Wishing you all a happy holiday and also a great new year ahead..
I use VLC media player for watching videos and some days back I noticed change in its icon. It has a santa hat on its logo! This is only seen on VLC's version 0.9 and higher.
Check out the screenshots, but better try it yourself. Thanks to VLC team for such a great media player..
Notice the icon on upper left cornerI should have been blogging this weeks back as soon as FOSS.IN/2008 was over, but it didnt happen. :-( Had to keep up with college work..
This year I was a volunteering! It was truly a great experience and for me a chance to work with a awesome team.
Anyways, I've uploaded the pics(flicks) on Flickr.
Did I say a video earlier? Yeah, it is captured during concluding part of KDE Project of The Day. Adriaan de Groot singing the KDE song titled "We're KDE!" and dancing along are KDE developers from India Shashank, Sharan, Pradeepto, Piyush, many more enjoying in the hall.. I forgot the name of person with guitar.. :-(
Please comment if someone knows it!
You can see the video on Vimeo. I uploaded it on Vimeo because you can download original video file as registered user. ;-)
I came back from FOSS.IN/2008 almost one week back, but didn't get enough time to blog in detail about it; reasons being I'd missed one week college!
Writing in few words, FOSS.IN/2008 was awesome! As I'd been a volunteer this time, got to work with one of the best team ever. Have a lot of experiences which I would like to share, but later..
I'm participating in a exhibition at our college. Will be giving talk on Mozilla Firefox and will try to add some more too. Problem is we(students) were told yesterday about exhibition! Lets see how this goes.. Definitely will keep posted on this. Meanwhile any suggestions/comments welcome....
Mozilla has been working hard to learn more about the technology landscape in India and has participated in a number of successful events the past couple of years to help educate people about Mozilla and Firefox. Mozilla has made a lot of progress, but want to get more people involved in our strategy in India.
Now it's time for you folks to tell us what we might have missed and to share what you know. Please take our survey at: http://moz.india.sgizmo.com (Understanding the Internet community in India) AND pass the link along to family, friends, and colleagues that can also provide Mozilla with their feedback.
Thank you for helping the Mozilla community and for sharing your knowledge with us..
Do comment if you have any queries regarding the survey!
Exams season is here for Mumbai University students. And for past entire week we had our practical exams, presentations, etc.
We have a subject "Internet Security", of course with M$ Windoze specific syllabus. And we had to give presentation on any topic related to the subject. I would never give a presentation with anything related to M$ in it..
Just had a peaceful talk with our professor, gave her idea of entire thing. Luckily, it was okay with her and I'm talking on Debian GNU/Linux..
My presentation was yesterday and it went well! :-) Feels awesome, that I got a chance to talk about Debian. I'd given a presentation about Mozilla Firefox during release of Firefox 3.
But, finally I think people loved my talk and they'll love Debian too..
Came home from college(attending boring lectures) and brother gave me some 'quotes' from some book he was reading. Would like to share them.. Loved them because they are fact that everyone must know!
1] It is best to learn as we go, than to go as we have learned.
2] Education has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
3] I've never let my schooling interfere with my education.
4] The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The GREAT teacher inspires.
5] If you want to make peace, you don't talk with friends. You talk to your enemies.
6] When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find if it has stopped.
7] Be ashamed to die unless you've won some victory for humanity.
8] One of the greatest victory you can gain over someone is that beat him at being truthful.
9] Be careful that victory does not carry seeds of future defeats.
NIce ones, aren't they?
I wish Debian project a very Happy Birthday. Its now 15 years since its first release on 16th August, 1993 and hence we can say today is Debian's 15th Birthday..
On this occasion, I planned to do some artwork in form of poster to put up besides my home desk. But today, its Raksha Bandhan and all relatives coming to our place. So, no time to do it. Instead I'll tell everyone about Debian and of course a cake for debian.
If I make any such artwork, will post it..
I always use bash on terminal and often find the tab-completion feature useful. Bet on it, without that, life would be horrible..
Yesterday, I and Kunal were working on some pythonic stuff. It is regarding pyslide story. We needed some kind of xmlparser in pyslide as python-xml is to be removed. I don't have any idea of what is XML and so was googling around today. While trying for some stuff with Python shell, I realized that their is no tab-completion in Python interactive shell. And it would be of great help. So bumped on this in Python Docs. While searching for proper way to do tab completion, I saw a video on dgplug tv by Kushal.
Here's what I did to get tab-completion in Python's interactive shell..
1]Create a ~/.pythonrc file with following content.
try:
import readline
except ImportError:
print "Module readline not available."
else:
import rlcompleter
readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")
export PYTHONSTARTUP=~/.pythonrc
Finally, I've completed the gigantic "JAVA" assignment # 1. It had 30 questions. You can say I just completed a "Complete Ref to Swing" kind of thing....
Thanks to following:-
1] my friends who believe in "co-operate to dominate".
2] bad mosquitoes who bit me throughout night and kept me awake.(coffee was not available :-( )
3] my *great* handwriting. :-)
Will write some quality stuff on blog soon.. I know this post s*cks, its CRAP.!
Just came back home with custom-made Firefox t-shirts everyone had ordered. There are 36 t-shirts. We printed them at Dadar. The printing has been done brilliantly.. Firefox logo has came up as it is..
Feel sorry for those whom we'd asked but they didn't order!
Wanted to post this yesterday but was too tired..
We'd a blast yesterday at Firefox Download Day Party organized in our college. About 25 people in attendance including students and faculty members. My slides were prepared at last minute, but everyone liked them.
Lab was decorated with Firefox stuff.. You can see it in photos on my Flickr..
I started by giving a talk on Mozilla and Firefox. I aggressively did comparison between Firefox and other browsers. It was fun giving a talk. Later, everyone got hands on computer and we Firefox'ed every computer in sight.. Everyone contributed to download day record and yes college printer was utilized at fullest for printing the certificates..
Also, we're planning to make t-shirts of Firefox.. They'll be ready in 1-2 weeks..
As I'd said in my previous post, I was planning for a Firefox download party @ viva college. It was made final by 12PM yesterday. Got permission from college officials to use college labs and other required facilities. So, yesterday, me and my friends spent entire day preparing for the party; making some posters, banners, stickers and CD's. I'd been requested by attending party'ers to give a talk on Mozilla 'n' Firefox. So here I am writing this post from college labs.. Its around 11AM and we'll be starting at around 12.30 and my slides or my sub-topics to talk on are not ready yet! Making the slides now.. Actually I came to my blog to read one of my previous post. Expecting a strength of 20-25. Let's see can't wait to start the party!
Will post all the fall-out and also my slides from our Firefox 3 release/download party later!
You may join discussion group at groups.google.com/group/fossible-in
Wanna make a world record? Its very simple. Download Firefox 3 on 17th June.
The Mozilla community is all set to make a world record for maximum number of downloads for a software in 24 hours. Oh yes! you get a certificate for it too.
Visit its site and pledge!
By that time I'm planning to arrange a download fest in our college. But, need to work again with college people.. I'll keep posting on this stuff.
Yesterday our family celebrated 75th birthday of my grandpa. He lives life to fullest and give me power to face happiness and sorrows in every walks of life!
I wanted to tell you all that party was at Park Club which is besides Mayor Bungalow in dadar. It has a awesome seaside view and fantastic lawn. So, if you've a party to make this is best possible place. Natural and fresh air along with soothing sound of waves in sea.
Yesterday I and my friend Mama aka Ankur went to fashion street in afternoon after college. Sun was shining as bright and hot as it could upon us. We then went to my grandpa's house by 6PM. Now a person who travels in mumbai local knows what kinda rush trains have at this time.. So mama came up with a huge idea!
His dad was coming to dadar for some work on bike.. Here goes kida in our minds!! That day we both of us came home at vasai on bike. And it was not in daylight. Ankur drives bike fabulously!!!! Safe 'n' fast! Thanks ankur.. And yes we were black by the time we reached home due to pollution. Reached home by 10PM.
Was greatest adventure and I know I can't do that..
I'd taken part in Firefox 3 t-shirt design contest and submitted a design. I didn't win it! A question came to mind what to do with that design.
Some friends of mine suggested that I must get the design printed on t-shirts. So I found that idea great and decided to go for it. Most of them suggested that it would've been great if it wpuld be the Firefox logo in the center.
So I modified the design to some extent and uploaded modified version on my flickr page. It shows multi-colored Firefox logo and a tag-cloud containing Firefox features. At bottom is URL to getfirefox.com so that people can get themselves Firefox.
Just take a look at design and let me know would you like to own one. I can't say exact price of one t-shirt right now, because we're not done with the person who's going to do the printing work. But, I assure one t-shirt won't be more than Rs. 150/- Sizes are available in two sizes L and XL. If any other sizes are required like M and XXL you've to buy 10 of them.
I can print these for most of them whom I know, because I won't be able to send it.
Please do post comments about design and whether you want them or not..
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS "Hardy Heron" has just been released. Congrats to Ubuntu community!
And the DVD is available only through cdimage.ubuntu.com which is overloaded. I think the all torrent files must be kept on separate server which does not have HTTP downloads.
Anyways, somehow I managed to get the .torrent file for Ubuntu DVD.
Download it from here.
AMD64 is here.
MD5SUM - 088b5d9e656dd89483dbb1b845b96fb9 *ubuntu-8.04-dvd-i386.iso
975d92e98ea1fa25a07a763a0a072d41 *ubuntu-8.04-dvd-amd64.iso
Enjoy Ubuntu!
Tomorrow its 1st April, The April Fool's Day..
I wait whole year for this day to see what Google does either a prank or a real news.. Remember GMail and Google reveals its search technology..
Damn it can't wait any longer.. Good Night here in India! Tomorrow morning first thing visit www.google.com
Just back home from college after giving "Operating Systems" exam.
Funniest thing was a exam on OS and there was not a single question on 'threads' or 'deadlocks'..
People all around the globe use Google to find whatever they want on the web. Google too helps them by providing their pages in various languages.. I went to "Preferences" page through Google's home page, saw various languages available. There was something unusual. See the screenshot below:
Google provides pages for hackers. That makes Google "hacker friendly".
I gave it a shot and result is seen in screenshot below:
That's great, isnt it??
I was never against Apple's iPod till today. Me and my friend Kunal were going to Magnet office which is at Kandivali, to meet Nirav. Met Kunal after many days and he'd told me he'd got a Apple iPod nano as gift. And I was excited to see it and eager to hear music n podcasts on it.
He handed me that masterpiece in auto-rickshaw while we were on our way to office. It was afternoon and as usual I was carrying the FOSS.IN cap. That cap is precious thing to me and helps me promote the event. Back at tour everyone took turns and put their head in that cap. That cap was most popular thing around during three-day tour and looking at it all of my classmates kept shouting terms like "foss", "open-source", "foss.in", "debian" and many others. So that cap is important to me.
Now, coming to point, to get comfortable I kept that cap on side and was listening to music n podcasts on Kunal's iPod. We arrived at destination, got off rickshaw and went to office. That time, I found cap missing and figured out I'd left it out in auto-rickshaw itself. Its weird because I never forget things and only because I was hearing music on that sick thing known as "iPod", I forgot that FOSS.IN cap.. The quality of iPod is so great that you forget the rush of mumbai traffic. So, I advice think buying a iPod..
But, I took it positively, now rickshaw driver will promote FOSS.IN..
Finally, there of about 500 pictures taken from my K850i during the tour. I had *tough* time selecting the best pictures out of those taken to display on website.
I'm today proudly announcing my photo album on Picasa WebAlbums. Its the place where I'll upload my photos.
Click here to go to my photo album..
We'll went to Karla Caves. Its quite on high mountain. Has two ways to climb, by stairs and by steep road.; We choose none. We did some rock climbing till a point and then used stairs because to climb further, we needed ropes which we did not have. Reaching top gave my camera some work, to get amazing snaps. The caves were amazing and I say everyone must visit it. I got some photos from inside. Will upload them on my photo album.
We went back to hotel, got our bags and left Lonavala with great moments to cherish..
Even though their were some maniacs in bus who ripped mazaa apart, but we managed to come back and enjoyed it.
To summarize three days, I enjoyed them truly along with my friends, Abhish, Veena, Gaikwad sir and everyone else.. But, however tour manager really s*cks.
Morning was great but did not get a chance to capture sunrise. Breakfast was somewhat eatable. In morning we did roam around hotel area. By the way hotel was "SweetHeart Hotel". Found out some shops where we can get something to eat in case hotel would repeat its bad quality food streak.
In afternoon, by around 4PM we went to Valvan Dam. Its a place of national importance and hence photography was not allowed. :-( But, some of them managed to capture some snaps at dam.
Then, we made it to market. Bought some *chikki*. Record was hold by Abhish for buying most quantity of *chikki*, about 4KG. ;-)
Then, we went back to hotel just only to see that *worst* quality food. To enjoy and have some non-veg food, we went to Smokin' Joes Pizza which we'd noticed while roaming in market. It served me best pizzas I'd ever ate.
Night was quite troublesome for Mama, he had fever.
And, yes I'd the Aamir Khan's hair style from Taare Zameen Par. Next morning we were suppose to visit Karla Caves.
This year we'd a much better bus and we left from college as usual by indian standard time aka being late. We had our group comprising of myself(MaCkeR), Aniket(aNIX), Ranjan(ChotaDON), Mandar(maDDy), Mama(sometimes called Ankur, thats his real name), Dipesh(Diprya). The journey was awesome and its great that I do not suffer from *travel* phobia.
We reached STPI[Software Technology Parks of India] which is situated at Hinjewadi near Pune City. That was the industry we were to visit. It is the place were "internet comes from" as described by the person giving us talk that day. We got to learn a lot on how the web works.
Then we went to a hotel which was situated near Sinhagad fort. It served us with good food. We were really hungry by that time.
It was then time to trek our way to Sinhagad fort. It was great, although we went in jeeps which people can hire to go to top. I went for first time their and next time I plan a visit their, I prefer to walk up the fort. It would be a really great adventure. Got some great photos up their. Will upload them soon on my album.
We then made our way to our hotel which was back at Lonavala. Hotel was pretty *bad*, it was under maintenance. To add fuel to fire, even food was worst. Sh*t off to tour manager.
But, we managed to sleep irrespective to menace outside our room caused by some.
Just came back from the tour. Extremely tired and sleepy.
Just ended the amazing vacation responder service that GMail provides. So if you want, you can now drop me a email.
More day-2-day details coming soon..
Tomorrow early in morning at 5:30AM, I along with my college friends will be heading to college and from there to Pune for our annual industrial visit. I know that's too early in morning, but it will be fun..
Its a three day visit to Pune which will cover visit to industry and a lot of sight-seeing. This year I have my Sony Ericsson K850i with 5MP camera, means I get lot of high-quality photographs. I love photography.. We've also scheduled a Sinhagad hike, I never went their. Let the photograph creativity in me fly..!!!!
Also, if I get time plans to hook up with some Pluggies. Many relatives too are scattered around Pune so would mostly if permissible would meet them too.
And now that their's warmth in air and weather is pleasant, expecting a great weekend.. Will be back at /home on Monday night.
As everyone who knows me, knows that I'm a free software maniac. Free software projects always face problems of buying bandwidth for their projects. So, the P2P world has a solution. Using torrents instead of a direct downloads. No server involved(tracker is involved though), solution to bandwidth problems.
Every time I need a FOSS project and if it has torrent download made available; I use that only. That's how you save a lot of money of project maintainers. Seeding torrents after your download is complete is easiest way to contribute to a FOSS project. I do contribute to Debian GNU/Linux[www.debian.org] by this way. I'm doing this since I got my internet connection and first look at Debian.
I'm downloading Debian testing DVD's. But, today a surprising thing happened.. The upload speed has been shot up to 200KBps which earlier was 30KBps. That makes my share ratio above 2.0.. Amazing thing and now onwards I'll be contributing to a more greated extent. Thanks goes to my ISP for removing upload-speed restrictions, VCPL who respects FOSS community and supports us to great extent..
I urge everyone to please use torrents or any P2P sharing to download FOSS and do keep sharing it. Seeding is your first step to contribution..
This is 25th post and a good news to post.. Great times ahead....!!
The OpenTest sounds quite weird, isn't it?
It would be mostly a *NEW* concept of taking a test of students by a teacher. This concept might have been used and named same way by someone else, but for me and everyone in my class, its being created by our Cpp professor. This test has been crafted by keeping Google's statement "Don't be evil..!!" in mind.. Because, it just doesn't sound evil..
Rules are simple:-
There are some things money can't buy, for everything else (i wont mention it here..)
One of the things money can't buy is FOSS..
I just stopped using Hotmail. Why? Its because of useless and countless ads and popups.
Screenshot:
I used it only for some MSN contacts who are my relatives..
Its EVIL!! I'll use only things(email) that are made by people who believe in "Don't be evil!!"
Sorry, for that terrible theme I use on my Debian/Ubuntu. Its because laptop battery runs an hour extra as black color saves power..
Mandar W got selected at IBM, I know he will end up at Sun anyway. So, huge party, isnt it? We'd a blast today afternoon. Also, me and Kunal treated both our friends Mandar with greatest party recipe(Mohini Nan) in a restaurant.
Dont know who enjoys great and unlimited internet at cheapest rates at home. But, I do. Many might wonder does a suburb like Vasai has a good ISP? Believe me there is.
I've been a proud and happy customer of VCPL InstaNet since two years. Now many people would ask why I'm blogging about it after that very long time.
I dont like to promote brand names or companies just for a single good reason or just because I like it. But, all these days people from friends, relatives right from Mumbai to some from abroad really find my internet connection blazingly fast. And today afternoon, Kunal too said that putting his favorite brand(wont mention which) behind. That moment I just thought its time and since many people thought so, to post about it.
Also, they're the only ones responsible for bringing me in the amazing FOSS world. All my FOSS media has been pulled down from my home internet connection. My bandwidth peaks to 180GB sometimes in 6 months. Many FOSS lovers can understand what does downloading *Debian* 3 DVD's takes?
Anyways, if you're in Vasai or plan to come to some day and you need good internet connection, their only one best ISP.
Finally after huge amounts of methods to accomplish the payment for domain name and efforts to get our event website running will be bearing fruits tomorrow afternoon. The problem our team had was that no one has a credit card. But with help from great people website will be up-n-running by tomorrow afternoon.
Do check this blog tomorrow as I announce the event website..
Today got a call from FYCS student from our college named Suvish inquiring about our event. He's first one to call and register with us. That was awesome feeling. Now feels like all my hard work and burning of midnight oil is not a waste.
Meeting him a tomorrow in college.. Let the freedom spread..
Thanks to some TY students, who'd project on Linux. I got a chance to put up Ubuntu on our college PC. Hope to see it on every PC soon. By the event is over hoping to see many students demanding Ubuntu to be installed on all college computers.
I'd asked Mandar to be with me on our visit to Magnet, but when I called him before leaving home; he was sleeping. I should have called him earlier. That was fine, I'd to go alone. Shhh! Not told anyone at home that thing, otherwise mother wouldn't let me go. So someone from my family reading this, SORRY I lied. I'm fine returned home safely.
First visit to Magnet, reminded me of Google documentaries I keep watching; especially after I'd look after their tech playground... ehhh office; needs to be called because people work their with lot of fun.
Shared with Nirav everything about event till date. We discussed about how more to increase the quality people coming can get than quantity. I summarize our discussion in following manner:- more talks starting off with basic to complex, more flyers about free software, goodies, keep budget of event low for first time. Thats helped us a lot, so concentrating now on local sponsors I'd talk with.
Also, meeting and interacting with this person(Nirav), kinda raises hell in mind to do something new and doing it perfect. Feeling better than ever before, voice still fluttering. Just missed 6.22 Andheri train. Took Churchgate return journey back home. Throught the journey in RUSH of Mumbai Minute(not NY) chalked out my-side plan taking into consideration GR8 suggestions from Nirav.
So tomorrow, sharing everything with the team of FOSSists and finalizing the event schedule. College too re-opens after vacations and Adagio fest.
That sums up to a big bang new year starting for me. Meet with the only-one-true entrepreneur geek..
Just woke-up now. Saw a deadly 22 new messages from friends and relatives. I'd get new year party in my dreams though irrespective of my health I was in. Now feeling much better and at least can utter voice out of my mouth. I can visit Magnet in evening..
Welcome 2008!!
