When I go to Dharamsala, no matter what my intended major focus, I always have a half dozen concurrent side projects. No exception this time. I spent several days talking with people and keeping those relationships and projects alive. And introducing new people to old people. Playing the role of human glue to bring people together. This was my fourth trip.

Now that I’m finished there, I’ve returned to Delhi, having arrived by train last night. The students from Nigeria and California, with the teachers and part of the video crew, were all driven down (in seven cars) to Pathankot where we picked up the overnight train to Delhi. We arrived in Delhi at 5 am. Delhi streets are fairly busy any time of day or night, but we had an easy time of it since we had a “tourist” bus waiting, which is at the disposal of the student group for the next couple of days.

(The photo shows the computer room at Chonor house, overflowing with me attempting a video transfer, two video cameras running, and two computers on the Internet.)

Today the photographers and video makers (and I) are looking thru photos and copying and editing them, as well as copying video files. And preparing blog entries which can be uploaded from the YMCA around the corner. While in Dharamsala, I copied the TCV videos (about 20GB) to a LaCie USB drive, and this morning I copied the Nigerian videos from Emmanuel’s camera to the same drive. This drive will go with John Sorensen back to GraceCreek Media so the video will be available for use in the documentary that’s being made for Project Happiness.

Several thoughts, and perhaps a cautionary tale or two for traveling geeks:

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Until recently, Google provided a pretty straightforward “Sitesearch” service that any webmaster could use as a “local site search engine.” Pretty simple to configure and use – I did one for a private client of mine a month ago, and it took about half an hour to configure and then install on their web site. And SiteSearch provided a Search box that permitted your site visitors to search just your site or to search the entire web – their choice.
But it’s now gotten more complex. And it’s gotten much better.

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Following up on my post about the decision whether to use free software or not, this MacWorld article Blogger bugs bug bloggers- Bloggers frustrated by Blogger bugs, Google says it will get better describes the woes of those using Blogger’s free online hosting following a recent upgrade of the software. It’s upsetting to base any portion of your business on a service and have it come crashing down, but probably even more upsetting if you base it on a free service like Blogger and then have it come crashing down.

Google/Blogger says the problem affect relatively few people, but there are obviously many people who use the service as part of their commercial activities, and these people are in real deep trouble.

I avoid this by hosting my blogs on servers that I own, and I only upgrade software after making a trial installation or two and I test it at least a few days if not a week before I deploy it to other sites. (I maintain 15 WordPress sites at the moment and have two servers in operation, so this isn’t the solution for everybody.)