tuxmaniac’s blog

My “photographer’s block” mentioned in this post, continued into the second and third day of the event. The days were filled with exchange of ideas, knowledge. Conclaves had heated discussions on Proprietary vs Free Knowledge. Food on the second day was like a “kabab fest”. There were rumors after this fest that freed.in would be renamed again to food.in from next year.

The best talk of the second day was “Hacking the Airwaves with GNU Radio” by Rakesh Peter, a talk which I am attending for the second time (attended it during foss.in 2007). Very impressive and great to know the work that is going on. Shreyas came out with his “dormant” idea of setting up a Radio transmission during foss.in 2008. It sounds like a very nice idea to me. The day ended with loads of quotes flowing from the mouths of various people. Details are here in this post by Sankarshan.
Day 3 begins with me feeling the OLPC XO laptop for the first time (Courtesy: Sayamindu). Initially, I was feeling very uncomfortable with the Sugar interface but eventually started liking it. Then it was my turn to take the stage and in my opinion the talk went pretty well with a few questions asked. The slides of the presentation can be found here. The find of the day was “Purisia font”. I think I will use this font for most of my presentations from now on. Flight back home was very relaxing with me getting a seat right after the First Class cabin. Good leg room and the food served was nice.

Freed.in and the ILUG-D folks always make me feel “At home”. This is the second freed.in for me and the feeling while leaving the place just is the same. Hats off folks!! I will mark my calendar every year for this wonderful event and just the thought of meeting up with the folks brings in loads of excitement. I had pretty good discussions with Runa, Sankarshan and Pradeepto and I take home great memories from the same. Special thanks to Gora (who drank H2O), Andrew, Kishore, t3 (for lending his hair to a bunch of people), Old monk, Tirveni, Shreyas and all those who were involved in providing the entertainment. It was great fun!

Reached Delhi yesterday by 2000 hrs. Waited for pradeepto’s “spicy” flight to land. We then called up Gora only to be asked “Who pradeepto?? Oh! Aanjhan is also coming?! He never gave me any details”. *sigh* Standard Gora’s funny side. We also became one of the “neem tree” victims. We had to wait for 1 hr under that damn neem tree outside the airport. We reached our hotel by 2100 hrs. Joined by the rest of the folks in about an hour and we had some OT stuff along with Pizzaish Dinner.

Today sat through the talks by Sankarshan Guruji (have my own reasons why I call him so ), Samiah and now listening to Valsa Williams, Intel. Its loads of fun. Spent a good time with cray3, a person who I admire a lot and thank her for those cute Ubuntu stickers I just got (pics soon). Freed.in is one conference which gives me that homely feeling. I feel I belong to this family. Its a lot of fun and learning here. Looking forward for the kebabs…. I am freed again.

Btw, I have not clicked a single picture. Looks like I am having “photographer’s block”?? Lets see how things go the next few days. My talk seems to be shaping well.