New Blog Features

You might have noticed two new features on the sidebar of my blog. The first is "Who Links To Me".

This was borrowed from Pandabonium's blog week before last. As the name implies, this feature gives an idea as to who is linking to the blog.

The other feature is the Neo Counter and this I got from the Moody Minstrel's blog. Generally, I'm not concerned about traffic volume to my blog. This Neo Counter is interesting in that it allows for various configs by country and city and each category allows for a few ways of tracking traffic. It also offers four cool backgrounds. I chose to show just one type of each category, recent cities and daily visitors by country, and I chose backgrounds of the Savanna (with three birds flying across the sunset sky) and Tropical (with an airplane across the sky and two nuts (I mean coconuts) falling to the ground.

On the first day after installing this, I noticed a city called Sheboygan, WI, which reminds me of "Home Alone". Remember the kind gentleman (played by the late John Candy) who offered the mom a ride in his van when she could not get an air-ticket home? Perhaps I'm mistaken.

Anyway, I saw cities like Soldetalje (Sweden); Burnaby and Port Coquitlam (Canada); and Igea Marina (Italy), Noordbroeksterhamrik (Netherlands) on the city-roll. Wow! These are cities that I had never even heard of and it is really exciting seeing them. Of course there are familiar ones like Bahamas, Quezon City (The Philippines), Santa Fe, London, Manchester, Bristol, Melbourne, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, KL and the different regions of Malaysia and even some of these are not familiar to me. Some geography lesson here. (And I just saw Ulaanbaator (Mongolia) - this is way too cool.)

As much as it is exhilarating for me to see those cities, I imagine it would also be exhilarating for visitors to the blog to see their cities being listed. I know I would get a kick out of it if I were to see my city on a city-roll on anyone's blog. Wouldn't you?

Excitement does not even come close. I am more in awe of how borderless the world has become and communication is merely a mouse-click away. Awesome! But a sombre thought here - why can't we even live together in peace?!

Well, give them a try. These features are free and easy, i.e., free to use and easy to install. Thanks PandaB and MM, for showing the way.

Switching to a different matter, I have decided not to wait until December to change the music video. I changed it over the weekend to "Forever Young". I figured "Hotel California" has served us well and need a rest. I hope you will enjoy the new one. Here are the lyrics to the song - I thought you might want to sing along.


FOREVER YOUNG
Alphaville

Let's dance in style, let's dance for a while
Heaven can wait we're only watching the skies
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst
Are you going to drop the bomb or not?

Let us die young or let us live forever
We don't have the power but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The music's for the sad men

Can you imagine when this race is won
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders we're getting in tune
The music's played by the madmen

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever young

Some are like water, some are like the heat
Some are a melody and some are the beat
Sooner or later they all will be gone
Why don't they stay young

It's so hard to get old without a cause
I don't want to perish like a fading horse
Youth is like diamonds in the sun
And diamonds are forever

So many adventures couldn't happen today
So many songs we forgot to play
So many dreams swinging out of the blue
We let them come true

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?