A geek's geek-log My not-so-secret diary

After long last, I sit down to put up a post on the Software Freedom Week celebrations we at MOSUM conducted in our institute. The plans were made, the weapons sharpened and we were all set to make this a successful event. The main focus of SFW in our institute was to reach out to the first and second years students which I think I succeeded in doing. Starting from the 16^th of September,2008, we conducted one session per day on FOSS, GNU/Linux, OpenSolaris and finally, on Network and System Administration. At the end of each session, we conducted a quiz based on the discussion and we gave away headphones as daily prizes and 2 GB USB sticks to the grand winners. Day 5 was a lab session where we conducted a Debian GNU/Linux and OpenSolaris 2008.05 install fest which was finally followed by a Netbeans hands on session. Luckily, the goodies from Sun arrived on an hour before our lab session was to begin. I also gave talks on FOSS in Subodh Public School and MGD Girls Higher Secondary School where I was surprised to find attendances of 200+ on each occasion!

The highly awaited day 6 went a little more smoothly than was expected. We had decided to go over to BITS-Pilani with whom we were to collaborate to conduct the Rajasthan Wide Software Freedom Day celebrations. 54 of us left on a fine Sunday morning in a Volvo bus and we stopped for breakfast at a store named Rawat which is famous for it's onion kachoris (a must have if you come to Jaipur) and made quick work of the 60 pieces we'd ordered in advance. The rest of the journey was fun filled and as we all pushed our vocal chords to their limits with our singing (read braying, considering our banshee like singing capabilities).

We reached an hour before schedule, to Saurabh's (CA, BITS-Pilani) surprise. We took a stroll through their brilliant campus and into the place they called SAC (Student Activities Center). The BITS people have acronyms for every damn thing and it takes quite a while to get used to having a conversation with them about their institute. Their hospitality was par excellence as we were all lead to the SAC cafeteria where we relaxed, freshened up and later on, dug into some amazing food. I myself went medieval on the rotis.

Saurabh then introduced me to Nandan Kumar, a Sun Cluster Engineer and a former BITSian who had come all the way from Bangalore to give a talk. We met again at 3 o'clock at one helluva lecture hall where we setup Nandan's laptop for the presentations. Once the crowd poured in, we decided to kick off the show. Nandan gave an insight to open source and Sun's involvement in the same. He also gave an overview of all of Sun's open source technologies. Next, I talked about OHAC and explained the basic concepts behind high availability clustering. Nandan then gave a demo on the same, by failing Apache over three zones. Saurabh and I then conducted a quiz where we handed out some CDs to the quicker (and sharper) ones among the lot .

Then came the programming/debugging contest where my team (and Ankit's team who were next to us :P) had a lot of fun trying to crack the four problems that were given to us. Apart from all the fun I had, I was also reminded of how bad I am at this . Anyways, once that was done, we then spent some time lazing around in the SAC and waited for dinner and we were treated with some pretty neat dishes again. The shahi paneer was simply superb. Yet again, I put up a good demonstration of my hogging skills. Darn I'm cheap, but food is food right?

We left BITS at 10 PM on the dot and I took some feedback from my fellow students on the week as a whole. And I must say, it felt really great to hear all that positive feedback . We reached Jaipur at 1:30 in the morning after another interesting trip where all the 2^nd years were actually working on an assignment they had to submit at 8 in the morning! Anyways, I fell asleep as soon as I hit my bed. I dreamt about Dota that night.

Ok, so it's been a long time since I blogged, but this month has without any doubt been one of the most hectic times of my life. The first mid term examinations had just been done with and everyone had let out sighs of relief. But with a lot more evangelizing left to be done and SFD looming around the corner, I had to spring into action. Me and Saurabh, the CA from BITS-Pilani had agreed during our induction training programme in Bangalore, that we'd collaborate for all major events and pretty soon, we had our plans set and it was decided that BITS-Pilani would host the Rajasthan Wide Software Freedom Day Celebrations, 2008. I quickly called for a meeting with my group and informed them about my plans for SFD and what it's all about. We formed a group of coordinators and a group of volunteers. We decided to conduct Software Freedom Week, with a series of sessions for 5 days and quizzes after each session based on it. We decided to give away prizes (headphones) to the daily winners from each year and USB sticks to grand winners. Furthermore, all that'll be taught during the sessions will be taught by means of a lab session so that students get a hands on feel of things. We also agreed to hire a bus to take 50 students to BITS-Pilani for the Rajasthan Wide SFD Celebrations on the 21^st of September. This was our first objective.

I'll give you all a little background before I write about our second objective for SFW. The main problem with Rajasthan is that students focus so much on clearing the engineering entrance examinations like the IIT-JEE and AIEEE, that they forget to think beyond that and they choose an engineering stream bubbling with misconceptions, the most common and disturbing one of which, is that of Computer Engineering and Electronics being the 'best branches' and branches like Civil Engineering being 'lower branches'. It can't any more wrong than this. There is nothing as a better branch or a worse branch when it comes to the field of engineering and the only thing that matters is interest. If one lacks that, it's pretty certain that he or she will not end up being a good engineer because this is a profession into which thousands of students graduate every year. Considering the limited number of jobs in the industry, only those who stand out end up being successful out there and to stand out, one needs to have a level of enthusiasm when it comes to excelling in his field. My institute is plagued with students who've picked certain branches without genuine interest and this is mostly prevalent in the Computer Engineering and Electronics Department. Most of them just want to get through with their four years and walk away with their degree. Our country produces only a two digit number of PhDs in the field of Computer Science compared to a 4 digit number of the same from China. Why is this? I guess I've already shown you all where the roots of the problem lie.

So my aim during Software Freedom Week was to visit as many schools as possible and clear the said misconceptions after talking about FOSS. I talked in Subodh Higher Secondary school about the world of open source for about 45 minutes. When I was done with answering questions, I went on to my next objective and asked the crowd of 250 assembled before me, “How many of you are going to pursue engineering?” Nearly 70% of the crowd raised their hands. My next question was, “How many of you consider Computer Engineering and Electronics as the best branches?” and I was shocked to see the same hands being raised. I asked them one by one why they thought so and they gave me very unsatisfying answers like there being more opportunities in the field of computers and that one can do anything they want with computers but not with other disciplines. I silenced each student with one argument each and told them about how important every branch is and what kind of students should pursue computer engineering and the doors of opportunities that it provides to. After four students, I repeated my last question again. This time, not a single hand was raised.

Subodh school also readily agreed to join hands with MOSUM in our FOSS Learning Connection where we'll visit students from their school occasionally and teach them how to work with open source technologies so that they may be inspired enough to excel in the field of computer science. I hope we can tap into some unseen potential by means of our endeavour. And I'm being told by my other coordinators that some other schools have also agreed to this initiative of ours.

The sessions within our institution began yesterday with a turnout of 70 students for my first talk. I believe I've succeeded in convincing them about the plethora of benefits that these technologies offer young students like ourselves and the edge it offers us when it comes to working in the industry one day. Let's hope the rest of the week is as blissful as it has been till date. With these thoughts, I get back to reading the OHAC documentation so I'm well prepared for the talk I'll be giving at BITS this weekend.

Hi everyone! My name's Lalith Suresh and I'm currently in my 3rd year, pursuing a B.Tech degree in Computer Engineering in Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur.

I belong to the state of Kerala which has been tagged 'God's Own Country' for the unparalleled beauty of the land. But my life has been spread across three countries, five institutions and six cities. I was born in the capital of Iran, Teheran where I spent the first seven years of my life. A year in Calicut, Kerala and five years in Doha, Qatar followed right after that. I finally returned to my country at the age of 14 to the beautiful, agricultural town of Palakkad and this is where my home is right now. I did the rest of my schooling there itself.

The Computer to me is the undisputed wonder of the modern world. I owe my deep interest in computers to my now late father who introduced me to them at the age of 4. I still remember the first few commands I'd typed out in MS-DOS which included 'dir/p' and 'cd'. More than anything else, I loved to play computer games and it's a passion that hovers around me even now.

My first exposure to open source came when some seniors of ours conducted sessions for us last year to get us acquainted with Linux and the LAMP way of things. For me, it was love at first sight (I'm talking about open source here... :D). You can say I've done my own share of evangelizing amongst my friends and relatives, insisting them to make the switch to open source software. I also took up the task of continuing the networking and system administration related work that the above mentioned seniors used to do in our institute and the first of these tasks for me was Network Monitoring through which I went up a good learning curve. A couple of months later, I was a delegate at 'FOSS.IN 07' which was the awakening call for me as far as the whole point of open source was concerned. I knew that I had to contribute somehow and it had to be through the road of a developer. For the next semester after that, I tried but I think I wasn't focussed enough. Doubting my own potential, I even chickened away from applying to the Google Summer of Code.

I'd decided to spend the summer holidays here in Jaipur itself to continue whatever work I'd been doing in my institute. And it was during one fateful morning that I found a notice put up by the former CA inviting applications from students to be his successor. I was quick to do a Google on the Campus Ambassador Programme and it was just one little line that I read that made me bent keen on rising to the challenge. And that was the one saying that the CA's will be mentored to code on specific projects. If I had to contribute to open source, I knew this was the path for me and here I am now, the CA of MNIT Jaipur.

My technical interests include Network Monitoring, High Availability Clusters and System Administration. I have ample experience in maintaining software and using them but if there's something I know I lack, it is proper coding skills . And through the CA programme, I hope to build up on that and emerge a fine developer one day. And this has been the only driving factor for me as far as joining the programme is concerned.

Moving on to my hobbies, like I've already mentioned above, I'm very passionate about gaming and my personal favourites include Warcraft 3 (more specifically speaking, Dota), the NFS series and Unreal Tournament 2k4. I also dig football and I'm a die hard fan of Bayern Munich and Germany. I used to play football a couple of years back but I've cut down on it because of asthmatic problems. Yuck. Furthermore, a more recent passion of mine has been writing. Satire is my forte, and I love mocking various incidents and experiences I've tasted in life. Do drop by and give my blog a look: lalithsuresh.wordpress.com .

Teaching is also something I enjoy and I consider it one of the most noble professions on the planet. I guess the whole idea of sharing knowledge to a younger generation is kind of enticing and I kind of draw parallels between that and open source at times because open source is all about sharing right? A dream for me would be to be out there teaching at some big university and being the only professor in campus to have a World of Warcraft account. Yeah yeah, call me a geek.

I'm looking forward to the year ahead as the CA of my institute. I've already been moved by the sheer amount of bonding I experienced at the Induction Training Programme we had in Bangalore between the 27th and 29th of July, 2008 which was the perfect concoction of fun and enlightenment. The feeling of belongingness I felt over there seems to have made me rather emotionally connected to the community and I'm looking forward to experience more and more of it as my tenure at Sun progresses.

Cheers!