Sorry, nothing new today. I got up at 5.30 a.m., watered my garden, answered all my emails, and then went to Pondicherry for the day to do some printing work on Guru Vachaka Kovai. It's 110 km each way, and for most of the day it was around 40 degrees. Fourteen hours later I am back home again, and not feeling inspired to do much else today. For those who are interested, the printer said I could probably have the first copy of Guru Vachaka Kovai in 5-6 weeks. I treat that as a reasonable minimum period, rather than a guaranteed completion date.
One of the emails I replied to this morning was from a woman who said that since I started posting photos and scans on the blog, the loading time for the main page had expanded to about ten minutes. I know what she means because I don't have broadband myself and I have noticed how slow the loading has become. I am going to reduce the number of posts on display from seven to four to see if that makes a difference. All the older stuff can be accessed by clicking on the titles in the right sidebar.
One of the emails I replied to this morning was from a woman who said that since I started posting photos and scans on the blog, the loading time for the main page had expanded to about ten minutes. I know what she means because I don't have broadband myself and I have noticed how slow the loading has become. I am going to reduce the number of posts on display from seven to four to see if that makes a difference. All the older stuff can be accessed by clicking on the titles in the right sidebar.
I should be posting something tomorrow.
12 comments:
Which is the guru vachaka kovai book you refer to?
If it's taking a long time to load on dial-up it will be due to the photos. Is there I wonder an option to load text only? It would load quicker that way.
-Michael Cape-Meadows-
I'll check on the text-only option.
The Guru Vachaka Kovai book referred to is the one that was recently translated by T. V. Venkatasubramanian, Robert Butler and myself. It is an annotated translation that contains notes by Muruganar (the author) himself, parallel quotes by Bhagavan, and explanatory notes by the editor (me). I have posted a few excerpts from it on this blog, and there are some other extracts from it on my site (www.davidgodman.org).
If your questions means 'What is this Guru Vachaka Kovai book that you referred to?' rather than a question about a particular edition, I would refer you to an excerpt from the introduction to the work that appears on my site. All the information you need should be there.
Another way to reduce loading time is to keep each photo at less than 50 KB each. I don't know much about this but I know there's a way to make photos 'web-ready', and therefore smaller files, and not sacrifice resolution or size on the page.
>"Another way to reduce loading time is to keep each photo at less than 50 KB each"
Indeed, a good point. All photo-editing programs I know have the option of reducing the size of photos to make them small enough for dial-up connections; besides, if one uses large photos it's not that long before one's blog allowance is used up ;) Are you using Windows, Mac or Linux?
It wasn't that long ago, as I remember, that most of us were on dial-up. Tiruvanamalai can be excruciatingly slow with its connections, even if it's broadband.
I agree with the smaller-photos suggestion. I was a bit profligate when I started, posting photos that were 2-300 kb each. I'll go back and reduce them. Also, as someone suggested, if I keep them small, I won't use up my photo ration so quickly.
I use Windows XP.
David, I looked on your website for info on the new translation of Guru Vachaka Kovai and could find only the Sadhu Om and Michael James version. I've read the latter and am interested in knowing more about what you and your colleagues are doing with the new translation. Could you direct me to it please? Thanks!
P.S. I looked in the section on books by you but found only the other one. I hope this is not an idiotic question.
They are not in the 'books' section because the book itself has not yet come out. You can find them in the section on Bhagavan's teachings. The two links are:
http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/gvk_extracts.shtml
http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/gvk_mountainpath.shtml
Jupes
There are also four posts on this blog that contain material from our new translation of Guru Vachaka Kovai:
http://sri-ramana-maharshi.blogspot.com/2008/05/true-nature-of-sleep.html
http://sri-ramana-maharshi.blogspot.com/2008/05/is-world-real.html
http://sri-ramana-maharshi.blogspot.com/2008/05/guru-vachaka-kovai-verses_02.html
http://sri-ramana-maharshi.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html
Thanks, David. I will check these out.
By the way, what prompted the three of you to do the new translation? Were you simply moved to do it or was there something else? Just curious.
I agree with the smaller-photos suggestion. I was a bit profligate when I started, posting photos that were 2-300 kb each. I'll go back and reduce them. Also, as someone suggested, if I keep them small, I won't use up my photo ration so quickly.
I use Windows XP.
long gone are the days when u wud post new everyday!!! :)
Why there have to be new translations of whatever Bhagavan wrote or taught? To my kmowledge, Sadhu Om himself translated Guru Vachaga Kovai by Muruganar very nicely! Why more and more of the same work? One could translate works which have not been translated already!
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