September 16th, a big day for the FLOSS guys around the world. When the whole world celebrates it under different names, we celebrate it here in Madurai under the name FStival which means Free Software Festival. FStival is jointly organized by GNU/Linux user group - Madurai and GNU/Linux user group of TCE. It was special to us for two reasons, one it would be the last FStival we organized as students, second due to the presence of most of the seniors or say founders of GLUGOT.
This year FStival was a great success with students from all over Madurai attending the event. The auditorium was packed with a overwhelming crowd of around 350. The chief guest for this year FStival was Mr. Kenneth Gonsalves from NRC - FOSS @ AU-KBC, chennai. Mr. Kenneth, a renowned geek in the FOSS world, gave an inspiring talk on "How FOSS makes you a great programmer". This was followed by the on stage Installation Debian session. Then it was time for XGL to steal the show. With cubes rotating while switching desktops, wobbling windows and menus, XGL looked great.
After all this came the most interesting part, the demo stalls. Thanks to the second year and third year students. They did their job well. They explained about the various tools in GNU/Linux starting from FOSS, Basic commands, Emacs, GCC, GIMP, GTK+ Glade, Games, Live CD & Education tools, Scilab, XGL, Latex, LAMP, Databases, CMS etc. They were also bombarded with a lot many questions from the enthusiastic crowd. It was a tough job indeed, explaining the same thing to more than 300. The CD burning students were kept busy all the time as they continued to receive CDs for burning various distributions. Hats off to all the juniors. The software freedom day ended with the demo stalls closing in the evening. In the mean time Sriram and myself managed to take some snaps of the whole event. Sriram also has a video of XGL demo. We would be publishing them soon in glugot and glug-madurai site.
On sunday it was great to see the software freedom day celebration as a news item in Dinamalar and Dinakaran. Thanks to the press people for spending their valuable time with us.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Thursday, September 14, 2006
FOSS in Syllabus
One more major step towards the development of FOSS in our college. FOSS has become a part of the syllabus for the computer Science students. So computer science students would be having FOSS as compulsory elective in their eigth semester. Anna university has already added FOSS as a subject, and it has happened in our college now. Still there is no clue about the syllabus but anyway it is going to be very very interesting. Looking forward for the FOSS classes in eigth semester.
tvslakshmischool.org
Yesterday i got the link to my school website . I do not know whether my school had the website when i was studying there. But now it is there. The site looks cool and has been designed using PHP(one of my favourite languages). They also have a separate login for alumni. I registered myself as as alumni there. I am still unable to accept the fact that i am an alumni of the prestigious institution. The memories are still fresh. Those were glorius moments to be forgetted soon. I have not explored the site fully. If you happen to be a alumni of TVSLMHSS and if have not visited it yet. Go to tvslakshmischool.org andexplore. You will feel a little nostalgic.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Book exhibition in Madurai
Went to the book exhibition that has been going for the past few weeks in Madurai. Mayoor and myself went to the exhibition. The exhibition has attracted a lot of madurai dwellers and i never expected to see a crowd like that there. Some were not interested in books and were spending their time like in picnic, eating panchumittai and millagai bajji. There were numerous stalls displaying wide varieties of books. Though there were a number of stalls for english and technical books, the number of tamil book stalls out numbered them. Did not look more into the details of the books available there. Most of the them contained biographies, autobiographies and small stories.
The english books were hosted in stalls of famous book stores like Malligai, Turning point, HB etc. These were the stalls that attracted me a lot. When i saw Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, John Grisham etc neatly arranged in shelf the lost desire of reading novels like this resurfaced. I remember reading a lot of novels during my school days and the habit slowly died out. The reason my school library was a huge repository of all these books. I would say that it had enough books to fuel the thirst of hungry students. Thats where i started reading Enid Blyton, Hardy boys, Nancy Drew and later switched over Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, John Grisham etc. That habit slowly died out once i left the school. Still i would like to visit the school library once again just to see the collection they have.
Coming back to the book fair, i left the stalls with the desire of getting a novel increasing every moment i was waiting there. Managed to collect some tamil books and left the stalls. How we got out of the stalls is an interesting story. The entire place was fully packed and no effort was needed. The crowd kept pushing and we were out after some struggle. The stalls should have been little larger. Other than that is a good place to spend some time.
The english books were hosted in stalls of famous book stores like Malligai, Turning point, HB etc. These were the stalls that attracted me a lot. When i saw Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, John Grisham etc neatly arranged in shelf the lost desire of reading novels like this resurfaced. I remember reading a lot of novels during my school days and the habit slowly died out. The reason my school library was a huge repository of all these books. I would say that it had enough books to fuel the thirst of hungry students. Thats where i started reading Enid Blyton, Hardy boys, Nancy Drew and later switched over Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, John Grisham etc. That habit slowly died out once i left the school. Still i would like to visit the school library once again just to see the collection they have.
Coming back to the book fair, i left the stalls with the desire of getting a novel increasing every moment i was waiting there. Managed to collect some tamil books and left the stalls. How we got out of the stalls is an interesting story. The entire place was fully packed and no effort was needed. The crowd kept pushing and we were out after some struggle. The stalls should have been little larger. Other than that is a good place to spend some time.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Hello World
Hello world. This is my first post in wordpress. I was a blogger user till now and recently switched over to wordpress seeing that wordpress has some really good features when compared to blogger. Blogger has not changed a bit and i hate adding an external hit counter and calendar to my blog. What really impressed me in wordpress is the categorization of posts. I dont know whether blogger is great or wordpress is. I started to lose interest in blogger and i am here blogging in wordpress. Wordpress looks cool to me now. That explains why i am here. To know more about me and about the what u will find here click the 'About' link.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
High Adrenaline Action
My 50th post is going to be something about me and snakes. May prove to be a interesting story also. Since it is sunday i was off for a casual walk near my home with my pet Tommy. About 100 feet from my home i sited a snake about 6 feet long and considerably large in diameter waiting to catch a frog that was in front of it. I did not notice it at first but on seeing me it went inside a large bush near that. A snake that has caught my attention has never managed to live more than 10 minutes. The count of snakes killed by me is already in double digit and i thought of adding one more to it. So i spent the next 10 minutes beating the bush with the intent of bringing the snake out. The bush was a little large to search and there was no sign of the snake but i was sure that it was still there. After about 30 minutes i went to the same spot with a little large and of course with my pet.
Still the frog was there in the same position where i saw it first. I started the same old job, beating the bush with the hope of getting the snake out. At one point i found the snake moving inside the bush and whacked it with my stick. One more
blow after that i started hearing hissing sounds. The sounds became strong and i realised the breed of snake. Ofcourse it was KING COBRA. It was there with its body raised to about 2feet and it has streched its hood and is making strong hissing sounds. The hood and hissing sound did wat it was supposed to do. I dont know where half of my courage went once i saw that snake. (summa saadha pambuntu nenachein, anna naaga pambuntu yaaruku theriyum)
An awesome and fearful sight it was. I backed off but my pet kept advancing and started barking. It was just 1 to 2 feet away. I thought it is going to be the last evening for my pet. Somehow managed to collect him and returned home. After tat still went there this time armed with some bricks and stones, still alone. I stayed a little away and threw some stones. But i could not find anything. So i returned home.
Encounters with snake is not something new to me. I started killing snakes right from my 4th standard and had killed all sorts of snakes. I remember killing a snake when i was 11 by stamping with my shoes. But this is the first encounter with cobra and this is the first time i have seen a snake standing against its opponent and this is the first time i felt some fear for a snake. Legends say that if you beat a cobra and dont kill, it remembers and take revenge on you even after years. Lets see. Already this incident has become a hot news for my nieghbours. I am hearing all sorts of stories now. Ok enough of the COBRA story i have CORBA exam tomorrow to study.
Still the frog was there in the same position where i saw it first. I started the same old job, beating the bush with the hope of getting the snake out. At one point i found the snake moving inside the bush and whacked it with my stick. One more
blow after that i started hearing hissing sounds. The sounds became strong and i realised the breed of snake. Ofcourse it was KING COBRA. It was there with its body raised to about 2feet and it has streched its hood and is making strong hissing sounds. The hood and hissing sound did wat it was supposed to do. I dont know where half of my courage went once i saw that snake. (summa saadha pambuntu nenachein, anna naaga pambuntu yaaruku theriyum)An awesome and fearful sight it was. I backed off but my pet kept advancing and started barking. It was just 1 to 2 feet away. I thought it is going to be the last evening for my pet. Somehow managed to collect him and returned home. After tat still went there this time armed with some bricks and stones, still alone. I stayed a little away and threw some stones. But i could not find anything. So i returned home.
Encounters with snake is not something new to me. I started killing snakes right from my 4th standard and had killed all sorts of snakes. I remember killing a snake when i was 11 by stamping with my shoes. But this is the first encounter with cobra and this is the first time i have seen a snake standing against its opponent and this is the first time i felt some fear for a snake. Legends say that if you beat a cobra and dont kill, it remembers and take revenge on you even after years. Lets see. Already this incident has become a hot news for my nieghbours. I am hearing all sorts of stories now. Ok enough of the COBRA story i have CORBA exam tomorrow to study.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Drupal Again
Yesterday a website was created and launched in just two to three hours. Thanks to Drupal. Drupal is really making our work a lot easier. The first time we worked in Drupal was when we redesigned the college website, now it is the glugot site. We had been thinking about moving the glugot site running in mediawiki to some other CMS for a very long time. Yesterday we decided to work on the site and decided on Drupal to finish the Job. Within three hours the work was completed and the site is up and running. We have turned into very fast workers indeed :). Now the site is perfect and looks great. Still there are a lot more modules to be added in Drupal and the contents in website should also be modified. Click here to take a loot at the new website.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Testing Dapper Drake
Got a feel of Dapper drake atlast. Waited for the oppurtunity to test Dapper Drake for a long time after it was released. I could not get it installed in my system as the live CD was not running in my 128MB ram. The oppurtunity to try out Dapper Drake came in the form of my friend vanniaperumal. On saturday we went to his home to install Debian, but the same old problem of debian installer and SATA harddisk spoiled it all. So it was time to test try out the new version of Ubuntu.
The installation proceeded smoothly and there were just 6 easy steps to be done by the user after which the installer does all stuff while we sit back and relax. The GUI or GNOME looks good. But all the efforts seemed to be a waste when we were not able to find EMACS or gcc installed. This is my first experience with Ubuntu Dapper Drake. The next step would be to enable XGL and to test it. Heard that XGL rocks so eager to look how it looks. Though Drape drake looks good, has a good GUI and lot many features it is Debian that rocks. Waiting for the official release of Debian etch on December.
The installation proceeded smoothly and there were just 6 easy steps to be done by the user after which the installer does all stuff while we sit back and relax. The GUI or GNOME looks good. But all the efforts seemed to be a waste when we were not able to find EMACS or gcc installed. This is my first experience with Ubuntu Dapper Drake. The next step would be to enable XGL and to test it. Heard that XGL rocks so eager to look how it looks. Though Drape drake looks good, has a good GUI and lot many features it is Debian that rocks. Waiting for the official release of Debian etch on December.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
A Tech Feast
Opensolaris day was conducted in college on Aug 18th. It was a technical feast to any programmer with a little unix background. Two great minds of SUN Microsystems Mr.Ananth Shrinivas and Mr.Pratap Devarajan were the speakers. They introduced a plethora of tools available in Solaris that would make the life of unix programmer easy. It was amazing to hear about bleeding edge technologies like Dtrace, ZFS, Zones and SMF etc. I also had a feel of Solaris after it was installed in a system in lab. The desktop is the same old GNOME with some customizations but the commands seem to differ a bit from GNU/Linux.
Dtrace was amazing and how the results were interpreted was little more amazing. Both the speakers had unique way of interpreting the bits and addresses thrown out by Dtrace. Zones & ZFS was interesting and are technologies for the future. Pratap who was one of the creators of Belenix also talked about the problems he encountered and the steps in creation of Belenix livecd. There were also instances where GNU/Linux was belittled while comparing it with Solaris. For guys like me who have great passion for GNU/Linux those facts were hard to digest. Except for that it was a great meeting with a lot of mind boggling stuff and introduced us to some great technologies. The opensolaris community has born in our madurai with the creation of Opensolaris user group called MOSUG which is an acronym of Madurai open solaris user group.
Dtrace was amazing and how the results were interpreted was little more amazing. Both the speakers had unique way of interpreting the bits and addresses thrown out by Dtrace. Zones & ZFS was interesting and are technologies for the future. Pratap who was one of the creators of Belenix also talked about the problems he encountered and the steps in creation of Belenix livecd. There were also instances where GNU/Linux was belittled while comparing it with Solaris. For guys like me who have great passion for GNU/Linux those facts were hard to digest. Except for that it was a great meeting with a lot of mind boggling stuff and introduced us to some great technologies. The opensolaris community has born in our madurai with the creation of Opensolaris user group called MOSUG which is an acronym of Madurai open solaris user group.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Something Something Unakum Enakum - Has Something in it
A lot of hype by my friends led me to the doors of Jeyam theatre to watch SSUE. As usual the cost of the ticket was increased due to the good name the movie managed to gain. Something Something had something to watch in the first half and nothing in the second half. But it had attracted a lot of family crowd and may interest some if it is the first time.
Ravi has done his part well under his brother direction. Santhanam has managed to evoke some laughter from the crowd. It seems that Trisha has realised that it is important for an actress to show some actions and reactions and has tried hard to produce some also looks a little beautiful when compared to other movies. The film had a light doze of comedy throughout. The songs in the first half are gr8. Prabhu is serious throughtout the movie and shows a lot of emotions. Bhagyaraj impresses but does not have a great role to play. Richaa, Manivannan, kalabavan mani just come and go and do nothing.
But it was the sentiments that irritates at lot. Hero risking his life for a toy horse, hero eating rice mixed with chili powder, hero sleeping in the dung den etc etc irritates us a lot. Slightly over doze of sentiments and emotions. SSUE seems to be a film that can be seen together with the family. I could see a lot of crowd getting too involved with the movie and one guy was shouting something like "Oh god the villain has arrived". It may turn out to be a hit for Jeyam ravi.
Ravi has done his part well under his brother direction. Santhanam has managed to evoke some laughter from the crowd. It seems that Trisha has realised that it is important for an actress to show some actions and reactions and has tried hard to produce some also looks a little beautiful when compared to other movies. The film had a light doze of comedy throughout. The songs in the first half are gr8. Prabhu is serious throughtout the movie and shows a lot of emotions. Bhagyaraj impresses but does not have a great role to play. Richaa, Manivannan, kalabavan mani just come and go and do nothing.
But it was the sentiments that irritates at lot. Hero risking his life for a toy horse, hero eating rice mixed with chili powder, hero sleeping in the dung den etc etc irritates us a lot. Slightly over doze of sentiments and emotions. SSUE seems to be a film that can be seen together with the family. I could see a lot of crowd getting too involved with the movie and one guy was shouting something like "Oh god the villain has arrived". It may turn out to be a hit for Jeyam ravi.
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