The Rain Machine

Since I started looking for Templates and Themes for my blog I came across a number of useful websites. If you're really really good at HTML, PHP you'll be better off with weblogs.us and other sites that offer better services for advance users rather than Blogger. If you want it quick, easy and free and want to stick to Blogger, here's a list of sites that would help you spice up your blog :)

Blogger Themes and Templates:
If you're a blogger user too, these themes are really simple to apply. They've got a nice number of themes but they're plain and simple. All you need to do the least is copy & paste to get it working.
Blogger-Templates: 1 2 | BlogTheme

CreateBlog.org
This site supports Blogger, Livejournal, Myspace, Xanga and other Weblogging Sites. They've got free layouts, scripts and tutorials.
Check it out

Others Designs
Hehe, I came across a bunch of girly template sites. They're really cool and nicely finished. Too bad there wasn't any classy template in black or dark red:
Weblog Design | Pink Design.
BlogSkins has lots of good designs but the site layout is a bit cluttered; makes it hard looking for what you need :S ...
Here's a bunch of crappy "free" template sites. They include dynamic templates, dreamweaver and flash templates too:
Template Monster | Template Store | Weblogger Themes. hehe, if I were you, I wouldn't bother going through such sites... :\ Oh and here's a nice list called "the ultimate blog template list". Hope the links there are worth it.

ShoutBoxes
Its a bit similar to 'adding a comment'. Many forums and bulletin boards have this feature. Its sort of a small chat room... Anyone can post in your shoutbox. They're also referred as "Tag-Boards". Its fun to have one :) ... There are many sites that offer this service.
shoutbox.us | myshoutbox.com | CBox | ChatterBox | Tag-Board
(Left to Right: Rated better in my opinion.)

Hacks, Tips & Tricks
When I was screwing around with HTML tags I placed a <'body'> tag in the itempage <'div'>. When I saw the preview the blogger bar appeared with the rest of the main text. It gave me an idea... >:D *chingggg*. Blogger sees your template and places its bar just before the last <'body'> tag :P ... And thats what i did. :D ... After sometime browsing I noticed there are a bunch of Blogger Hacks out there! You can make your blog display photos of those who posted comments... :D ... This is the forum post that led me to Blogger Hacks. Blogger itself has a hacks page in its help section. Do check out peek-a-boo comments. Two other sites have tons of more hacks, tips and tricks:
BloggerHacks | FreshBlog.
Here's another post on how to Remove the Bar permanently!

Counters & Referrers
There are many websites out there that offer free counters. Counters are good to keep track of how many people come to visit your blog. Most counters have their ugly names and/or annoying ads in it. Mostly people don't like having it in their counter... The one I'm using is by StatCounter. You can choose the type of counter you want and pretty much customize most of it. It gives you detailed information about the hits your counter got along with detailed statistics and stuff (from graph illustrations to IP Addresses of your visitors). Other than counters, you can show a list of pages that brought visitors to your blog.. This small service is provided by Referer.org and TrueFresco.org. Recently Google started something similar called Google Analytics. Its a must see :)

Well thats about it I guess. Loads of goodies :P ... All you need is a bunch of spare time and voila!! :D

It has begun! I'm banging my head against the wall with messy HTML and Meta tags.. :/ I'm googling like crazy for templates and stuff. Getting something from here, a tab bit from there. Sugar. Spice. And everything nice. But not anything girly :P ... Some of you might know what type of theme i'm trying to acquire for my blog.

Anyway. I turned my blog completely pink, black, and shocking green... and i still cant understand some of the CSS Styles. Making a hybrid like I am, is tough as shit!! :/ ... I'll be posting useful links later. Back to my hit-n-trial efforts of getting this baby spiced up :D

Spiced up??? Spice of your life?? There was a song like that.. wasn't it? No, I wasn't a Spice Girls fan. :P

I was browsing around randomly and came across this picture. lol... Its from a museum exhibit called Illegal Art. From the name it sounds a history of naughty, dirty and explicit pictures but its not. Copyright holders have threatened and sued many of the artists here for sampling, remixing, and recontextualizing other people's artistic creations without permission. Check it out.

About poor bert here:

"Thorneycroft had to withdraw this series of drawing from an exhibit in Canada to avoid getting sued."

"These drawings were scheduled to appear in Foul Play, an exhibition by Thorneycroft and Michael Boss to be held in Winnipeg, Manitoba. But when Thorneycroft and Boss were in discussions with Gallery 1C03, a lawyer advised the gallery that it would be liable for copyright infringement. (In Canada, copyright law is even more restrictive than it is in the United States. "Fair play," which is the Canadian equivalent of "fair use," doesn't allow for parody.)

According to Thorneycroft, the works from Foul Play reflect the hypocritical way that society ignores the violence that is often at the heart of child's play. She and Boss ultimately exhibited Foul Play at Winnipeg's SITE gallery. But for fear of legal problems, Thorneycroft removed these drawings of well-known cartoon characters from the show."

Here's more Illegal artwork. There's also Audio and Video art besides Visual. I found it pretty interesting...

The past week was full of travelling... Spending Eid with family in Islamabad. Going around meeting relatives.. A brunch at Pir Sohawa. A Daewoo bus loaded with chinese tourists came to the place later on. All in white bucket hats, backpacks and cameras. Food sucked which usually isnt the case. Made me sick for a day or so. I bet those chinese tourists would be cussing in chinese :S ... or would they cuss in english?? :S ... "Yuck Fou!!" :S
*shakes head*
Anyway, I had no access to the internet at my Grandparent's place in Islamabad. I felt being disconnected :P ... Spending 4 to 5 days there was tough, but having 5 young cousins around (aging from 1 year to 3 year olds) kept each day from being as boring as shit.

Me finally back home in Lahore for another week. Pappi (aka Osman Arif) is here too till mid November. Our NUS wouldve-been-engineer turned AKU will-be-doctor spent the summers (around 2 months) with his family and elder sister in USA and later met up with the other guys. Huj, RA-ing at LUMS, left for India on the 8th. He'd be debating in Bangalore representing LUMS.
Ugh, I want to graduate too :P

RSX Diploma!
Back to good old late-night browsing, I clicked on some ad that led me to getting an Acura RSX Diploma from the Acura RSX Institute, lol.. crazy... :P ... Check it out. Its a really cool 3D flash based website. You have to "earn credits" to get a diploma, and you get 100% after you've "gone through the whole site 100%" lol... :P ... If you've got a slow crappy internet connection, don't bother clicking.

What is the Rain Machine?!?
Actually I came up with the 2 words just like that. Didn't have to mean anything. Rain: obviously taken from my nickname on IRC. But now I plan to start a small stupid story, post every week or so and have a small flash animation with each post. Its a fun idea i'd like to start on whenever I get the time. :D

Blog Facelift!! :/
I'm sick of it. The theme, the looks, the way stuff is organised here. I feel it should change now. Something different, cool and ... big :S ... Expect really big changes :D ... So far I've updated the Blog Ring... err... Ring?? umm...

Or

... whatever :/
*poof*