tuxmaniac’s blog

Its been really long since I updated my blog. More or less 2.5 months and I just realised that. May be its a side-effect of doing a lot micro-blogging. If you are’nt following me on twitter or identi.ca , please feel free to do so. It has been very hectic and will continue to be atleast for the foreseeable future and I am loving it.

Google Summer of Code 2009

I am participating in this year’s google summer of code program as a student (yes, you read it right , as a student ).  You can find my proposal to RTEMS here (pdf). The Community Bonding period is almost coming to a close and the work package is getting more clear day by day. My mentor, Thomas Doerfler from Embedded Brains Gmbh has helped me refine and catch up with all the necessary required knowledge to start work. Thank you Thomas. So this summer is already scheduled for me. Oh! You can find the project related wiki page here.

Photography

Whenever I feel like “Its getting on to me”, I take my good friend (now its got some companions like tripod, UV-Filter, Polariser etc) and go shooting. Outcomes are the sets of Tulip Show (one of my favourites), Geneva Autoshow, random pics of my town and nearby areas. The photos I liked the most are in the Masterpieces set. Some preview below.

Oh and my cooking skills have improved tremendously. I can now cook Palak Paneer too

Academia

Its been hectic, hectic and hectic. But things are looking good. If everything goes well I should be able to get some experiment results out of my project by July which could be great. I have decided to put all my code that I have written for my assignments on the interweb under the WTFPL. Thanks to Thibault to have suggested it If FEL team accepts we can package it under different sections and provide it along with the FEL Spin for F12. I have a few blog posts to make on some roadblocks I came across which could be really very interesting and informative for fellow Computer Architects, students and in general to anybody interested in Hardware Modeling and Design.

Thats all folks! Later!

Ever since I saw pradeepto distribute hand outs during his sessions on “Contributing to KDE” at Freed and NIT Calicut a year ago, I always wanted to do something similar to that. It is very true that when your audience have something to take back after the session, the impression created is very different. The handouts need not or should not run to pages as this will again bring down the motivation level. So the best thing would be 1 page handouts with all the basic info like where to download stuff, where to ask questions, website, tools provided, a 2-3 line introduction on the project and some nice graphics to please the eyes.

This weekend, I wanted to try my hand at this handout creation and used Scribus for it. I must say Scribus is an excellent Desktop Publishing tool, with very nice video tutorials for starters like me. The effort put in would be something like 4 hrs and the basic draft output looks pretty neat. Lots of tweakings necessary though.

Download the pdf from here. If anyone wants the editable version of the brochure please do leave a comment and I will send it to you.

As I recover from my flu, I write this post on my FOSDEM 2009 experience a couple of weeks back. I attended the conference as a Fedora Electronic Laboratory Team Consultant (thats what the team devel time-line says ) from Feb 6th to Feb 9th 2009.
Day 0:

After going around Brussels the whole day, it was time to meet Chitlesh Goorah, the man behind Fedora Electronics Laboratory at the Brussels Station - Central for dinner. We were joined by Joerg Simon and Robert later on. Over dinner we discussed a lot on current status of Fedora Electronic Lab to Java to Ruby to Life.. Then it was time to head to the Delirium Cafe where the Beer event was taking place. As I entered into the pub, I was stunned to see not a “menu” but a big “book” being given for me to choose. I picked up 3 different makes and did have a nice time. Belgian Beers are the best! At around midnight I realized, I have spoken to lot of unknown people and also figured out that I have lost the folks with whom I came there. So, took a walk back to the hotel to end Day 0 peacefully.

 Day 1:

Headed to the ULB campus at around 10 AM. Reaching the place was pretty straight forward. Right away got into the job of photography and networking. Got myself a cool FOSDEM tee and started to do some booth hopping. Every free software project under the sky had its presence here. The hallways were a lot crowded than I expected. I met the KDE folks who were with the KDE Handbook (designed, developed and exported from India - Pradeepto, do I need to tell more or are you going to blog about it? ) Met Ade and a whole bunch of KDE folks before heading to the fedora devroom where the Fedora Activity Day was about to begin. Christoph’s RPM packaging talk covered most basics but I wished he actually did some live packaging and showed. Then came the most awaited talk of FOSDEM (atleast for me). Chitlesh’s FEL talk. A good number of audience and the talk went well. One can clearly see the clarity in his vision and mission that he for FEL. Complete focus.After some roaming around, decided to hack on some Hardware design stuff and got into the hack room. Spent most of the afternoon there and came out exhausted. Headed to the hotel and later joined the Fedora Team get together in the evening near the Grand Place. Nice Day 1.

Day 2:

Mostly spent in the Embedded devroom listening to talks relating to the research work I am doing and in the Fedora booth helping the folks down there. Met Chitlesh late in the afternoon and we decided to go for a “Closed door” meeting of the FEL team. We discussed our next steps and my To Do list became longer and longer. Some important next steps discussed were getting the documentation in proper shape on the wiki + exploring how better we can provide support in the embedded area. After that it was time for the group Fedora photo and the usual hugs and bye byes. Next day i took the flight out back to Lausanne, Switzerland.

So whats the title all about…

I have mixed feelings leaving FOSDEM 2009. I was happy that I met quite a few folks with whom I have *only* had on-line communication especially Chitlesh. I felt somehow not at home a few times (which of-course is true.. but you know..) and also i got lot more things done at foss.in. May be the atmosphere of FOSDEM is not ideal for hacking or development work but more towards networking, planning etc.  It was a mixed feeling with which I left Brussels and FOSDEM.

Full FOSDEM flickr set here

So, Brussels it was last weekend. This wonderful city will be remembered by me for a lot of things (good and bad) for quite some time to come. I went there to attend FOSDEM (a separate blog post for this) and of-course didn’t miss out on the opportunity to check out the city either. Some quick points..

1. Came out of Brussels Railway station and for a moment wondered whether I took the wrong flight/train to some place in the US. Tall buildings (very much unlike Europe)
2. Explored most of the city with a map provided by the youth hostel (2go4). Very informative map with some cool Young Traveller tips and favourites.
3. Travelling alone is no more boring.. I have my good companions (yoda and my Nikon D60 - need to find a name for her)
4. KillerX decided not to join me in brussels at the last moment because of some commitments, and I was left alone in the 6 bed dorm. It was so exciting to meet new faces everytime you enter your room in the evening and everytime you exit the room in the mornings, you would know these people (who you would have spent a whole night chatting) were not going to be around. I left notes on their tables and left the place.
5. Met people from Chile, Australia, Taiwan, Spain and ofcourse Switzerland itself in this short stay here. And most of them were good looking girls KillerX , you missed someting
6. Had all those that Belgium and Brussels is famous for.. From Waffles to Kwak, Kasteel, Krieks…
7. I returned back to Swiss and was down with flu for almost three days and today I am feeling a bit better. Hence this quick blog post. Its been a horrible three days.
8. The number of times I got lost in this city easily exceeds the sum of all the times I have got lost in my brief periods of stay in Europe and my short Eurotrips. I infact managed to get lost and end up in a street having strip clubs too.
9. The number of Siren sounds I have heard in three days is way higher than any I have heard in my 6 month stay in Swiss. Goes to show the number of politicians in this city.

Brussels, a nice mix of middle age europe and modern architecture. A city that has life and parties go well into the night. Brussels through my lens here.

Starting tomorrow, very early (I really mean it, I have a flight at 0635 hrs from Geneva), I will be in Brussels, Belgium for FOSDEM 2009. The schedule is amazing. As Madhu pointed out, there are more than 200 speakers from all over the world, from all FLOSS projects gathering there. I am very excited! After working with Chitlesh close to a year now, I will be meeting him personally and what more he has a talk on Fedora Electronics Laboratory too. Lots of KDE folks have also promised to be there. The Fedora and Ubuntu gangs will be there too. Looking forward to some great Belgian Beer.

Its going to be 3 days full of knowledge, travel, photography, hacking, networking, socialising… on and on. More from FOSDEM as I get through the days. Now off to sleep to get up in time for tomorrow’s flight. If you are around Brusells, do drop in at FOSDEM. I love saying “Hello” to people

Amazing day! It all started a couple of days back with me reading a blog entry on “Student Summit for Sustainability 2009″ happening at ETH, Zurich (the sister univ of EPFL and popularly known as the MIT of Europe, though EPFL is snatching that name slowly ) The interesting part of this summit was not “sustainability”  but the “Free” Software stuff squeezed in. So the date was 28th and thats the day I have my final exam. So why not head down to Zurich in the afternoon? And yes I did just that today. I am visiting Zurich City for the first time and after the usual photo shoots headed to ETH Zurich for the talks by Georg (President, FSF Europe) and Aaron Siego (President KDE e.V, KDE Architect).

As with everything in Switzerland, the sessions started sharp 1730 hrs. Georg talked on basics of Free Software (from the feedback, It seems not new stuff for the crowd). He then followed it with how KDE community were doing “catch up” work for the past several years with other Desktop Environments and appreciated the decision of the K folks to innovate and lead rather than ending up doing “keep up with the trend” type of development. Yes, any such gutsy decision always draws a lot of flak and flames in the community. We saw that recently with the FOSS.IN conference format changes as well . And viola, here we had KDE 4.0 followed by a much better and stable 4.1 and then now KDE 4.2.

Aaron took the stage and started showing some “bling” of KDE 4.2. What I liked the most is the way he backed up the eye candy he showed with the technical background and some overview of the underlying technology. I must admit, that it felt like I had been missing something revolutionary for so long. The amount of the thinking, innovation, effort that has gone into KDE 4.x are a lot to be put in a few words. Right from changing the “Desktop” image, panel handling, window resizing, file selection etc etc. so much thought on usability has been put in. The very mission of trying to make the Desktop experience feel very similar to handling things in real world, I think will help KDE go a long way.

After this we had the Apperitif or the drinks and food session. Everybody were give Free “Free beer” with loads of snacks to munch along with. As with any such socialising sessions, there were groups discussing random stuff from KDE to sucky Economic situation. Met loads of people and here I am sitting in the train back to Lausanne and writing this blog entry from Fedora 10 with KDE 4.1 running on it. I have *never* used KDE for any such work other than when developing/testing/using Fedora Electronic Laboratory (which is a considerable amount of time). But now, I am here playng around with DigiKam, gwenview, Dolphin etc etc.. Hats off KDE Team. Looks like its time to do a sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop too

Complete flickr set of Zurich, ETH and the KDE Party sessions

What a year 2008 has been for me. As mentioned in the last line of this post, it has indeed been life changing. Top Events of my life 2008.. Here it goes..

• Lost my lovely little Nikon Coolpix L2 (I miss it even now)
• Became a proud owner of Nikon D60 DSLR
• Became a Fedora Electronic Laboratory team member (The dev time line calls me a consultant )
• Got my Ubuntu Membership Approved (Yes I have a @ubuntu.com and @fedoraproject.org email ids now )
• GNUSim8085 was awarded FOSS India Award by LFY magazine
• 2nd time speaker at Freed.in (Will miss this year’s edition. Its like missing a family event )
• NIT Calicut happened (3rd time) again. Miss that too this time around.
• FOSS.IN 2008 Speaker. Was great to meet the known and unknown faces again.
• Quite a few memorable trips with friends and colleagues. (I also did some snow sledging in the fag end of 2008)
• Got Admitted to a World Top 15 Engineering and Applied Sciences University and shifted base to Switzerland.
• I Quit my Nice Cosy Job as a senior Engineer and got back to Academic Environment and Research (Loving it!!)

And this year again, though I feel is not going to be that life changing is definitely going to be full of challenges, travel, loads of photography and a lot and lot of learning. Looking forward to 2009!!

PS: Around Christmas and New Year Abhijeet (I linked your flickr account. Happy now?? ) and I went around a few cities in Swiss and here goes their photos. Enjoy!!!

Full Flickr Sets Luzerne, Bern, Les Diablerets, Montreux

So many things happening this time around Christmas and New year. First off lets start Free Software. Duh! obviously

GNUSim8085 FOSS.IN 2008 Delayed Release

What was supposed to be a foss.in 2008 release has been delayed by a month and it just became the Christmas Release. Yes!!! GNUSim8085 1.3.5 is released! Go grab it now. So whats special about this release? You can run gnusim8085 now on Windows machines as well. Kudos to a lot of guys who helped fix a lot of issues that were big road blocks for the release and foss.in 2008 was the place where things got sorted out and most of it got fixed in the Workout. So thats news number 1 for you all.

Next..

Around Switzerland in 4 days

Starting tomorrow evening I will be touring Switzerland (Bern, Luzern, Diablerets, Geneva and the likes.) with a very very good friend of mine who is coming down from Germany. I am really looking forward to it. And I will be doing all these with a special thing in my hands. (thats the next news..)

The Special Thing

The special thing is the wonderful DSLR Nikon D60. I got this at a great price. Thanks to Nikon for the 100 CHF cashback offer. Thanks to Abhijeet for the gift contribution. I just cant believe that I am the owner of a D60 now. Yipee!!!! And already I have started flooding flickr

So thats it for now. Wish you all a Merry Christmas and see you again around New Year’s eve. Happy Hacking!

Yipeee!!! My vacations have begun and I cant believe myself the amount of work I have put in the last few weeks. Easily “the most challenging” 3 months I have had in quite a few years. Its been a terrific learning experience and I am loving it. Now that I am into vacations before the exams begin in mid Jan, it is a very nice time to get back to some bit of travel, photography and Free Software. For photography, I am looking at buying either a Nikon D60 with 18-55mm VR kit lens (which costs like 639 CHF and Nikon CH promises a 100 CHF cash back, which means an effective 23,500 INR) or go for the point and shoot ones (costing from 220 CHF). Canon P&S cameras seem to be much more feature rich than Nikon. For the uninformed I am an intermediate level photographer,  looking to have better control over the pics I take

As of now I have listed a few P&S cameras as follows, Canon A2000 IS, A1000IS, A590IS. Any suggestions are most welcome.

Finally, I am back to Switzerland (well, a week back) after attending the “radically” changed FOSS.IN conference in Bangalore, INDIA. My return journey was quite uneventful only with the Air France “check-in” counter girl in Chennai showing amazing interest in what I was doing in Switzerland and we ending up having a 5 minute conversation on general stuff I had set targets for FOSS.IN this time and I seem to have completed about 65 % of the tasks.

I had missed the first day of FOSS.IN due to personal reasons and my FOSS.IN journey started from the second day. After the usual “hello”(s) and the *hugs* all around, it was time to sit down for the planned GNUSim8085 workout. I had not expected much of a gathering here so decided to take up a small BOF place. But to my surprise we had about 12 people (If I still remember the numbers right), and we started off hacking. I had put down a list of to dos on the white board available and thats how it started. The result 2 bug fix patches, 2 feature enhancements, windows port syntax highlighting problem fixed and we are all set for a windows release. Yes!!!! Target reached but because of the last two weeks of the semester I have been extremely busy (well put infinity to it) and hence could not make a release. Thanks to all those who joined in and special thanks to Krishna Baradhwaj, Madhusudhan, Vattam, Aditya et al. for pitching in with those wonderful patches. *Kudos*

Even after foss.in these guys are continuing to work on the project and the sudden increase in the devel list traffic says it all. Next stop was the preparation for my talk on “Fedora Electronics Laboratory”. Fedora 10 had just been released and with that ofcourse my favourite FEL10 based on KDE4. Well I must say two things here. KDE4 has suddenly seems to have become usable for me and FEL10 rocks as always. Chitlesh and me went through every point that needs to be talked at the event, with me actually doing a run through of the presentation on IRC just to ensure I dont miss anything and I had some log to look back to check if had missed some thing.The presentation as such went well with an expected turn out. The success part of it is that a couple of people actually came forward and started asking questions on specific areas of the devel time line I had shown during the talk and were ready to start off. Apart from this Rahul and me had an offline discussion as to how we could improve things in the spin and a couple of ideas popped out. One idea that was interesting was to have a menu structure clearly partitioning the various tools present and what for it is used. For e.g. One Menu item would be ASIC Flow, another one could be Simulators, etc. This would let users have a clear understanding of what tool is present and what it can be used for. The current challenge is that most of the tools are command line based. So we must now find a solid way to communicate the entire set of tools present in FEL along with its purpose.

The couple of reviews that I had planned did not happen because of infrastructure issues as always. Bad me. I should have got the required files downloaded prior. But nevertheless, electric has got approved already and will be in the next Fedora Electronic Lab DVD Chitlesh has been working extremely hard on getting more packages into Fedora Electronics Laboratory. Though this is good news, we are now left with the challenge of documentation and QA to give the end users a pain free experience. (*whispers*  Someone said they will help out with the documentation and having a few quick start tutorials in place at foss.in *whispers*)

 
I have now got loads of tasks in the free software world to complete and also in my academic life. Its getting interesting and all the more challenging.I missed meeting quite a few people but at the same time happy to have met a lot of my good old buddies and potential contributors. Thanks to team FOSS.IN for giving the Free Software world this wonderful opportunity to interact and “Get things done”. A lot more happened but this blog report is already reaching its limit. So I stop here and let you enjoy the pictures on flickr with the tag fossin2008 And I love my t-shirt which actually has my IRC nick “tuxmaniac” printed on it It would really be cruel to end this blog post without thanking Fedora and my respected good old motivator. Thank you everyone and looking forward to more such “getting things done” conferences.

PS: It really is a co-incidence that almost all the photos I am in at foss.in 2008 is with me wearing the Red Hat.