Home Page: http://sepiamutiny.com/blog/

RSS Feed: http://sepiamutiny.com/blog/feed/

Please let me know if something appears broken or out of place. Thank you for your continued readership.

Team Sonia – Sonia’s brother Sumit Rai, family and friends are organizing drives today and in the next few weeks. Please take the time to help spread the word about the drives and join the NMDP registry if you have not already done so. You can visit www.curesonia.org, or visit their Facebook page.

As you may be aware from our previous posts on the topic, the National Bone Marrow Registry (NMDP) is in dire need of more ethnic donors. South Asians, as well as any minority, and especially people of mixed ethnicity are needed. Sonia is currently receiving excellent care at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, but in order to survive beyond the next few months, she requires a bone marrow transplant. Most matches occur within ethniticty and increasing the number of South Asians registered as potential bone marrow donors will help Sonia as well as many others who are searching.

Among the 7 million registered donors currently, approximately, only 2% are South Asians. Ethnic Minorities have a 30-40% chance of finding a match from the existing NMDP registry. Caucasians have an 80% chance of finding a match from the existing NMDP registry [link]. The saddest truth of this process for a patient is that finding a match is not sufficient. I attended a talk by a Samar representative who mentioned a South Asian patient. After a lengthy search, he found a match and moved to the Seattle area. Unfortunately just before the donation process, the donor backed out. Another patient had 4 matches that did not work out.

Approximately 50% of all Ethnic Minority donors will NOT push through with donating if called as a possible match for a patient. (whether because they are unreachable, they say “no”, or become medically ineligible). Whereas over 70% of Caucasian donors WILL proceed with donating if called as a possible match [link].

What can you do?

LEARN

Learn about AML and what committment it takes to be a donor. The process has gotten a lot simpler over the years. It does not take a blood test or a needle, only a simple, non-invasive cheek cell sample to become registered. If you are contacted as potential match, learn about what is involved. Learn about some of the facts and myths.

JOIN

What Sonia and others like her need are committed and available donors. This holiday season, spend a small amount of your time and be the miracle someone is praying for. Find a drive organized by Team Sonia. For the most current information, visit their Facebook page. Here are some upcoming events I found starting today. Team Sonia plans to organize more events on the East Coast as well:

Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drive: Nachi’s Birthday. Where : 25 Lusk Street, San Francisco, CA. When : Today from 18:00 to 21:00

Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drive: Darbar-E-Khalsa. Where : Pomona Fairplex, 1101 W. McKinley Ave, Pomona, CA. When : Saturday 25 December from 11:00 to 17:00.
Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drive: Fremont Gurdwara. Where : Fremont Gurdwara, 196 Gurdwara Road, Fremont, CA. When : Sunday 26 December from 10:00 to 14:00.
Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drive: El Sobrante Gurdwara. Where : El Sobrante Gurdwara, 3550 Hill Crest Road, El Sobrante, CA. When : Sunday 26 December from 10:30 to 14:00.
Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drive: Livermore Temple Where : Shiva-Visnu Temple, 1232 Arrowhead Ave, Livermore, CA When : Sunday 26 December from 11:00 to 15:00
Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drive: Sunnyvale Temple Where : Sunnyvale Temple, 420-450 Persian Drive, Sunnyvale, CA When : Saturday 1 January 2011 from 11:00 to 17:00
Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drive: Los Angeles New Years Drive Where : Valley Hindu Temple, 18700 Roscoe Blvd, Northridge, CA When : Saturday 1 January 2011 from 11:00 to 17:00

or learn about how to join and become registered.

STAY IN TOUCH

I gave my email address when I joined, and now I get a monthly newsletter which also contains my Donor Center and Record information and a convenient link to update my contact information. If you have already registered, stay committed to this cause. Remember to update your contact information.

SPREAD THE WORD

Even if you are already registered, you can still do more. Email, blog, tweet about it and spread awareness using your favorite networking media.

Please let us know if you continue to experience any problems. Thank you for your patience.

Kunjan and I will be doing some site maintenance tonight after 10 pm EST. During this time you may not be able to post comments.

This is a major technical upgrade for us. As long as things don’t go really bad (fingers crossed), you shouldn’t notice any difference tomorrow morning. As part of this upgrade, we may also be moving our server (again) to an undisclosed location in the United States (as part of our security measures) and so a DNS update can cause some of you to be looking at the site on the old server (depending on your ISP’s service or where you are in the world).

We will update this post once everything is back to normal. I’ll leave the comments open. After maintenance, please let us know here if you notice anything broken (if comments are working) or email me at chaitan [at] sepiamutiny.com.

Thank you for your support and patience while we continue to keep all the pieces working.

We interrupt this blog to bring you this notice that Sepia Mutiny site will be down for maintenance between 2am – 4am EST on 8/26/2009. This includes DNS updates of our domain which would mean that for some users, depending on your location across the globe, the site may not work for up to 24-48 hours.

Please bear with us during this transition. Back to the real bloggers …

For the longest time we have been preparing a makeover for this site. We have years (yes, years) worth of emails, documents, diagrams, ideas about a face lift. We hoped the site only needed a few diet pills, a little exercise, a moderate amount of makeup and some decent coordinated colors to improve her. Of course, none of that worked. We finally decided it was time to put her under a professional’s knife. Please don’t accuse us of being shallow. We are allowed to indulge in fantasy. This is needed for all websites of a certain age. We are not trying to compete with any hot new Web 2.0 genre sites. We don’t want her to just look pretty. We want her to work better. We wanted perfect. We heard from quite a few young, creative and brilliant designers during our search. We finally settled on Avani as the one .

As amazing as her imagination is, the quality that most impressed me about Avani was her courage. She was not afraid of this project. I did my duty and warned her that plenty before her had tried to tame this beast and failed. Avani did not flinch. She calmly examined the patient and then asked – “Tell me what you don’t like about her. ” And that’s how it started , over seven months ago. Discussions, sketches, mockups and of course, airbrushing. Months of cuts and carving, agonizing over little details. And finally, here were are. Voilà! Isn’t she fabulous?We had a pre-launch party where the Mutineers gathered at the bunker to celebrate and toast the months of hard work Avani and I put in. (Although, Abhi’s toast was rather short to my suprprise. I guess he doesn’t like being called a slave driver all that much. Hmmm…) Our SM Intern coaxed the always busy Avani into a short interview. Thanks SM Intern, for letting me use a copy of your transcript. I’m sorry about Abhi not letting the interns write any articles on the Blog until they graduate. Anyway, about Avani’s interview:

SM Intern: How did you get suckered into this project?
Avani: I was kidnapped from my home, locked up in a dark room chained to a laptop that only runs Photoshop.

SM Intern: What are some of the goals you wanted to achieve with this design?
Avani: Beyond the aesthetic side of things (aka “making it pretty”), I wanted to make it easier to find, comment and post things.

SM Intern: How is this different from real design work that you do and actually get paid for?
Avani: Chaitan wouldn’t let me use Flash.

SM Intern: Seriously, how badly did we need this upgrade?
Avani: Very badly.

SM Intern: Why would our readership care about design anyway? Our lurkers are much more interested in the drama between Sepia fans and trolls on a daily basis.
Avani: Of course drama is more interesting. I know some people may not initially like the redesign. That’s cool, just give it a few days and see if you change your mind after you get used to it. Change is hard, but it can be good.

And that’s enough of that. You know, Avani can get a bit talkative sometimes. And she was totally kidding about the being kidnapped part. I’ve spent years in the bunker chained to a laptop and I’m fine. She’s still new. She’ll get used to it. And then what do you know, the SM Intern wanted to interview me. It may seem tacky to write about my own interview, but hey, who else is going to do it? The Bloggers are all too busy covering “important” stuff. Anyway, here goes … (sorry about copy-pasting this transcript verbatim. It may need a few corrections, but I hate typing, unless it’s programming code, of course)

SM Intern: What do you want me to ask you?
Me: Look at the cheat sheet I gave you dummy.

SM Intern: What are some of the goals you wanted to achieve with this design?
Me: I wanted to create a very friendly user interface that synergizes the use of web 2.0 technologies with … wait, that’s not … ok, stop asking me about design stuff. I don’t care what that girl in the next cell does with Photoshop and all that mumbo jumbo. Frankly, she spends way too much time screaming for fresh air than do actual work. And that’s not the cheat sheet I gave you.

SM Intern: Oh, sorry. What are some of the new features that the readers are going to be excited about?
Me: (very serious tone) The new design is not just about coming up with something flashy. We wanted to weigh the various components of the site and bring some of the most important parts right into the front page.

• The news column gives a quick overview of the top ‘viewed’ news in the past 24 hours.
  
• Everything seems bigger: Actually not everything is big. Some of the fonts are the same. Other tiny fonts have been increased for relative emphasis.
  
• What happened to the News tab?: The voting system has been removed and instead the news section now records the number of clicks/views by the readers. Additionally the news section has been moved to the front page. Anyone interested in viewing the news section exclusively can click any of the sub-menu links for the section (e.g., New, Top in 24 Hr, 7 days, etc.), and a dedicated page will show all the news items. We hope this new ranking system better captures the most relevant news based completely on user-generated content and readership.
  
• The Twitter bar on the home page keeps you updated of the latest in the Twitter dimension. The RSS feed, Facebook group page, Google links are right up top.
  
• In addition to being able to emailing blog post articles, you can now also share blog posts on Facebook. Use the link following each post.

In the spirit of spreading some Sepia to the South I’ve decided to do my part by hosting a meet-up.

I know there are tons of you , including me, (I know, I know – commenturbation, hehehe) in and around Atlanta that point your browsers here daily from both work and home (and do your actual work while taking a break and waiting for the next snarky comment), but eggjactly how many brownz live on the Southsyyyyde? I want to know. Who are you? Why do you have so much time? Where do you hang out? How long have you been suffering spring allergies in Atlanta? I have many more pointless questions. Any takers?

Please RSVP here or to chaitan at sepiamutiny dot com so I have an idea to find a place for Brunch for that day. Suggestions welcome. I’ve been behind the scenes as the site admin for too long and its time for me to get out of the bunker.

Date: Saturday, June 28, 2008.
Place: TBD
Agenda: Brunch (and whatever we feel like doing after)

Caution: I will be bringing my camera and I’m not afraid to use it.

Update: Due to an utterly bad guess on my part while imagining the schedules of my fellow SMers in Atlanta, this meetup is canceled. Looks like it’s just a case of bad timing. No break for me. Back to the bunker then. Another time perhaps …

While some of the bloggers went fishing during the summer, some of us were left behind on purpose sigh!. The monkeys have been training us, the new admins, in the ND bunker all summer! After barely getting a passing grade, we set to work and now have something we promised you.

You thought it wasn’t possible anymore to impede your work-day productivity reading Sepia Mutiny. I’ve got News for you. The News tab has been re-designed with new features so that the content can be customized by YOU! Yes, shiny new toys for those fond of the F5 key. Here are the highlights of the changes / new features …Scope: The changes / new features only apply to the News and Events tabs. The blog itself remains unaffected. We know you love it just the way it is, so we dare not change too many things without warning. Some of us may even be too old to cope with change … ummm …

Sign In: Most of the updated / new features now require you to sign in. During sign in, you will be taken to a third party website – TypeKey, an authentication service from the makers of MovableType. After you (freely register if necessary and) sign in, you will be automatically redirected back to our site for us to uniquely recognize you as a sepia user. Hold it, before you say it, we are not trying to track you down, we just want to be able to tell you all apart. And it’s not just us, sometimes you need to tell each other apart. Specifically, we will not publish your email address associated with your TypeKey account. We respect your privacy.

Post Story / Event: You must now be signed in to post a story or event to take credit as tipster. This affects the Enlighten The Mutiny! bookmarklet you use to post stories. You must be signed in, prior to using the bookmarklet, to post a story.

Mutinous?: Sometimes it’s not enough to send us tips, spam our email, call our cell phones and bang on our doors in the middle of the night to tell us you’ve got a new story! Each news story posted can now be voted using the mutinous? link next to the story. This will tell us and fellow brown folk what’s interesting, hot and sizzling andhra pickle hot!

Popular Menu: The popular menu on top will sort the news stories based on what you like.
– New is the default option that shows the latest tips we receive.
– Popular sorts news tips that have been generating a lively discussion in their comments section.
– Top in 24 Hr, 7 Days, 30 Days, 365 Days all sort news tips based on the number of people macacas think it’s mutinous.
– The above sort options can be further filtered by Category, such as Humor, Politics etc.

Profile: You can tell the world who you are, what you do and confuse us with your strange handles, or just tell us like it is and keep it real (simple)! Tell us a little bit (or a lot) about yourself on your profile. Your profile will be automatically linked to your tip or comment handle.
– Stats: The profile page also features a stats section in order to distinguish the regulars from the visitors.
– Stories: The stories sections will show the stories you posted, you liked, and your popular and top submissions.

Comments: We know you have a lot to say about a lot of things, so here is even more room to say it. Each news tip can now be discussed in its own comments section. And plus, heavily discussed news topics make it into the popular section of the news tab, so we and fellow site visitors know where all the ruckus is.

Semi-auto moderation: From time to time (or perhaps most of the time these days) we have the he said, she said debate in comment threads turning into flame wars. Here’s a way to curb that a little bit .
– In the News tab, tell us if a story is a duplicate (or commercial spam) by using the Duplicate (or Spam) link and we will take care of such old or duplicate stories, and ensure the earliest tipster gets credit. Use the buttons, and help keep the News tab clean and interesting with only the latest stories.
– In the News Comments page, tell us if a comment is violating our comment policy i.e., abusive (or irrelevant / spam), by using the Abusive (or Spam) button and we can delete it for you. Use these buttons, and help keep the Comments section stay on-topic.
– Please use these moderation features judiciously. Improper use of these features will be tracked and may result in banning. So play nice.

In The Works: We are working on more toys for you to play with. Got suggestions? Feel free to share with me or via our Contact Us page. Pats on the back are welcome too.

Credits: Ok, stop rolling your eyes. This took a lot of time and effort in creating.

Abhi has been the driving force behind this. All the time he spent discussing ideas and patiently answering questions about every little detail. Thanks! This project would have never happened without him.

Thanks to Neha for her support. And thanks to Kunjan especially. So many times I’ve come close to breaking things, and thought I had no other choice but to call the governor of ND state and have a state of emergency declared. But he was there to rescue me from myself. Phew! (uh-oh … I hope Abhi doesn’t read that part.)

Thanks to the bloggers for making this place an inspiration. Thanks to the regular readers, commenters for their suggestions, to Payal, Amit and many others who I may not have interacted with directly, but nevertheless deserve credit for pouring in ideas. THANKS!