper copies cumbersome and I spend my day in front of the computer anyway so the only time I actually have an inclination to hold up a paper book or a magazine is when I go to bed. Hence the pile of books on the bedside table.

Now Chicago and I share an unique bond. I always have visited the windy city to meet people. The first time was a blogger meet and the second to meet up with an ex-roommate who had hitched up with another common grad school friend. And both times, it was in winter. The first was around Christmas and the second around Thanksgiving. Those aware will know Chicago winters to be a bitch. At least this time it was much warmer at 40F. I could even get away by not wearing gloves for ten whole minutes. I will spare you the details of our ‘joyous’ reunion except the fact that it wasn’t really that momentous. Of course, people change and so do things yet everyone expects them to be the same. But it was nice catching up and getting updated on everyone’s progress in life. Everyone is married now and three of us have kids so everyone worldview is not exactly the same but I’m guessing eventually we’ll all get there.

Since this wasn’t my first time in Chicago, I had already taken in the sights; how much ever you can in winter. And of course, we did them once again. We drove down to the Millennium Park, goofed around with Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, stared in awe at Frank O’Gehry’s concert stage, and walked the Magnificent Mile. We concluded our short jaunt with spiked coffee and hot chocolate at the Signature Lounge atop the John Hancock Tower. This was the only time I could see any trace of fall colors although thanks to Chicago’s windy nature, there wasn’t much either. However, there is one thing I did different this time. I did not take my precious Nikon with me on this drive to downtown. Instead I decided to shoot photos with my iPhone. The results were not bad at all and a little tweaking in Aperture, they turned out to be not half bad. As long as there is enough natural light, the iPhone camera works pretty well. Some of the photos are shown below:

Fall Colors at Millenium Park

Fall(en) Leaves

Lake Shore Drive from atop John Hancock

This is where they make Fox News sit, now.

ANA MARIE: If you enlarge you’ll see the chairs are clearly marked, so no one confuses the black President with the guy from Denmark, named Lars.

JASON: “All you world leaders look alike.”

ANA MARIE: Well, they used to! It’s a fair point.

Every once in a while, Pete Souza likes to show that if he wanted to, he could be reading all kinds of of classified shit.

“No, seriously! I could do your job! If you wanted! I COULD do it!”

“Yes, Joe. We know.”

HAPPY DOG. Rightfully the center of attention.

PS. This one was taken with the Corps of Cadets when Obama visited Texas A&M last month.

You must be this tall to be chief of staff!

OK! I’ll stop now. Check out all of them. Seriously funny.

[click to enlarge] The United States is only 15th in the world and unfortunately, India doesn’t even figure in the list.

While Harry lacked the wiliness and cunning of some dogs, I did watch one day as he figured out a basic principle of physics. He was playing with a water bottle in our backyard—it was one of those 5-gallon cylindrical plastic jugs from the top of a water cooler. At one point, it rolled down a hill, which surprised and delighted him. He retrieved it, brought it back up and tried to make it go down again. It wouldn’t. I watched him nudge it around until he discovered that for the bottle to roll, its long axis had to be perpendicular to the slope of the hill. You could see the understanding dawn on his face; it was Archimedes in his bath, Helen Keller at the water spigot [source].

How can you not love dogs? Similarly Lucy is the source of constant amazement and mirth. It’s like having a baby without the terrible twos and moody teens; almost makes you rethink having children at all.

The thing is, I don’t think I am just in the tank and think Obama can do no wrong. And this is where the first question/comment comes into play. If I’m obsessed with anything, I’m obsessed with people saying what I think are crazy and irrational and stupid things and then making fun of them…I also think that there is a certain mindset among some people that if you are not spending every day dramatically freaking out that Obama sucks, you aren’t doing your duty as a citizen and aren’t thinking critically and are “just in the bag” for the President. There honestly seems to be a group of people out there who think that when the President tells them to “make him do something,” they don’t understand that he wants them to apply constructive pressure on him and on Congress, they think it is a license to scream and flail and yell “just words” and adopt Republican messaging frames. They think it is permission to have a hissy fit. And I don’t think it is being “in the bag” for Obama to point out those hissy fits.

Although John Cole specifically talks about the “brouhaha” over gay rights legislation that Obama just signed, it could be applied to any issue. And I couldn’t have said it better to you-know-who-you-are :)

The $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers would be extended and some people who already own residences could claim a benefit under a proposal by Senate Democrats.

An agreement reached yesterday by the Democrats would let homeowners who buy a new home qualify for a $6,500 credit if they have lived in their prior residence for five years, according to Regan Lachapelle, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The plan would extend the homebuyers credit, due to expire Nov. 30, to home purchases under contract by April 30, 2010, with borrowers allowed another 60 days to close the sale, according to a person familiar with the details of the agreement [source].

Since we are now in the market for our first home in this country, this comes as welcome news. It vindicates our decision to wait a while before we bought a home. In fact, the extension opens up the program to homeowners who may not be buying their first home but have lived in their existing home for at least five years (approx. the average period a household lives in one home in the U.S.) The tax credit is 10 percent lower but it is at least better than nothing.

On the other hand, I know of people including my in-laws who purchased their first-home this year just to take advantage of this tax credit. But considering the still-dire economic conditions and the sad state of the housing market, I had expected at least a one-time extension of this program similar to the ‘cash for clunkers’ program. There are arguments to be made on either side whether this program works or not but in our town which has been largely unaffected by the housing crisis, realtors and mortgage lenders have admitted that business was up by at least 20%.

This tax credit provides an impetus to potential homebuyers to take the plunge toward their first home and in turn stimulate the real estate market to get the ball rolling. However, this can also encourage behavior that landed us in this spot in the first place. I know of some people who rushed into buying their home this year just to take advantage of this tax credit. Buying a 200-300K home for 8K sounds ridiculous especially when you have a mountain of student loans. I know my in-laws who recently moved into their new home factored this in their decision but at least they put 20% down. For yuppies who wait and save up for their downpayment, this extension comes as a godFSMsend. More on the housing hunting later.

Providing excellent customer service singlehandedly transformed Carbonmade from a side project into a profitable company. I can confidently say that, as pro-active customer response is the most significant “update” to our product we’ve released to date.

Of course, this assumes that you have trustworthy partners who are expert programmers and can handle that aspect of the job well. However, the real and most significant stumbling factor to any entrepreneurial venture is the degree of risk averseness which in turn is affected by several inherent and environmental factors. More on that later.