DebConf17

So, I’m here. It will take sometime to write about this, but this is to just reminder to myself that I exists on this blog too! 🙂

New laptop or how to teach tech to anyone? Part 1

* So, we got new laptop last week.

The entire plan was to introduce my wife into ‘tech world’ or atleast in ‘Debian’ and/or ‘OpenSouce’ world. I visited home for one of this and other personal reason(s) [Expect next post on this!]. My wife reported her first bug (installation-report, with help from me) which was closed by mighty bubulle! I handed over couple of freely available Python books and we started with codecademy‘s Python track. So far, things are good, but being really non-tech person, I’m currently working as ‘support system’ for her.

I’ve used KDE as desktop. Machine runs on latest kernel from experimental due to issues with hardware mentioned here. I was not able to explain IRC in much depth, so we’re using non-free methods like Google Talk for communicating and reporting.

Wish us luck! 🙂 I’ll report Part 2 when things will be enough to report the progress.

My fantastic four aka #DPLgame

* Inspired by DPL Game post.

Not in order,
1. Christian Perrier
2. Martin Zobel-Helas
3. Russ Allbery
4. Cyril Brulebois

Pick anyone. All four are capable leaders! Although, I only met Christian personally from list, I’ve watched others doing great work in Debian since long time.

Mandatory yearly post

* Somehow, I felt that there should be post for atleast to abuse ‘Planet Debian’ in the new year of 2013. So, what’s going on?

1. Finished Full Marathon aka Standard Charted Mumbai Marathon with pathetic timing of 5h55m35s (and felt good at the end).

2. Good thing: Visited family twice in last 2 months.

3. N number of Idlis were consumed. Where, N >= 300. Overall, I’m big fan of South Indian food which is more suitable for my stomach. Thanks to running, my junkfood consumption is lesser than I can imagine but you can find me in those places during some weekends to fullfill calories lost in LSD run!

4. Last Sunday, I delivered lecture on ‘Debian Ecosystem’, mostly same presentation with additional updates and details, at SVIT, Doddaballapur (technically, some outskirt of BLR) as part of FSMK’s 5 days event. It was well received from the applause I got. Photos are still lying in memory card and probably will not come out until next usage of camera.

5. I’m very silent on Debian packaging and someone will hit me for pending tasks, but enjoying packaging and fixing tlsdate/torbirdy for Debian lately to get motivation. Other than that, few uploads were done.

[Life] Relocation and running

* In case you’re not watching my twitter (and other social medias), I’ve moved to none other than – Bangalore. I’m  working with credativ. So, hello all DDs there!

* On running front, I’m back to track from today. Planning to run Bangalore Ultra 50K next month and then Mumbai Marathon (SCMM) in January 2013. BLR Ultra registration should be done in next 1-2 days.

* It is challenging to stay along after four and half years of staying with family (and out of it 3 years of working from home!). I hope to move them here as soon as some things are fixed and start enjoying ‘real’ life.

KDE Needs You!

* KDE Randa Meetings and make a donation!

I know that my contributions to KDE is minimal at this stage, but hey I’m doing my part this time for sure!

Vote

* Vote early, vote often. #DPL2012.

fonts-* migration

* We’ve now done with big transition of Indic fonts from ttf-* naming to fonts-*. Debian-IN-Workers team now maintains around 61 packages. We’ve also finished process of moving to Git from SVN along with this. Kudos to Vasudev, Muneeb and AbdulKarim for taking lead, help and pushing me hard for upload and testing. (31 packages upload on Sunday night = 62 times my GPG passphrase, not counting couple of wrong entries ;))

Updates

* In case of you’ve noticed, this blog has new URL: https://0x1f1f.wordpress.com, reading from Planet Debian doesn’t harm your feed reader (if any readers left ;)).

* On Debian front, I’m mostly helping Debian-IN-Workers team to finish ttf->fonts naming transition and moving rest of packages to Git. Vasudev and Muneeb has done most of these work, well done! Rest of my time with Debian goes to usual updates of packages and in reading debian-devel during weekends. It is still fun, yeah.

* And, illumian is born.

* On personal side, life is great as usual. It looks that couple of dentist visit is coming soon. I also started jogging/running regularly since couple of months. In case you’re interested, I’m on dailymile too.

Wikipedia takes Ahmedabad

* This post is almost translation of my this post on Gujarati blog (with some corrections and additions etc). If you’re not interested in Wikipedia, move on.

So, as I mentioned here and here, Wikipedians in Ahmedabad planned event: Wikipedia Takes Ahmedabad. We gathered at Gandhi Ashram. Met Noopur again and some volunteers were already there at 8 AM. I never been to Ashram since long time. This place has something, you know it, folks! People started coming around 8.30 and we quickly divided them based upon their interests on 4 routes we already decided. Most of people went to old city’s route 1 and our route 2 had odd 6 (and 2 coordinaters) people only. Good. Less is always good.

Noopur and Anirudh gave introduction to wikipedia, creative commons license and some basic rules and todo. We then left for Swaminarayan Temple at Sahibaug. We asked for permission to take photographs and we got it after meeting main swamiji there along with nice sweets and he promised to send professional picture for wikipedia to use. We then left for Delhi Darwaja. Ahmedabad has numbers of old fort gates. We covered some of them and moved to Kalupur Railway Station. Palak and Chirag were caught by traffic police and we should take care of following rules from next time. Point noted for next photowalk.

We then left for Zulta Minar. This is well known for its carving and some myths associated with it. We discussed some points regarding uploading pictures, categories and left for Raipur Darwaja. This place is famous for Bhajiyas. We didn’t taste it but had again fun taking pictures, talking to police and had smile before we leave for home. Only bad thing I’ve got in this walk is that due to some or other reason my phone’s touch screen seems stopped working 😦 That’s another topic, but I couldn’t call Noopur/Anirudh for lunch etc due to that 🙂

You can view all uploaded pictures at: Categories: Ahmedabad 1

Most of Ahmedabad is covered due to event. Time to write articles?

xosview

* Some months back, we (Mark Hills is main culprit here) decided to fork xosview codebase and released new version 1.9.0. I had no luck contacting main authors and there were 23 Debian patches pending. Mark did amazing job here and we’ve one major and one minor releases in two months. Kudos to him again.

You can always grab latest Debian packages from unstable and code from Mark’s Github xosview project page. Temporary homepage until we take over SF.net project is here.

Feel free to send patches!

(This post is bought to you by myself that this blog exists :))