Flew from Mumbai (BOM) to Chennai (MAA) on 9W469 Jet Airways today. The Air hostess reset the in flight entertainment system and lo and behold I see the above screen. I managed to catch some specs too. It runs on one of those AMD Geode procs with 256 MB of RAM. Uses Redboot as the boot loader. More details when I travel next or feel free to add to the specs as comments if you have more details.
During my college days I used to dream of leading a life where in I travel all over the place in flights and paying extremely short visits to far off cities. It was one such day this Wednesday, when I had to visit Mumbai for a day.
Took the morning Jet Airways flight out of Chennai Airport, found a few familiar faces sitting one row before me me in the economy class having fun! My work got finished very early than expected but Jet could not provide me a earlier flight out. Traveled in the locals from Churchgate to Andheri, visited the InOrbit Mall in Malad, returned to Airport way too early for my return flight to Chennai.
Mumbai Airport has free wifi provided by Airtel and the SSID actuallu says so “Free Wifi by Airtel” 
! Its got way better facilities and actually is one of the few airports that can be categorised as “Airports” in India. Spent about 3.5 hrs in the airport before heading back! Reached Chennai around midnight, took the car that I had parked in the morning at the airport and zoomed home! Wow! Mumbai in a day - Executive style!
Oops! Forgot to mention, I ate “Vada Pav”. Now thats complete.
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
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!
Some days back I got a mail from the editor of Schmapp guides asking for permission to include one of my photos of the Landing Bridges of Hamburg, Germany in their next online edition. I accepted it and today I got a mail saying it has been released. Check this link http://www.schmap.com/hamburg/tours_tour3/#p=63860&i=63860.jpg
Now, I am even more motivated to get a DSLR. Oh, Btw I also have a second career option
Btw, yet another mini-travel happened this weekend to Nandhi Hills on our way to a Colleague’s engagement. It had rained the previous night and Nandhi Hills was magnificent.
Last Saturday, I was part of a 15 member gang heading towards Shivanasamudra and Talakad. The gang was none other than my office mates. The trip kicked off with me pulling a argument with my office security for not allowing me park my cycle because I was wearing shorts and he did not allow me in. What the hell!! I have worked in office with shorts many times in the past 2 years and where did this *new* rule come from??? After some quarrel, he then allowed us to park the cycle inside. Somebody tell this moron “Security” that this is not a firm that has “Dress Code”!!! Actually the trip started a bit on the dull side (atleast for me); may be because I had passed the same place on Bikes during the Independence trip or may be my body was begging for rest from the excess work and traveling that I have been doing for quite sometime. To top it, Shivanasamudram was kinda disappointing. The falls is amazing and all, but where is that excitement????
Yeah, the trip’s mood changed. We had lunch and then headed to explore the temples of the nearby forest area. The architectures and sculptures are really worth mentioning here. Returned back to Bengalooru at around 10 PM.