Google Says: Happy Valentines Day with a Twist

Have you seen today’s Google Doodle? If not then I’ve saved it just for you:

manukhanna.com-Valentine Day

Did you notice the error? No! Can’t blame you, at first I too didn’t notice that Google has misspelt itself. The “l” is missing from Google and the Google Doodle reads “Googe”

I first noticed this error yesterday afternoon and now at 03:40 AM (15th February) the same logo is still there, surely this is intentional, else somebody from Google’s army of geeks would have noticed it and got it removed.

UPDATE: The alphabet “l” isn’t missing; the stem of the strawberry is the “l”. Here’s why they did what they did:

When you look at the logo, you may worry that we forgot our name overnight, skipped a letter, or have decided that “Googe” has a better ring to it. None of the above. I just know that those with true romance and poetry in their soul will see the subtlety immediately. And if you’re feeling grouchy today, may I suggest eating a strawberry.

Couldn’t have been more subtle

Here’s what blogss from across the blogosphere have to say about this:

Death of a Blog

Over the years I have learned to take regular backups of all my word, on my local system or on the Internet. So a data loss has hardly ever given me sleepless nights, not until now.

As you would have noticed, this blog as it existed prior to 26th January 2007 is now dead. It so happened that during my vacation up North I did something really silly (no I don’t know what caused it) that rendered this website bare, void of any content. This didn’t bother me much as I had four backups, all created using…

Over the years I have learned to take regular backups of all my word, on my local system or on the Internet. So a data loss has hardly ever given me sleepless nights, not until now.

As you would have noticed, this blog as it existed prior to 26th January 2007 is now dead. It so happened that during my vacation up North I did something really silly (no I don’t know what caused it) that rendered this website bare, void of any content. This didn’t bother me much as I had four backups, all created using Skippy’s WP Database Backup Plugin, now managed by Austin Matzko stored safely on my system here in Hyderabad. So once I got back, I fired up my FTP client, uploaded the WordPress 2.1 setup files and executed the installation script. Next, I dug up the backup and restored the database using phpMyAdmin.

After the restore finished, I viewed my site and noticed that all the content except the posts were back. So I emptied the DB and imported the backup once again. Still same result. I tried restoring using the other three files as well, but the result in each case was the same. After close examination of the .sql file, I noticed that the code for the wordpress_posts table was missing, all of it. I looked far and wide to find a way to figure out why the plugin left out only the “wordpress_posts” table while creating the backups?

This is really annoying and frustrating for me as I had put in a lot of effort in writing the 70-odd posts, not to mention tweaking the plugins and themes to meet my requirements. I’ve decided to chuick this plugin and use WP-DbManager instead.

UPDATE: Thanks to Tina and Technorati’s cache of my blog, I’ve recovered 10-odd posts from the original 70. I wonder what I would do without Tina! Thanks sweety!

Second Leg of our Trip Up North

We had split our trip up North into two parts– 26th Jan to 31st Jan in Chandigarh and then 1st February to 4th February in NOIDA. We came to Chandigarh first because of the shanti path in memory of mom, who passed away an year ago. Originally, Tina and I were to go to NOIDA together but I’ve had to stay back for a day or two for certain engagements that might help us shift back to Chandigarh for good. Wish us luck!