Darth Chatri

... I wrote a blog post. Its been so long that I don't even remember it. Actually I have been just too lazy to update the blog even when I had something to write about. So I'll just put everything that comes to mind in this post.

At the top of my mind are the six sixes by Yuvraj Singh. I missed it live, but it felt great to see in the replay! It gave the team the impetus to take on South Africa and thrash them.

I tried using the Gnome Desktop Environment after ages today. After about 15 minutes I had had enough of that nonsense. Switched back to Ion 3 immediately and regained my sanity. And for the record KDE is much much better than Gnome.

Check out PLUG Mashup camp. I should have written a post dedicated to it, but then, I'm lazy. I request all good developers to please attend this event and get your hands dirty with some coding out there. Given enough number of people, I'm sure it will be a lot of fun.

Thats all I can remember folks. I'm sure I missed most of the things I had decided to write yesterday when I said to myself "Well, you ought to write a blog post now". My short term memory is extremely short.

I am getting more and more frustrated nowadays when I watch TV. In the middle of anything worthwhile, there are spans of 10 - 15 minutes when I am repeatedly told that my life is totally useless and not worth living, and the way to correct that is to buy so and so toothpaste or toothbrush or computer or bike or car or something like that.
I also get to know recently that one should take a vehicle loan because the neighbour has a better car. Also that some TV is superior because it has an image decoder (the users of other TVs interpret PAL waveforms). And at times I think that I am a fool not to use fairness creams when they guarantee instant success in whatever it is you want to do.
The opinion channels (some refer to them as news channels) have totally got out of hand, except maybe for BBC news. The hindi soaps make me weep, the marathi soaps (which I encounter because of my mom) make me cry and the various vote based competitions leave me wondering who benefits from them, the viewers or the telecom companies.
Luckily some channels are still worth watching. HBO, Star movies at times, Star World comedies, some sports coverage on ESPN and Star Sports and a couple of programs on Pogo. Animal planet and the discovery channel are also good I suspect, but I can;t get myself the hindi dubbed version which is what I get.
All in all, the TV is fulfilling its description of an 'idiot box', whichever way you look at it.

I have moved back to blogger. URL - http://darthchatri.blogspot.com

powered by performancing firefox

I might be moving back to blogger. I got hold of this new firefox extension that makes it easy to use blogger. And considering that I have been using quite a few google services of late, it makes more sense to go back to blogger.
So updates your bookmarks/readers.

After a long long time, we had a full game today. And though I ended up on the losing side (6-5) it was a good game for me personally. I started out on the wing (as usual) and in no time, I had put in 3 goals past the goalkeeper, one of them, a long range shot placed to perfection.
I quite surprised myself with the overall composure I showed after a gap of so many days. Although we have been having a short game every Sunday, the skills, stamina and temperament required in the full version is quite different. All in all a good outing.

This has to be the next best thing since ... ummm ... vim.

http://vimperator.mozdev.net/

Not for the weak of heart though

Back on Debian after a long time. My laptop has Ubuntu Edgy and the desktop had a distribution called Pardus. But I don't quite know how to use a distribution where dhclient is replaced by dhcpcd and getting it to work is a PITA.
So back to my trusted combination of Debian Stable (Etch) + ion3 + xterm + gaim + mutt + xchat + vim. And this time, firefox has given way to 'iceweasel'. Its a fork of firefox because the firefox guys came screaming "Trademark! Trademark!" at Debian.

"Aspect Oriented Programming: Radical Research in Modularity" on Google Video
A talk I found on Google Videos. Pretty interesting stuff. It will be used quite a lot in the future I think. In fact I realised I had used this concept while coding in Qt some time ago, when I created a signalcollector class that did nothing but aggregated signals and resent them. Google TechTalks May 16, 2006 ABSTRACT Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is based on a radical exploration of modularity in software development. By presenting new mechanisms that enable better modularization in a number of systems, AOP is driving us to ask fundamental questions about what modularity should mean in our field. In the past, we have tended to think of modularity in terms of hierarchies of crisply defined blocks, where each block or module defines its interface with the surrounding modules. This idea seems attractive but experience tells us that it is hard to actually get the modularity of the software we build just right. Some issues are hard to code (or design) in a single module, others just don't seem to want to stay where you put them. Work in AOP and other areas suggests a different conception of modularity, based on crosscutting structures and a more fluid notion of module boundaries. The talk will present existing AOP techniques and the problems they solve, as well as open practical and research problems ranging from mechanisms, to applications, to theoretical formulations and to conceptual foundations.

Just came across this - http://www.livejournal.com/chat/

Anyone using it? I wonder whether I can get user feeds as IM messages, that would be cool eh?

Thank you, all. In advance.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcdverha/scijokes/

Have fun.

And now a quick roundup on some tech stuf - there is not much I can share ouot here either :(
1. Devendra introduced me to SQLite in a PLUG meeting. It looked pretty good at first glance. I had to try it out immediately, especially because it fitted the requirements I had. And it has proven to be pretty amazing. Check it out yourself.
2. Previously I had written a post about mu experiments with Qt. I am now using it fulltime. The signal-slot mechanism is extremely useful. I haven't yet exploited the concept as much as I can, but it is possible to eleminate a lot of data structures by intelligent use of signals and slots.
3. One fine day I ended up marvelling about how the gmail mail paradigm was very convenient to use. What I was lacking in my setup was HTML mail handling and fast mail searching. Solutions were found here and here. Now I am happy again with my mutt + ssmtp + fetchmail + procmail + links + nmzmail setup :P No, seriously, it works like a charm.

I had almost forgotten that I have a blog. Its been a while. And the amazing thing is that I have been busy all this while. So what have I been upto ...
I am working in a startup, which I have co-founded. People who read this blog probably know this already. And like all startups that you co-found do, this one has kept me busy almost 24x7. There were a lot of things that were on my todo list when I quit my job in Jan, but I haven't managed to do any of them. Details of what I am doing will be posted as and when it would be apt for me to do so.
One thing I did manage to do was attend the Roger Waters concert. That was amazing.
On a completely different note, here is one small piece of knowledge that humanity needs to hear about - if you want to reduce your weight, walk. Or run. And I'm talking about serious walking, not that thing you do in a park while you are concentrating more on other things :P I have observed significant reduction in weight just by walking. The difference is immediately noticable on the football field :)

I have been programming using the Qt toolkit of late. Its awesome, to say the least. I am a complete newbie when it comes to UI programming. All my previous attempts to learn it ended up in disaster and I had developed a prejudice towards UI programming. But in spite of that, writing a UI with Qt has not only been fast, it has been fun as well.
The nice thing about Qt is that its not restricted to UI programming only. There is a huge world out there waiting to be explored and exploited.

I just realised that I haven't moved from my position for 7 hours. I've been in 'the zone' :)
Its been quite a few days since that has happened.

An update is due, mainly because of the fact that far too many people are unaware of my whereabouts or what I have been doing.
Right, so the update is that I have quit Codito (Celunite). As to what I'm doing, I'll post about it later, when it starts taking some shape.

1. The ultimate philosophy for the female mind is Ayn Rand. Personally, I find it very shallow. Also, one has to be a bit careful when it comes to an author who died in a mental assylum. So if you want to impress a girl - Ayn Rand is the best. Anything deeper or more complicated is beyond them.
2. Diet control can work wonders!
3. 2 weeks of not playing football make me very uncomfortable. I feel something is missing.
4. I used to have some respect for the IIT MTechs (as a breed). I have lost it. Completely.
5. I need a vacation
6. KDE is good. And getting better.

The quality of the breakfast has just been decreasing :P I hope its better tomorrow. Reached the venue late today and missed the opening keynote. However the quality of talks today generally has been far better of all the three days. And (from secind hand reports), this is not just limited to the talks I attended, but others as well.
The first one for me today was knutties talk on web marker (which I had to leave towards the end). It was nice to know that all my suggestions (and sample code) regarding the implementation of multiple selections has now been completely thrown out, along with most of the code that existed then. Which basically means that a lot of though has been put into the current policies and implementation.
The next one was Ashbert's talk on Linux Wifi stacks. This was an interesting talk for the sole reason that I was reminded of some lectures from my engineering college days. I did not understand a word, and was more busy chatting with Alok (thats the real reason you need wifi at the venue).
After a quick lunch I went and sat for Harald Weltes talk on OpenEmbedded for the Simputer. I had hoped it would be more on hacking the simputer than on the OpenEmbedded framework, but it turned out to be otherwise. During the meantime I evaluated mgp as an optional presentation software, and reached the concusion that Latex is still much better.
Next was a presentation being given by Sirtaj Singh on the QGraphics class for canvas drawings. UI programming is not really my forte. I cringe at the idea of having to provide a UI which is anything more than command line option. But I'm getting to see the way things work in Qt, and its seems so good so far.
Then came the highlight of the entire event - a presentation on the activities of the Chaos Computer Club. I can only say that it was phenomenal and inspiring. The more I attempt to put it in words, the more injustice I would be doing to it.
After the formal event was over we had a nice dinner at Atul's house and had a great time interacting with other speakers. It was a fitting ending to a great event. I would like to give more details, but at the moment I'm extremely sleepy.

Day two of the conference started with another decent breakfast, in the confines of our room. We actually left on time and reached on time too. The drive to the venue was pretty eventful, with Alok and me showing why we are the best when it comes to stupidity. Asbert meanwhile was laughing away to glory rocking the risckshaw.
After the first talk, I left the venue and went across the street to meet Ananth and Karthik. Ananth is doing his MSc in IISC while Karthik passed out a few months ago from IISC and is now working in TI. I got to remind myself why I enjoy their company so much. We discussed on topics varying from the Upanishads, the open source model applied to the scientific fraternity, the Goedel theorem applied to the brain and the business practices of Microsoft!
After lunch, we walked back to IISC chatting all the way, catching up with each other and remembering some good old times.
I resumed my presence at the conference after that. I attended the Debian BoF (Birds of a feather) and the KDE India BoF. Following that was a pretty good and entertaining panel discussion on "10 years of Linux in India".
After the days proceedings at the venue, some of the InfyLUG gang got together for dinner. Everyone seemed to have a common agenda, that of pulling Mahendra's leg. Sooo ... after an eventful day, I'm back at the hotel, where I'm greeted with a pleasant surprise. The Wifi is working! Hurray! I'll get down to some web browsing now, something I don't remember doing for a long long time.

The day started with a lengthy and nice breakfast. With the important thing take care of, we proceeded to the venue for the FOSS.in. After going around in circles for a couple of times, we finally reached there.
This time, its going to be more about meeting up with friends, making new ones and catching up with other geeks. So I did not really attend the talks, except for a couple of them ... and mine :P
The talk went well. I didn't really realise how time flew and I had to speed up more than I would have liked, towards the end. Otherwise, I was satisfied, going by the questions that were thrown at me after the talk.
As I said earlier, its not about the talks, not even mine! Its about catching up with fellow geeks. So far I've met (trying to remember in order) Pradeepto, Natarajan, Mahendra, Mandeep Singh, Karunakar, Toufeeq, Manish Malik, Sughosh and his friend Linu, Herald Welte. And the official socialising is yet to begin.
Right now I'm at the closing keynote for the day.
Details of the dinner and chats would appear in tomorrows update :)

FOSS.in starts tomorrow (actually today, considering its past 12 midnight). I reached Bangalore with Ashwin Chagule and Alok. The Kingfisher flight was pretty much uneventfull, except for a rerun of the Great Indian Laughter Challenge that was on, and some rarely done mutton. Oh yes, I forgot to mention one gorgeous air-hostess ;)
My talk is at 5 pm tomorrow. I've been going through the slides, making a few last minutes changes. I don't have net connection at the moment, so I'm not sure of the link the website, but you can try http://foss.in and http://foss.in/2006/schedules.
Time to sleep now.