Adil Najam
We are in the process of making some important changes here at ATP and I thought this picture captured very well the mood of these changes. A mood of accomplishment; and of possibly having sown some seeds that might just take root if the conditions are right.
Regular readers would remember that from the beginning the goal has been to turn ATP into a team-blog (here). When I first started the blog on June 11, I was not sure anyone would even come to visit. Today, just over two months (68 days) into the experiment, this is the 158th post and we have had over 60,000 visits. In many practical ways Guest Posters but even more so for the active discussion from all of you.
Now its time to take the next step.
Please welcome Bilal Zuberi and Owais Mughal who are joining me in the day-to-day management and editing of ATP.
Most of you are, of course, very familiar with both Bilal (on Naii, on Ishtiaq Ahmed and Inspector Jamshed, on Mueen Akhter, and on The Greeing of Pakistan) and Owais (on Goth Alla-Bino, on Chai, on Fountain Pens, and on Rickshaws) who have been been regular and frequent posters of ATP. They have already been very active on ATP and now kindly agreed to take on major responsibilities in its management. They will, I am confident, bring even greater variety and diversity to ATP.
We will, of course, continue to have Guest Posts from the wonderful bloggers who have been contributing in the past and, hopefully, from more new ones. I believe that these have been a central element of how ATP has developed and we want to continue on this path. I would like to thank all who have been contributing Guest Posters and also invite our readers to consider contributing Guest Posts (see here).
Unfortunately, none of the above means that I will disappear. Getting rid of me will not be that easy. I am having too much fun doing this to let go. While you will see a little less of me (as I actually start doing work for those who pay my salary), you will probably still see more than you want to; at least for a little while longer.
And, finally, about the photograph at the top of this post. Titled ‘The Farmer’ it is part of the portfolio of Razaq Vance. Razaq sahib is in the same profession as me – a teacher – but is immensely more talented and his photographs always leave me entirely mesmerized. I plan to do a proper feature on his photography soon, but along with Umair Ghani (where work we presented on ATP here and here), Razaq Vance captures the grandeur of life in rural Punjab like few others. Thank you Razaq Sahib.
[By the way, the second post I did with Umair’s photogrpahs – about the rural-urban divide in Pakistan – was one of my most favorite posts on ATP; both because of the topic and becasue of his photographs].
Somebody made a suggestion to emphasize text more than videos/pictures. That is NOT a good idea. This blog is interesting the way it is right now, please don’t make it a bland text based one.
Thumbs up to the contributions of everyone involved for making ATP such an interesting blog and an integral part of our daily internet life :) A very warm welcome to Bilal Zuberi and Owais Mughal and best of luck with ATP’s future endeavors.
Picture of the day and its title are appropriate for these changes and accomplishments. An excellent pick!
Welcom Bilal and Owais !!!
Thanks Adil for such a wonderful initiative. Its always pleasure to see the ATP posts and to particpate in the discussion. Hope everybody will participate with the same spirit.
Thank you all for these kind messages.
Mansoor, Adnan… don’t you worry; I am not going anywhere; at least not yet 8-)
After all, I am a Pakistani. I was trained never to give up anything at all… not without screaming and shouting… as a friend of mine used used to say: ‘salli bhi muft millay to lay lou, patta nahiN kab kaam aaa ha-aye’ 8-)
On the design, I agree with many of the sentiments; especially the very small font on the comments (my browser, Safari, allows me to change the font on the but I believe other browsers don’t). On some of these things (including font size or ability to edit/spell-check comments) we can do little, because the template is pre-set since we are on the free WordPress service. A number of friends have already convinced us to move to a domain of our own and supposedly that will allow us more flexibility in these things. We will try to do so soon and one of our priorities would be finding a new design that allows for larger font size for easier writing and reading of comments.
I am also told that this and all WordPress blogs are best viewed by using Firefox (downloadable free) and sometimes style problems come up with Internet Explorer … can people confirm if that is so?
On the downloading speed issue, Dr. Awab (Teethmaestro) had earlir alerted me to the fact that our download was too large and too slow. He also taught me some tricks using which I cut the size of the page into half (mostly by using lower resolution pictures). We are now very careful on piccture size. We will keep trying to improve download speed. Can people who are using telephone connections tell us just how big a problem this is for them so we can figure out how drastic our response should be.
We hope to do a redesign over the next many weeks so if you have other ideas.
Adil bhai hope you would keep sharing your thoughts as a “Reader/commentor”.Welcome to new guys.