rohitj's domain

For last few days, I have been talking to people (mainly IITK students) about different events we have in FOSSKriti. I found people pretty enthusiastic about different events. I am pointing out those events here:

0: RoR : Y4 batch, being highly affected by Prof. TVP’s, is highly interested in attending RoR workshop. Some people want to learn RoR, some people want to discuss RoR. And I assume that some people will come because they know Saurabh Nanda.

1: Linux Kernel : Those who eff around there linux distro, especially Gentoo users, and those who have slightest interest in systems, were found interested in this.

2: Lisp : I personally am going to attend this event as a participant, not as organizing team. . And I am sure I will bring 10 more people. Actually no, some people were found interested in this workshop, specially those who are doing compilers course, or those who have done compilers course.

3: Linux Chix :

(female.isIITian())&&(female.isGeek())&&(female.hasTalkedTorohitj()) = 0

So, I am not sure how many females will turn up, but I am sure people will be there. This is the second event I want to attend. I want to see what they are upto.

4: KDE4 : Those who do not know, recently there was a big shift in IITK linux community. People broke their long loyalty for Gnome, and shifted to KDE. Alas!! KDE4 is still not in official repos, but they are still on KDE. They think its worth waiting for KDE4. Of course, this talk will attract these people.

Left are beagle hackfest and Clutter talk. Beagle is a must-attend hackfest. (afterall it substitutes stupid google desktop ). And clutter? I have no idea about it.

So this year in Techkriti, we are going to have FOSSKriti as well. FOSSKriti is basically a set of talks, lectures, workshop, hackfest and BoFs about different open source softwares. We have called people from Gnome, KDE, LinuxChix and cool people from Cleartrip (who is supporting this event) to give talks and workshops. Everything has been planned. Checkout the FOSSKriti site to get more information about it.

Basically, there is going to be talks on RoR, KDE4 and LinuxChix. There is going to be a beagle hackfest and kernel hackfest and workshop. And there are some BoFs. In short its going to be awesome. Those who are coming for Software Corner can easily attend these events, we have ensured that there is no major time clash between Software Corner events and FOSSKriti events.

And those who haven’t registered for the event, don’t worry. There is on the spot registration as well. ….

All 7 IITs in India and IISc joined together to open their course materials so that people could use them. IITs and IISc are the best technical schools in India and are pretty much world renowned. They have started collecting course materials in the form of slides. The slides can be accessed from http://nptel.iitm.ac.in . Its still an on going process, and it will take time to have course materials for most of the courses. But its surely an awesome initiative. Now, they have also started uploading lecture videos. I don’t think they are actual classroom lectures, I think its all staged. But I think it will still be helpful.

These institutes got Google’s help to get the videos uploaded on youtube. All videos can be accessed from http://www.youtube.com/profile_play_list?user=nptelhrd

For more details see the IITK site here .

So, here I am, seeing probably 8th movie in Umang’08. This times Umang is surely one of the best Umang in these 4 years. And yeah, I am liking doing live blogging. I just had Pizza from Domino who has a stall just near the auditorium where movies are being shown. Apart from that I am having coffee and popcorns. Surely prices are high. Coffee costed me 10Rs, which usually cost only 5Rs. Pizza prices are 10-20rs higher. Popcorn which should cost only 5Rs. costed me 10Rs. But then you always screw your customers, don’t you.

This time there are 3 screens. 1 in auditorium, where you get to see the wide big screen. 1 is open air theatre, just outside the institute auditorium. And the last one is in newly made outreach auditorium. The outreach one has a really small screen, though the sound quality was good. Open air theatre surely didn’t attract people as even after arranging fire and bed, people didn’t come. Auditorium as usual is awesome.

Today they are showing bourne series in one serious. Right now they are showing Bourne Superemacy. Sound is good. So is video quality. And ofcourse this series is good as well. There were 3-4  non-english and non-hindi movies as well. Audience was like zero till thursday. But from friday onward the auditorium which has a capacity of 2000 students is more than half full. Good, isn’t it.

We also had Mr. Chanakya in opening ceremony, which was surely way too cool. They showed us a episode his new series which is about vedas and upnishadas. The episode was cool. I am now desperately waiting for it. I loved Chanakya.

On a serious note. Its good that Umang uses legal CD to show movies. But they were using illegal songs in intervals. And they even copied VCDs to show movie. (it should really be fine, but its still illegal)

2007 was overall good. I got to learn lots of things, and got to do lots of things. Got to talk to lot of cool people. Though I wouldn’t forget that it also brought 7th semester which was like the most difficult semester I ever had. This semester probably took my anxiety level to top. Some of the highlights of 2007 are below:

1. Got a job at Microsoft, India. I am excited about it.
2. Got involved into Free Culture activities.
3. Shifted 99% to open source softwares. (flash )
4. Shifted 100% to free songs. (though, this is true.)
5. Shifted to wonderful KDE. I will write an entry for it.
6. No more Gentoo, it takes time. Ubuntu on other hand is wonderful. (Apologies to all those who are on Gentoo or are thinking of shifting to Gentoo because I asked them to do so. )
7. Hiking
8. Another hobby now is Photography …. need money to buy DSLR.
9. Bought a new web space to play with different things. Its been wonderful till now.
10. Zeropage removed restrictions from their songs.
11. Kelly Allyn sent me her autograph, need to go home to get it.
12. Met some wonderful people during internship at Virginia Tech.
13. <compressed because its personal>

Hopes from 2008 :

1. Grad School or a good job (or a startup?)
2. DSLR
3. Free Culture Club at IITK
4. Passing IITK
5. openmoko / android
6. make IITK music club release an album under CC ( www.tempostand.com should help us)
7. Finish talk with Vox Populi guys

Its a great pleasure to announce that Tata guys have come up with a supercomputer which is ranked 4th fastest in the world, and fastest in Asia.

I am happy for 2 reasons

1. that India did it again. (remember param2000?)
2. that the computer uses Linux

Tata is the only company that has maintained its reputation for long time now. Even when TCS is criticized sometimes, Tata has maintained its reputation. Those who do not know, Tata’s most of the money goes to charity work. I am using the word “goes” not “will”. I love this group.

For more details check the original post.

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose said that English strategy was “Divide and Conqueror”. I think the following image says more than that.

So, in IITK we get net access through LAN. LAN not only gives us access to internet but also supports our LAN activities like file sharing, gaming etc. No doubt internet has decreased human interaction and is making people introvert/weaker. IITK is facing a similar problem. Some frequent suicides in past 2 years brought the issue that interaction between students should increase. And interaction between senior and junior students should increase as well. And authority came up with the rule that for first 3 semesters students should not be allowed LAN or personal computers. For computing purpose they should use Computer Center or Hall Computer Center. They claimed that reason for decreasing student interaction is computers. Students tend to spend most of their time in front of computer rather than with other students. To some extend its not wrong. If I consider myself, I spend most of my time in front of computer, and because of computers only, I spend most of my free time on computer rather than with friends. But being an extrovert guys ( I am pretty much extrovert, right?) I interact with friends as well. But its not same with others. Those who are not active in different activities inside campus tend to become more introvert.

But the question was, is LAN Ban going to help? Actually NO. Because its not computers that is contributing more, but its lack of activity in student community that is making students introvert. Gossips between students can not make students truely strong. We need to increase student co-curricular activities. Kanpur being a sort of village place where IIT students have no life outside IIT Campus, we need to create opportunities for students so that they come out of their rooms, rather than sitting in front of computer. Computer is just filling their free time. If you want that this free time should be spent outside students room then we have to increase social activities, which can be sports, festivals or anything. Let us talk logic here, how many of us play any game here? How many students do physical exercise? If I consider my wing of 24 students. No one does any physical activity. games, dance, jogging, gym, nothing. We do not have that good infrastructure for physical activities. How many of us participate in some club activity or something? Except from 2-3 guys, no one else does that. Why?

I guess there are 2 main reasons :

1. First is that academics load is a bit extra and irregular. We tend to work really hard for 2-3 days and then we relax for 2 days. Such irregularity doesn’t let us do anything other than acads and then sitting in room. For example, I want to play Lawn Tennis or Table Tennis, but I need a partner. The academic system doesn’t allow a student to be remain regular in schedule. So, I can not have a fixed partner, and hence I can not play either game regularly, and soon I stop playing that game. I have tried it a lot of time, and every time after 2-3 days, I got an assignment or my partner got an assignment and we stopped playing. But they wouldn’t decrease academic pressure.
2. Lack of infrastructure for student co-curricular activities : no of Table Tennis tables in each Hall of Residence of 500 students is just 1. For the whole IITK of 10,000 population only 2 Lawn Tennis courts are there. Squash? no. Bad-minton? no. Swimming? limited service. Volley Ball? just 1 court which has lights. Basket Ball? just 2 courts (though its probably enough). Gym? limited service. pool/billiards? no.

And more it. LAN Ban meant snatching freedom from students. Those who want to learn about computers, will not be able to have their own computer and hence wouldn’t be able to experiments. I remember I learned about Linux in my 3rd semester. LAN/Computer ban for 3 semesters will mean that a computer science student will remain away from computer for 3/8th time of his degree. What an irony. Those who want to partipate in programming contest, those who want to work on their projects, have to dependent upon Computer Centers, ah common thats so inconvenient. And anyways, as we got feedback from new batch which is affected by this ban, this ban is not helping students interact with seniors. Probably same batch student interaction would have increased.

So, considering this new batch’s response, Student Senate has said NO to LAN Ban. IITK has been a place which has given full freedom to students. This freedom has given us rights that we can say NO to decisions taken by authority which affects students. I hope now when even Student Senate has said no to this, authority will take back their decision.

I invite comment/suggestions regarding the two point I raised.

In my post about google products, I had shown my wish to have a desktop application for calendar which should sync it’s data with an online server so that I will not have to open browser to see calendar, and I will be able to see calendar even if I do not have my laptop with me.

Now, in software engineering course, we are asked to make a software using different software engineering techniques. And I could persuade my project partners to work on this dream calendar. Mainly the calendar will have following properties :

1. API for making desktop application and web application. First release will have API for perl only. (will serve both desktop and web application )
2. All normal calendar things
3. The software will be under GPL.
4. Others will be able to change your calendar, if you have given them permission.
5. others will be able to send you a request to add an entry in your schedule, like your friend may want you to attend a meeting, (s)he can put an entry for that in your calendar, but you have to accept that request so it finally appear in your schedule.
6. We are trying to understand how iCal works, once we understand that, we will try to include iCal as well, so that you could use current softwares which supports iCal. (iCal is RFC standard for calendars, that means I can freely use it. right?)
7. As of now, if iCal doesn’t make sense, we will have our own thing, for now we are calling it oCal.
8. I will run this server on my web server, so if you others wouldn’t have a server to sync their data, they should be able to do that.
9. We are thinking of including some plugin system as well, so users could modify the calendar functionalities, though we are looking at how different plugin systems works
10. Current status of the project can be seen at http://rohitj.net/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=software_engineering_project

If you think you want a particular feature in the calendar, let me know. We want to know what users want.

Last week was a different week for me. My schedule was all screwed. In general, I slept at around 4PM (IST) and woke up at 11PM. But, this wasn’t that bad schedule as I got good peaceful lonely time to work. Though, last week I slept for just 30 hours. I had exam which is screwed big time. Then had assignments and the biggest part was used for BTech Project. I had some tough time doing the work my guide gave to me. Though it was interesting at the end. As, I got to learn lot of things. And then yesterday’s meeting went well. I have now a lot of things to do. Most of it are the things that even my professor himself have no idea about. I think I am going to enjoy my BTech Project.
And yeah, I have started another blog to write about the work I am doing in the project. Check out  www.rohitj.net/researchblog/ . It’s again powered by wordpress.