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Life throws challenges at you at the most unexpected time. You can either choose to accept the challenge and make the best of it; or ignore it and probably regret for the rest of your life.

I wanted to be a freelancing consultant six years back – when the markets were high and CRM (and ERP) consultancy was hot. At that time I was posted in Belgium and most of my colleagues were freelancing. But for various reasons, I couldn’t get into freelancing.

Now, there is a widespread pessimism in the market and I got a freelancing contract! How ironic is that?

I took more than a week to debate with myself. The boss, the team, the work and the clients made the work environment one of the best I ever had; but having already handled series of roles that were available, I was running the risk of becoming complacent.

On the other hand, the freelancing contract is on e-governance. With increasing economic growth in India, e-governance is becoming prominent; and with tech savvy Barack Obama taking control in the US, I believe, many countries will embrace e-governance. Downside? I’ve to move to Delhi, learn Hindi and probably understand ‘red tape’, ‘bureaucracy’ and ‘politics’ in their real terms.

Having debated with myself, the pros and cons, I discussed with the family. Honestly speaking, I expected resistance from them. Because, for the past three years my sister and I are settled in Bangalore and our parents are with us. We were able to take family trips and have quality time together as a family. To my pleasant surprise, they were extremely supportive. That gave me the confidence to take it further and discuss with friends. Finally I took the decision to be a freelancer.

Slowly things fell in place – resignation was accepted; last date finalized; contract was signed; and joining date accepted.

I’ve been preparing myself by reading a lot about freelancing (and e-governance); yet I’m sure there will be plenty of things that I’ll have to work out as I continue through the freelancing world. I’m also convinced that the thrill of being a in a new place, meeting new people and learning new things will keep me motivated to continue the journey.

For now, I’m looking forward to Jan 1st. Because on Jan 1st, 2009, I am becoming a freelancer.

If you are reading this post on your favorite RSS reader, you may not notice any change. But if you read it on the website, you will notice that site layout is changed. There are two reasons for this change:

I was running an older version of WordPress (2.3). I didn’t have any issues with 2.3 – security or usability. I just wanted to check out the latest features offered by the newer version. That one was a geeky reason. There was another reason too.

When I started this blog, way back in 2003, I had no particular topic or direction in mind. Since I was interested in many topics – programming, theology, consulting, new ideas and so on – I wrote about whatever came in freely, when I remembered to write. These articles generated web traffic, beyond my surprise, but I wasn’t focused on anything in particular. I was wandering and polluting the pages.

Now that I’ve become a freelancer (oh! I didn’t tell you that? That will be another post), I’ve decided to keep this blog focused. I hope to keep the articles under the below categories:

Programming - I’ve been a programmer and I loved it – COBOL, C, C++, C#, Visual Basic and now Python. I find that Python provides an easier route to translate my thoughts into working software. Hence, posts in this category will be primarily on Python (Django and IronPython). This category will also include my learning on other related aspects of programming – architecture, design, testing, documentation and so on.

Personal-MBA – As programmers, we’re comfortable sitting in front of the computer and program. But if we have to be successful, we also have to know to promote ourselves (or product or idea), negotiate a price (or salary), persuade potential stakeholders to support our idea, manage interpersonal relations and so on. I could not force myself into going to school again. So I’m following Josh Kaufman’s idea of Personal MBA – getting the knowledge through reading the best books. Posts in this category will be my learning from these books.

Travel – The Smell, Sight and Sound of new land are too much for me to resist. I’ll capture my experiences in these articles.

Elsewhere – I’m a man of many interests and will remain so. I am not limiting my interests – just focusing this blog to the above topics. This category of posts will be aggregation of posts that I post elsewhere.

General- Site updates and any articles that doesn’t fit into the above categories.

With this thought process, I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.7. WordPress team has always emphasized on ease-of-use and it has improved upon it, version by version. In 2.7, they’ve gone one step ahead – plug-ins can be installed from within the admin login (you don’t have to access via shell or ftp – except for few plug-ins that need change in file permissions). WordPress come with fantastic set of plug-ins and here are the plug-ins that I’ve installed:

Akismet  – This is a must plug-ins to keep the spammers away from your comment section. You need an API key which, you can get by registering in WordPress.org.

Official StatCounter Plug-in – I use StatCounter for web statistics. It is easy to install and provides a simple tracking mechanism.

FeedBurner : WordPress provides feeds by default, but feedburner provides facility to track subscriptions.

WordPress Mobile Edition – You Can’t Afford to Lose Mobile Readers. This plug-in enables your blog to be viewable in any mobile browser, irrespective of the operating system. Traffic from this mobile plug-in is not part of the web traffic as Statcounter plug-in depends on JavaScript.

Other plug-ins include: Simple Google Sitemap, Contact Form 7 , Simple Archive Generator, Clean Archives Reloaded, WordPress Reports.

The theme used is Arthemia. I selected this theme because of its professional magazine like style with placeholders for Google Ads.

If you’ve comments on improving the site, please leave them in the comments section.

I’ve always been a Microsoft Windows user – primarily it was mandated by the corporate world. Recently I decided to use Linux for home laptop and was pleasantly surprised about the switch. Kubuntu 8.04 comes closer (in some cases, even better) to user experience and availability of mature applications to Windows XP (I haven’t used Vista, so can’t comment). It has been about 2 weeks, since I’m using Linux exclusively and I’m happy with it.

Installation was smooth and various configurations also went smooth. However, finding applications that I like for various needs took lot of time – reading and reviewing applications takes time, whatever be the platform.

Below are the applications that I’m using in Kubuntu box.

Web Browsing – I’ve been using FireFox and Opera under Windows. Both of them are available under Linux.

Email – I use GMail as a primary mail agent and hence no need for a client. I tried Evolution and am happy about it. Just to reduce the bandwidth usage, I continue to use gmail. If there is a need to use desktop client (for offline usage), I might give Evolution a try.

RSS Feed Reader: Not found a decent one. On windows used to FeedDemon. In Kubuntu, used Akregator, part of Evolution suite. But am not satisfied with the features of it and still looking around for a desktop offline RSS reader. Currently using Google Reader.

Twitter: I’m not a very aggressive user of Twitter. But I do get a good amount of information from it and I would like to continue to be on Twitter. None of the Linux native applications were good. I’ve installed TwitterDeck using Adobe AIR platform. So far it is pretty good.

Add / Remove Programs: Kubuntu has a nice ‘Adept Installer’, which gives almost similar (read as better) UI than its windows counterpart. If I want a geeky control, I can always use Synaptic Package Manager.

Office: Word and Excel has come to be an important part of business life. I’ve been using Open Office even under windows. So it was easier to adapt to it under Linux. Infact I’ve installed KOffice too, though haven’t started to use it heavily. Open Office seems to be sufficient enough.

Games: I like to take a break sometimes, just to freshen up my mind. I don’t want to think. Just divert the mind – I find ‘Five or More’ to be easy to play with and also not to make me think too much.

Messenger: I used pidgin in Windows and hence migrating was no big deal. It can seamlessly connect with yahoo, Google and msn accounts.

Programming : Having started as a geek’s platform, it is no surprise that Linux comes with plenty of tools for programming – IDEs, Subversion clients, Standalone DBs and so on. Though I’ve passed the programmer stage, I still continue to play with programming – primarily on Python and its various flavors. Python comes pre-installed in Linux. IronPython and Django comes along in the repository. (It was a surprise to find out that IronPython comes installed in a Linux distribution was a surprise). I’ve downloaded web2py and I might give it a shot.

Virtualization: In case you don’t want to part completely with Microsoft Windows and want to still run some of your investements on Windows, you can use VirtualBox (don’t use the one comes in the source repository; download and install from VirtualBox site).

Photography:  I have been using Adobe Photoshop Elements. I tried it under Kubuntu with wine. It didn’t work. Not yet comfortable with GIMP. So have installed Elements on Windows with VirtualBox (as a matter of fact, I’m running Windows purely for Elements).

Blogging: I used Microsoft Live Writer under Windows a desktop blogging application. KBlogger is a desktop blogging application for Kubuntu. I’m also testing with ScribeFire, a FireFox plugin. But both are far from a match to MLW.

Personal Finance : I’m don’t keep a strict track of my finances. But KMyMoney seems to be simple and easy to use. It might help me to do so.

Zim Desktop Wiki: Interestingly Kubuntu has other applications. One such is Zim Desktop Wiki. I’m using it to collect all ideas.

What do I need more?
I use Nokia E71 and I haven’t found a tool for desktop integration. If I find one for two way sync for Nokia, then Kubuntu comes as a self-contained installation.