tuxmaniac’s blog

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!

After 2 really long weeks of uncertainties, confusion, disappointments, chaos it was finally decided that I will head to FOSS Meet @ NIT Calicut. It was pretty late when this decision was made and hence no bus tickets (3 day weekend in BLR means its “evacuation time” ), no direct flights nor trains (only 2 trains per week) to Calicut. Also figured out that kart_ also was stranded and when I was again re- thinking my decision to head to Calicut, a thought struck me. May be we should take a taxi and head out! And so we did. kart_ and myself started the drive to Calicut around Friday night 10 PM. Drive was pretty long and tiring, after which we reached the place by 6 AM just to crash land on the bed. Later in the day we headed to the lab where FOSS in Schools workshop was being conducted by Pramode. I guess, this was the biggest success of this year’s meet. Lots of enthusiasm and energy from school kids.

After a bit of emails, builds and blog readings, headed for lunch. Met Kiruba, Praveen, Anivar, Hiran and other folks. Pradeepto joined us late afternoon and headed straight to his talk on “Join the VISION - Kde”. Nice one it was. My talk on “FOSS for electronic enthusiasts” went very well with about 30-40 people attending. Then we (Pradeepto, Kart_ and myself) decided to head out to Malabar Palace for some Appam fest! Returned back to the guest house, discussed various things under the planet including Alternative Education, KDE, Packaging, Marriage, Life and what not.

We had a “Contribution to FOSS” talk the next day for which we had absolutely no preparation. Well when 3 guys are gonna present, I suppose we need some kind of a understanding. But guess what, the talk went extremely smooth and IMO message conveyed. We showed them Wiki, subversion, Bugzilla and also mentioned about IRC and mailing lists. The flow was impeccable for the amount of (almost nil) preparation which we did. Goes to show the understanding among the three of us??

It was time to head back to BLR. On the way back we made quick stops at Wayanad Pookat lake, lunch, Mysore Palace (JIT for the Sunday Evening lighting) and Kamat (dinner). Back and fresh again today to write this long post!

All in all a very relaxing trip. Taking into account the amount of hardships these NITC folks have faced over the last month with loads of speakers dropping off in the last minute, these guys have managed to finish of yet another good FOSSMeet @ NITC. Three Cheers!

Flickr Sets: Mysore Palace, FOSSMeet@NITC, Wayanad

Hola folks! The Ubuntu community has unleashed the Brainstorm page. It is a interface for people with any kind of thought to just add those as “ideas” and let the community brainstorm over them. We are already having about 2400 Ideas in just 5 days of its existence. Wow! Add your idea now.

As I was browsing through the ideas and some mailing list, a idea that just popped out of my head is that students can use the Ubuntu Brainstorm project as a platform for getting involved in Free and Open Source Software. What they have to do is just pick up an idea which they find interesting and start working on them. What more with Google announcing “Summer of Code 2008” edition, one can propose or develop on any of these ideas and go ahead implementing them. Whats really special about such an approach is that, you are picking up a “project” which the “community” has asked for, commented already. So there are better chances that you find more mentors who are willing to help, more users who are willing to test and ofcourse more chances of you becoming a “r0c|<$t4r" in the Free Software world.

What more?!! You can also help promote an Idea in your blogs and websites like I have done below. So.. what are you guys waiting for. Unleash the hell of ideas right *now* and students/developers pick your favourite idea *now*

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.