There are events in your life that people do not forget! Things that stay in your memory for quite a lifetime. One such thing is “Promotion” or call it “Progress in one’s career(???)”. Ironically, I just forgot completely that I am a “Senior Engineer” from this month until someone talked about his promotion to me. My reaction was “Oh Yeah! Even I got promoted to Senior Engineer! Forgot to tell you” *grin*
Does that indicate something???
Have you been in a town filled only with Students? A place where all businesses have evolved around the student population and nothing else? A place where there is a mix of Medical, technology and management students from all over the globe? Yes, Manipal is one such wonderful place. Buzzing with activity! This weekend I had been to Manipal and Mangalore to give a talk on Free Software, VLSI CAD Tools, a brief talk on Ubuntu-IN community and different ways of Contributing to Free Software. Talk went very well with around 30 enthusiastic guys and gals attending it. Something that shocked me is that, the univeristy has rejected the formation of a Free Software users group. They need some kind of organisational support without which the university authorities are not ready to approve. Very strange! All in all a good trip with a lot of fun and travel.
Ubuntu-IN Presentation can be found here.
Updated a few photos and btw check the new look Deccan Airlines!
Easily… By far… Hathway Bangalore wins the worst Indian Internet service provider. Its been ages since I connected to the Internet properly. Its been days since Internet is working now! The Customer Care *executives* are the most pathetic executives I have ever interacted with. They are prompt in asking Bill payment due date for a service that I have not used. God save them from my Wrath! After so many calls for the status, I have not received a *single* call back from the so called “Invisible” technicians as told by the so called Customer “Care” “Executives”. Some of you guys might say that others are bad as well, but I have been there done that and believe me, these folks are worse.
So the moral of the story is “A Strict No No to Hathway as a Internet Service Provider”. Can someone recommend me a better service provider in Bangalore? I think its time for a change.
After several unpleasant circumstances, situations I managed to land in at the Capital of the world’s largest democracy. Yes, I am talking about the *huge* city of New Delhi and the wonderful scenic venue for Freed.in 2007, Jawaharlal Nehru Univeristy. Freed.in is the new incarnation of FreeDel and a big big success this time. Apart from that feeling of a Speaker at such a conference, what made me feel so accomplished is that sense of involvement, feeling of being part of the team and that mindset of “Its our conference”! I have never had such a feeling of involvement in any other conference till date and thanks to the wonderful evergreen team of Indian Linux Users group Delhi (ILUGD).
The entire #linux-india was there and it was great fun relating nicks to *actual* faces. Good food every day, wonderful place to stay (yes! I got a suite for all myself 
) and great discussions of dogs, maggi, free software, music, internet/service providers and what not. My talk went very well and things look like I will be travelling to Delhi atleast two more times for workshops in a few other colleges. I talked on Free and Open Source VLSI CAD Tools and gave a quick demo of all the tools and listed down some to-dos that students can start contributing towards.
After those good-byes, we (Kartik Mistry and myself) decided to use the little over 6 hours that we had to roam around New Delhi. Visited Qutub Minar, India Gate, travelled in the wonderful Delhi Metro (brought back my European memories 
) and had some nice burgers at Wimpy’s Restaurant. Headed off to the airport and here I am back in Bangalore doing the mundane stuff of working and blogging my life
Photoset on Flickr: Freed.in and New Delhi Outing
September 10th is my dad’s birthday and I would not be able to take that day off since I have my German classes starting then. So I decided to hop in on Thursday evening itself. Without notice I gave a surprise visit to Chennai. Reached home at around 2030 hrs and everybody were like “Whaaaat???!!!” It was fun.. The next day my dad came in from a official trip to Trichy and he was stunned to see me lying on the bed 
Little did he know that yet another surprise awaited him in the form of Car Stereeo Systems! I got him a Blaupunkt San Diego MP27. (Ofcourse me being Blaupunkt employee, I get 15% discount!). He was very happy and I went to a local service station to fit in the Speakers. Got a Blaupunkt GT and BG series speakers fitted for the rear and front respectively and off it was ready to rock the roads of Chennai!!
Oh yeah, before I end I got a new look. Blame or appreciate that little machine which took a bit of more hair than what I expected!!!
August 15th, 1947 - India became free!! August 15th - 2007 - 5:00 AM; the mobile starts singing the lovely “Nare Nare..” song. I pick up the call and the person at the other end shouts “Abey, Ut jah. Paanch baje” (Translation: Dude, get up, its 5 already!!). There we were on the bikes outside our homes at around 5:45 AM ready to start the journey which everyone of us were waiting for. Its the Independence day and we are off to Bheemeshwari (A nice Fishing, nature camp on the river banks of Cauvery) naming our trip as the Independence trip - “Express your freedom and relax, Have fun”. We were joined by 4 other friends and off we all rode away from the concrete jungle; Away from any signs of software. We stopped for breakfast at Kanakpura (40Kms from Bangalore), after which we rode like crazy “Wild Hogs” enjoying the beauty of mother nature combined with the wonderful cloudy, cool weather.
We reached the camp only to find out that people without booking were not allowed inside. “What the fscking hell!!! WE had called up and this rule was not mentioned!!!” The last thing we wanted was to just return back. Thanks to Nagendra, who somehow convinced the manager and guess what we were on our way to experience “White water rafting”. Yay yay!! Its a lot of fun and very relaxing. After the amazing 8 Km rafting we relaxed on the hammocks, ate lunch and wandered around for sometime. We started our journey back to Bangalore at around 3:30 PM and reached Bangalore at around 6PM. We had made several pit stops while returning. I repeat and will keep repeating - It is fun! It is fun!!!
Outcome: I am going to try the grade 2-3 rapids near Dandeli (North Karnataka) and then head to Rishikesh to rock on the Grade 4-5 rapids of Mother Ganga!! Its fun. Its fun!
Complete flickr Photo set here
Do you need to plan it to the last detail for getting any event successful? Do you need to have huge “conference rooms” to exchange ideas? Here is Barcamp, an event that dumps these myths into the trash!! Its always been a great experience and learning for me at the barcamps in Bangalore. This time too was not different. Good Food, Apt ambience and many “diversified” people made Barcamp Bangalore 4, an event to cherish. The idea of having collectives worked very well especially with groups having less number of people. A new addition to the barcamp culture was the SMS Update service which always kept me informed of the happenings all over the venue. (At times I thought I was being spammed ) WiFi was all over, giving me download rates of about 350 Kbps. Yes! You read it right Check the screenshot if you still did not believe what you just read.
I spent most of the time in the Mobile Collective where there were talks on Zook, Using N-Series phones as webcams, WWigo, GPSWatcher and some nice overview from the guys at Microsoft research foundation about their research activities. Photo Collective was another of my favourites where I got some really nice tips on How to make full use of *NOT* DSLR Digi Cams, some nice overview on post processing of photographs and other informations regarding Photography.
Yet another first timer was the “Unband Collective” , a collective for people interested in music. These folks added rhythm to the already amazing ambience. And ofcourse there were the evergreen Lawn, Corridor, Lunch and floor talks and discussions. It was yet another chance to link “IRC Nicknames” to “real faces and names” . To ice it up, there was grande musical finale too this time. BCB4 was lot of fun!!! Waiting for BCB5 now in November 2007
Check my entire flickr set of BCB4 here.
I unusually was not *that* lazy this weekend. Finished several tasks.
1. Merged Onkar’s branch of gnusim8085 to the trunk. There is a conflict with one of the language specification file of gtksourceview which I think I will do after consulting him.
2. Got my cycle pedal repaired. Now its in Top form and has already set 25 Kms of Bangalore Roads on fire this weekend.
3. Uploaded quite a lot of my Deutschland photos. Neatly organised them. Keeping things organised is really a talent whatever be it . Here are the new uploads; New Parties in Deutschland Set, New Hildesheim Set, New Hamburg Photos, Updated the XPS m1210 photoset. Still to upload several Netherlands photos and more party pics. May be next weekend.
4. Did some Book reading.
5. Checked out ScummVm and got addicted to the Flight of the Amazon Queen.
6. Did some Photo stitching tutorial using Hugin and other scripts. Its fun. I am gonna go deeper into this sometime.
Today I came across a very interesting article claiming to be an interview of Bjarne Stroustrup by the IEEE Computer Magazine. The entire dialog can be found in this link below.
http://geekswithblogs.net/chrishan/articles/72646.aspx
Old one. But very interesting. Thought I would share it with others too. Have fun.
After some really long delays, Sean had announced the opening of the “Shipping dates” of the Neo1973 in his post to the Openmoko Community list here. Having promised no further delays in the production of the GTA02 and with hardware being upgraded including 3D accelerometers, better proc and wifi chipset, I think I will go for the Neo in October. That gives me some buffer financially too .