tuxmaniac's blog

FOSS.IN : GNUSim8085 Workout

aanjhan — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 13:41:25 +0000

As announced here, we shall have the GNUSim8085 workout at FOSS.IN on Wednesday 26th Nov 2008 from 1130 hrs until the time people can withstand hunger. Of course there will be some Swiss Chocolates on offer during the Workout session (Now go doodle )

We shall decide whether we end up in the lawns, corridor or elsewhere on Wednesday morning. Since all the 4 guys who have shown interest until now are known guys to me, hopefully it shouldnt be difficult to find them.

The Joy…

aanjhan — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 09:32:07 +0000

After almost forgetting that I had a flight in less than 24 hrs (thanks to Air France for the reminder mail), some silly transit visa fiasco triggered by some peers, almost missing the train to Geneva and pretty much an uneventful (except for an old guy beside me becoming unconscious suddenly and the on-board doctor(s) treating him) 10 hrs or so in the skies, I was standing right behind a *big* queue, an “Under Maintenance” air-conditioning system, very relaxed Immigration officers, loads of people all around. There was *JOY* in this chaos, the “organised” chaos. Yes, I knew I am back in my Home land. In 48 hours I leave to FOSS.IN

Looking forward to it, because this is where everything started for me.. FOSS.IN 2005. See you at FOSS.IN 2008.

FOSS.IN - Call for participation in unofficial GNUSim8085 workout

aanjhan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:54:52 +0000

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls!!!

If you are still clueless as to what FOSS.IN is all about (even after reading through this sentence) then it probably isn’t for you And the news is I will be saying “Hola”, “Bonjour”, “Hi”, “Hallo”, “Nihao”, “Namaskara”, “Vanakkam”, “Namasthe” to a lot of my friends this year too. Apart from the “scheduled” talk on “Fedora Electronics Laboratory” on Friday (yes, my talks always coincide with a more glamorous session *always*), I have planned to have some workouts (unofficial ones from those listed on the site). One such planned workout is the GNUSim8085 Workout.

If you are interested in taking part, please use this doodle link to give your preferred time and I will blog about the timings sometime around Sunday evening. The venue of the workout is most probably the terrace or corridor or some place which has a free power socket .
The Current agenda of the workout is as follows:

Get the Windows Version of the package released (long time pending and also means people with “official” laptops running Windows are welcome and wanted for testing)
Fix lying around small bugs.
Brainstorm on further development and maybe get a base framework done on one of these ideas.

Looking at the current state of things it could either happen on Wednesday or Thursday. This is just not it. Some Fedora and Debian work will also be done. Details in another blog. See you then.

PS for Students: I believe this is a very apt small package to start contributing to Free software. You are the most welcome. This doesn’t mean oldies are prohibited .

FOSS, Education, Career, Skill Development - the relationship

aanjhan — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:56:46 +0000

If you are one of those students who is plagued by the question “Will FOSS get me a Job”; If you are a budding Software Engineer; If you are interested in choosing this career; you are one who develops Free Software as a hobby (like me ); or you are just another living thing in this world, then I am sure the following triplet of emails sent to one of the mailing list I am part of is worth reading. Kudos to SM for these nice articles.

[0] Will FOSS get me a Job?
[1] How do You select a career oppurtunity

[2] Why not the Best?

Happy Reading!

Weekend Discoveries - Rufscript, conky and xournal.

aanjhan — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 21:08:38 +0000

[Click on the image for viewing an enlarged screen shot]
Some cool discoveries this weekend..

Installed Conky on my laptop and began to play around with the rc file to customise the view. For the uninformed, conky is a very lightweight system monitor. You can get my .conkyrc file from here. I would like to improvise more on that. For. e.g I dont want eth0 information to be visible when I am connected via wireless and vice versa (dynamic update is what I am looking for). If someone knows how to do it please do post in your comment.

Started using the Rufscript font released by Hiran. A neat handwriting font indeed. But for some reasons I find the font spacing between alphabets very close for me. I know Hiran from the NIT Calicut FOSSMeet events and a really enthusiastic guy. Hiran, way to go! Keep releasing such better fonts to the world. For the Ubuntu folks install the font from asomething’s PPA. For the Fedora folks, Rahul Sundaram has already packaged it and here is the review request.
I always wanted to do some note taking on pdfs and found “Xournal” interesting. Thanks to Nicholas Boichat (my senior in EPFL) for pointing it to me.

Configuring VPN in Network Manager

aanjhan — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:17:04 +0000

If you are one of those people who got stuck converting your xxx_vpnc.conf file into something that Network manager on Gnome or KDE can handle, here goes the short description.

In Debian/Ubuntu you need to install network-manager-vpnc and on Fedora the package name is NetworkManager-vpnc

After you have installed the respective packages, click on the Network Manager icon on the task bar, VPN Connections -> Configure VPN.

Choose Add in the dialog box appears. After that choose a VPN connection type. In most cases it will be Cisco Type. Give a connection name in the dialog box that appears. This can be anything. Say you are connecting to your XYZ university’s vpn then the name could be XYZ. Now for the list of fields and their corresponding meanings.

The Gateway maps to your IPSec gateway. Group Name is your IPSec ID. You can either choose to enter your User Password and group Password here or you will be prompted to do so during connection. The User password corresponds to your user account password and the Group password maps to IPSec Secret. User name in the optional field is the “username” you will use to log in to your VPN. Thats it. You are ready to go. Choose Apply and now from the drop down menu of Network Manager choose VPN Connections -> the name of the VPN connection. Have fun!

All set for yet another hectic week! Have a nice week ahead.

Install fest in Lausanne, Switzerland

aanjhan — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 09:05:48 +0000

Heya gang! We, the GNU Generation here in EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland are conducting an GNU/Linux Install Fest this month at the EPFL campus. Details below

Date: 18th october 2008

Venue: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland (Canton de Vaud)

Website: http://gnugeneration.epfl.ch/IF/accueil
Be there!

FOSS.IN announces its version of the LHC experiment!

aanjhan — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:29:52 +0000

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is believed to be the greatest experiment ever conducted with thousands of scientists collaborating on finding the beginning of the universe. Now, FOSS.IN, the conference which was the prime force behind my contributions to the Free Software world has announced its experiment. A major change in the event format this year. Read the full details here.

I consider this the Greatest Indian FOSS Experiment . Its a move that requires great courage. The focus has been made more clear this time (not that it was not clear last year). “Talk is cheap, show me the code” is getting more visibility. Yes, its going to be the first “Developer” conference in India. Hats Off, Team FOSS.IN. My chances of getting there and finishing off all the todo hacks looks bleak because I am miles away from Bangalore, but will try my best. So ladies and gentlemen, get your wiki pages ready, your brains sharpened and start jotting down your plan for FOSS.IN 2008. Be there and show your code to the world. I am sure its gonna ROCK.
Rant: I am not so happy with the organisers calling “Packaging tasks” as “low hanging fruit”. I am upset a bit because its not such a mundane task as mentioned in the mail, that too from TEAM FOSS.IN.

Its Me(me)!!

aanjhan — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 09:12:39 +0000

After all the posts on Planet GNOME, Planet Ubuntu and now also on Planet FLOSS India (thanks to killerX) , I should not be left behind. So here it goes..

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair… just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.

Hello from Switzerland..

aanjhan — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:52:54 +0000

Loads of things have been happening last week and hence did not have much time to blog. But If you have been listening to my identi.ca notices then you have got a fair idea of what I was up to. Well the news is I have moved to Lausanne, Switzerland and am having great fun. Nice weather (as of now), nice people, nice neighbours, nice apartment (close to Vidy - 3 minutes by walk), excellent campus and the list can go on and on. But I will stop here and let the pictures speak for its own. People have been extremely helpful and most of them speak English here. Well, the campus is truly global. In one of the get together there were 111 people from 19 countries spread all across the globe.

Some other updates…

SF bug 1875401 is closed. I hate you Onkar. this is worst Copy paste job I have ever done
I found a GNU/Linux enthusiasts group at my univ. They call themselves the “GNU Generation“. They seem to pretty active with troubleshooting and conducting a few install fests now and then. Exciting!
Been meddling around with Ubuntu MID KVM image a lot.
I am unable to get the Fedora Electronics Laboratory DVD image to test. More pondering needed over the coming days.

Now that the Welcome Party at both my University and the housing apartment is over, its time for the grinding to begin. Expect the blog posts to be shorter and more crisp

In the meanwhile.. Enjoy the pics from Lausanne, Switzerland.
Complete Flickr Set of Rhodanie (my apartment and the parties) , Lausanne and the welcome party at EPFL.