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Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Pradeepto Bhattacharya" journal:[<< Previous 10 entries]
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07:37 pm
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Dil Maange More.
The month of February was an eventful one. I represented KDE at four different foss events in India. Four events in four different cities in 4 different states :). First event one was Mukti '09 at National Institute of Technology, Durgapur. Second was Gnunify '09 at Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research. Pune. Third event was at Magnum Opus, Banaras Hindu University Institute of Technology, Varansi. Finally, one of my yearly pilgrimages, FOSSMeet'09 at National Institute of Technology, Calicut.
I had an very interesting time at each of the event and each deserves a separate blog post. Made many new friends and many new contacts. I am still in touch with many of them and its really cool to see so many new faces getting into Qt/KDE contribution.
My favourite dude currently is Shantanu Jha. Met this dude at FOSS.IN/2008, one of my regular and yearly FOSS pilgrimages :). Yes, Atul, I know, I have to write that report :). Anyway, so this dude attended the KDE Project of the Day at FOSS.IN/2008 and all the KDE talks. Volunteered along with his college gang at the KDE booth and helped us a lot during those five days of FOSS.IN ( and before/after the event ). So he attended the talks, got interested, spoke to the speakers. Then went back home, started poking with the code, and asked questions on the lists when he had doubts and started fixing bugs and sending patches.
Some days back he wrote me an email telling me about what he has been upto since FOSS.IN/2008 and how excited he is that Aaron accepted his patches. So I told his mentor friends and BMS college seniors Madhusudhan, Santhosh and Krishna to bring him along to FOSSMeet, Calicut. I was going to do a Qt/KDE development workshop for beginners. Asked him to join me as "TA" :P. And boy! he did an awesome job. He took a very interesting session on RAD with Qt Designer. It was fun meeting the whole BMS college gang again.
Now all that is over. New things to look forward to.
For starters, I am sure most of us know that Akademy will be held at Gran Canaria this time as a part of larger event Gran Canaria Desktop Summit.
The Call for Papers went public couple of days back. Read this news on the dot. So what are you waiting for? Go submit your talk. You can even submit a technical paper if you wish to do so. :)
Current Location: New Panvel
Tags: akademy, call for papers, contributor, kde, shaan
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11:44 am
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On my way to ....
... Kharagpur for a few days. Writing this blog sitting inside a train. The train is Bombay-Howrah ( Kolkata ) Sunday Superfast train, a weekly service since a year or so and most importantly reaches Kharagpur around 17:30, which is much better than any/most of the other trains going to Kharagpur / Howrah.
Also trying to get kdepim-e4 built on this box as I munch on some snacks. Yay! for Indian Rail for providing us with power sockets for each seat cubicle. I am carrying my own internet and hope it works for most of the route ;).
Current Location: Train
Tags: bombay, howrah, in-laws, indian railways, kdepim, kharagpur, power sockets, sunday special superfast train, train
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11:35 am
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The Making of " We Are KDE".
Some of you might have already seen the video of "We are KDE" song. But here is the inside story behind the song.
So we ( folks from the KDE-India group ) were working really hard to make sure that KDE has a blast at this wonderful conference called FOSS.IN/2008. One of things we worked on were the "KDE Handbook"
Here is the "His Highness Geek God and Mighty Blogger" Gopal V endorsing the brochure/handbook. More about the handbook later.
But for now, you must know that the the layout and design of this brochure was done by a dude called Lakshya Shrivastava ( Lexi ). Over a period of time, I was interacting with him on daily basis over IM and phone with regards to the brochure. One fine day, I came to know that he is an painter and amateur musician as well. I saw photos of his painting and even heard him sing and play guitar. Then one day, when he was almost done with designing the brochure, I generally asked him, if he could write song. He said, he hasn't done that before but can try. I also contacted our dear Summer Of Code ( Marble ) candidate Shashank Singh ( shanky ), who is btw, Lakshya's classmate and of course the one who got us introduced in first place and told him about this idea. Shanky loved the idea and told me something that made me even more enthusiastic about the idea. Apparently, his childhood friend Lokesh Gupta ( Loki ), magically knew to play a guitar as well. Shanky wrote the first email to all of us concerned with the subject "Lets Rock FOSS.IN ... literally". So we had two guitarists, one dude doing the vocals and a possible song :)
So Shanky, Lexi, Loki, Sharan and myself got together on irc and fleshed out what we could do. Problem we faced was, Lexi and Loki were more or less KDE agnostic. But thankfully by then we had our handbook ready, so we told Loki to read up the booklet and Lexi found it amusing that he has to read up the handbook he designed ;). Shanky, Sharan and me tried to explain them a few KDE points that we could stress on. Free Software, Freedom, Pillars of KDE and such was some of the things we decided upon.
We signed off that night with Lexi promising to deliver the first draft soon. The dude did all nighter, not only wrote the song but also put the lyrics to a nice tune. Sang it, and sent it across to us. Next few days, the song went back and forth between all of us, trying to polish as much as our amateur musician brains could. We kept a complete "Radio Silence" about the whole sub-project ;).
We had some glitches, one of them being Lexi told us that he won't be able to make it to FOSS.IN/2008 which was unfortunate. I must have had hours of discussions with him over im/phone, trying to get him to FOSS.IN/2008, but in vain. Anyway, we realised that we have lost our vocalist. But kudos to Shanky and Loki, who took it upon themselves and practiced themselves from then.
So, once the conference started, I revealed the idea to Ade and Piyush on day 2 of the conference. On day 2 evenning, after dinner, all the KDE speakers ( Ade, Shanky, Piyush, Sharan, Me ) met up at the hotel. We were joined by Loki and his friend Kingshuk. At the hotel lobby/atrium, we made ourselves comfortable on the nice big couches and started our first and only group practice session. Our hotel roommate Ajay Kumar of Sahana fame also joined us. Together we blazed away to glory.
First it was Shanky and Loki, who sang the first version. After which it was Ade and his trust KDE@Solaris laptop all the way. Ade reviewed the lyrics for like 30 minutes or something, suggested some changes and then we started practicing. Ade automagically became our Lead Singer and rest of the wonderful chorus. Some of us even had coffee during practice. Btw, all this was happening in the middle of the night, and a night before our talks. Most of us had 2 talks next day ;)
So as we practiced really hard ;), fellow FOSS devs, ace photographers and all round cool dudes Kushal Das and Sayamindu Dasgupta came downstairs with their photography artillery. I guess we were singing really loudly in the middle of the night and they couldn't sleep ;). Kushal video recorded the practice session and the dude has nicely put together a "collage" of what he recorded. The video ends with a beautiful picture by Sayamindu. Cool stuff!
Here is the Ogg version.
Thanks Lexi, Loki, Shanky, Sharan, Piyush, Ajay. And Adriaan, thank you so much, I knew you as a friend, as a leader, my first ever KDE contact back in early 2005 ( helping me with some pilot-link code ). But now I also know you as a singer ;). Thanks Kushal, Sayamindu for giving us company and capturing the moments of what was truly so much fun. We can cherish memories for a long time thanks to you both.
Current Location: New Panvel
Tags: foss.in, fun, kde, kde song, music, photo, song
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11:12 pm
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Feels as if it just happened...
...but its been an year exactly. Good fun.
( Thanks to Kevin Ottens for taking countless pictures :)
Current Location: New Panvel
Current Mood:  cheerful
Tags: first anniversary, marriage, mousumi, pradeepto, wedding
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06:57 pm
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Indic KDE :)
This poster show cases all the official Indian languages ( Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali,Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu ) in which KDE is being translated into and has a entry in the KDE localisation website. A heartfelt thanks to all the translators in India and elsewhere who are doing an amazing job.
This poster was done by Kamaleshwar Morjal as well. Thanks dude.
Current Location: New Panvel
Tags: foss.in/2008, indian languages, indic, kde, localisation, translators
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08:24 am
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"The Pillars - FOSS.IN/2008 Collection"
The journey to KDE 4 has been a long one, it is still on and has a long way to go. It has come a long way since the last major release KDE 3 on April 3, 2002. This journey involved many contributors - developers, artists, translators, sys-admins, technical writers, marketing dudes, bug-triagers, users and more. Many meetings, many sprints, many commits, many news articles later the KDE community released KDE 4.0 on January 11, 2008.
KDE 4 firmly stands on very strong foundations - Oxygen, Solid, Phonon, Decibel, Akonadi, Nepomuk, Plasma - also known as the "Pillars of KDE". So we ( KDE-India ) proudly present you the "Pillars of KDE" poster collection.
Like last year, these posters has been made by a good friend Kamaleshwar Morjal ( btw he used only inkscape for all his work ). The logos are of course the official logos made by the members of Oxygen and KDE-Artists team. The high resolutions version of the posters can be found on Anurag's Flickr account :). The desktop wallpaper versions will be put up soon.
So did you register for FOSS.IN/2008 yet? It is a wonderful FOSS event and you *got* to be present there to know what it experience it.
Current Location: New Panvel
Tags: foss.in, kde, kde-india, pillars of kde, posters
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09:43 am
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Happy Diwali
Wishing everybody a Very Happy and Prosperous Diwali. Bengalis ( and some other communities ) celebrate this day as Kali Puja. Today evening my family will go to the Kali Bari ( Goddess Kali Temple ) in my town, New Panvel, for the Kali Puja rituals.
Yet again, I have not bought a single fire cracker, don't even remember when I did that last. Thankfully, for some reason, this year even others around the place I live have not bought many. Nice to have a beautifully lit but less noisy Diwali for a change :). Have fun!
[Image : Courtesy Wikipedia]
Current Location: Panvel
Tags: happy diwali
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11:09 am
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Shubo Bijoya
"Shubo Bijoya" to one and all. Last 4 days were some fun. This was the first Durga Pujo after my marriage so it was quite interesting. Its like the whole Bengali Community - "Milan Tirtha" - in your locality is watching you or such ;). Too much pressure, I must admit :P. Everybody wants to see the "notun bou" even after 10 months of being "notun" ;). "Sindoor Khela" is quite interesting. For the first time I volunteered to do "pori-beshon", liked it, loved the enthusiasm that surrounds the whole thing. Oh and "Sandhi Pujo" was around mid-night, attended it. Cool thing was a senior police officer attended it as well and he was quite down to earth and humble, sat along with others like a common man, actually refused any special treatment, and during the whole "mangal aarti" he was praying with his eyes closed. He even had gun carrying personal guards.
Mamata Shankar performed here on one of the nights, plus the local artists did their bit. But like previous years, my favorite was the folk songs session by a "baaul" artist. A Kolkata band - "Abriti" also performed.
Planned to do pandal hopping and go atleast to Vashi if not to Dadar and Lokhandwala, but that never happened. Pujo at New Panvel kept me busy. Saw Kidnap one of the days at Kharghar Adlabs, nothing to great about it.
Oh and my sister and my brother in law attended a Durga Pujo some where in New Jersey and she being a big khichudi bhog fan was sort of dazed at pizza being offered as bhog there and not to mention 60 USD being charged for the "Darshan" even. I pray and hope it never comes to this here in India.
Tags: durga puja
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07:41 pm
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An Idea ....
An idea, I have been nurturing since a long long time, ever since I started my KDE life back in late 2005 is going to come true coming weekend. I always read that on the dot and lists that a hackathon has been organised somewhere in Norway or Germany or somewhere else where KDE developers/artists/contributors would meet and do some good KDE work to produce stuff like Plasma or Oxygen or Akonadi or KOffice and some other really wonderful stuff. I always wanted a KDE hackathon here in India.
And yes!!! we are going to have our own KDE Hackathon - "KDE.IN Monsoon Hackathon". It will be held in Bengaluru ( Bangalore ) on 11-13th of July 2008. FOSS.IN is sponsoring the event and will be held at Geodesic's Bangalore office. I bounced this idea off Atul Chitnis, the FOSS.IN Lead and Geodesic's Sr. V.P. and he whole heartedly accepted it from the day 1 and helped me incubate the idea into reality. Since some of us - including me - are not from Bangalore, travel sponsorship, venue sponsorship, internet facility is all being sponsored by either FOSS.IN and/or Geodesic. Coolness! Thanks guys!
Now the important part - the participants of the hackathon. Atleast 3 KDE contributors along with 3 KDE GSoCers from India would be coming together for this wonderful event. Sharan Rao, Akarsh Simha ( SoC ), Gopala Krishna A ( SoC ), Shashank Singh ( SoC ), Tejas Dinkar, Kushal Das (?) and me. Idea is that the SoCers would hack on their SoC projects ( unless they want to hack on something else ) while the rest of the gang would hack on their favorite KDE project. So for example - Sharan might be hacking on Kexi/Umbrello, while Tejas would be hacking on Kopete/Bonjour plugin and so on. They guys are all excited even, since it would be their first hackathon as well, I think.
Current Location: New Panvel
Tags: bangalore, foss.in, gsoc, hackathon, kde, kde-india, meeting
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08:23 pm
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Rains, Electricity, Nuclear Power, Bandhs
Its raining here like crazy since last few days though today was day off or something since it rained only "cats and dogs" today. Its nothing unusual for people living in this part of the country. We have seen this in 2005. I like many others have were in the middle of it back then in 2005. I know that my good friend Anurag just managed to escape drowning that day ( check the link and see the pics that Anurag took with his cell phone ). He took shelter at one good Samaritan's place with some others. We didn't know each other back then. I used to stay in Kandivali as a paying guest, some 15 minutes walk from my previous work place. 3 of my colleagues stayed over at my place that day since it was impossible to go back home. They even tried to go back home and managed to survive the rains and came back from Borivali station. Next day when the rains stopped ( for some definition of stopping ), me and my friends went back home. It took me some 9 hours to reach Panvel instead of 2.5 hours or such. One of my friends reached the day later since he wasn't allowed to enter his town Kalyan and took shelter in some temple or such. The story didn't end there, I came to Panvel right after the flood was over but the effects remained there to be witnessed. There were many buildings which had mud marks above their ground floor level and just below the first floor balcony lever. Imagine the rise of water level. I remember cleaning atleast 2 of my friends house along with their family. Rooms full of mud, cupboards full of mud, books, wedding gifts all soaked in muddy waters. Some of us volunteered at a relief camp at "Kali Bari" organised by Bharat Sevashram. We didn't have any electricity for next few days. Joined work exactly 1 week down then line Yes, that was back then in 26th of July 2005.
So electricity in Panvel is in a better shape than what it was few months back but still I would like to go back to 1993-2004 or even 1986-2004 ( all my years in Maharashtra ), when there was no such thing as daily power cuts. Occasional failures yes. That is why I think we need the Nuclear Agreement with USA. Because about time we solve such issues and stop relying on Oil for everything. As it is inflation at 11+% - which is at all time high in many many years is not helping at all. Solving the energy issues might help the cause a lot.
But the polical parties are busy doing politics over the whole issue and other issues as well. Some call for nationwide bandh, others just do a "rasta/rail roko andolan" and some others do something else. I know, all this will stop soonish. Its election time in few months anyway - maybe sooner thanks to the Indo/US Nuclear Deal.
Anyway, after such a grim post - expect some good news in a day or two - thanks to friends in Bangalore, Mumbai and Allahabad ;).
Tags: electricity, floods, good news, power, rains
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