Night Dreaming (by Sudar)

It’s time to clean my camera, which has been idle for quite some time now. I am going to take part in the Chennai Photowalk on June 15th.

This is the eighth edition of the Chennai Photowalk which is going to be on both June 15th and 22nd. We will start at Panagal Park in T.Nagar and proceed in an easterly direction down Thyagaraya road, and end the walk at Residency towers. The initiative is by Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan and you can get more information from his blog. You can also browse photos of the previous photowalks in Flickr.

For me, this is the first time to be part of a photowalk and so I am really excited. If you are in Chennai and ready to sacrifice a Sunday evening, then please do come. You don’t need to have an expensive camera; there are people who are going to shoot using their mobile cameras itself.

Update: You can find the photos which I took during the PhotoWalk in Flickr. There are lot of teddies out there

Tags: Chennai, Photography, PhotoWalk

One of the organizers of pipesCamp, Prabhu, is organizing another unconference called WebCamp in Chennai. WebCamp is an unconference (like BarCamp) to discuss about the advantages, disadvantages and correct uses of various web frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Django etc. So if you are crazy about Web 2.0 and live in Chennai then be sure to attend. More over it is going to be a pure technical event without any non-technical people so as to concentrate on highly technical stuff.

I am planning to talk about Client side frameworks, mostly about jQuery. If you want to attend or give a presentation just add your name in the wiki and spread the word. You can add the tag WebCamp or WebCampChennai to your blog posts, Flickr photos, Slideshare slides etc.

Date

Saturday, Feb 23 2008.

Venue

RailsFactory,
9/55, Karikalan Street,
Jafferkhanpet, Ashok Nagar,
Chennai, TN, India 600083
Phone: +91 44 43521306

Wiki

http://webcamp.org/webframeworks

Hoping to meet you all there and I will keep you updated about my experience there.

Tags: Chennai, Web Frameworks, WebCamp, WebCampChennai

The guys behind hover.in (more about it later) are organizing a one day unconference event called pipesCamp for Yahoo Pipes hackers and hobbyists in Chennai. Yahoo Pipes is an excellent and useful tool from Yahoo.

I am going to save some typing by copy/pasting information about Pipes from the Pipes home page.

Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web.

Like Unix pipes, simple commands can be combined together to create output that meets your needs:

• combine many feeds into one, then sort, filter and translate it.
• geocode your favorite feeds and browse the items on an interactive map.
• power widgets/badges on your web site.
• grab the output of any Pipes as RSS, JSON, KML, and other formats.

The event is taking place on December 23 and you can find more information about the event from its home page. There seems to be lot of interesting things planed for the event including a hackday type event.

So if you are Chennai then make sure that you don’t miss it. The event is taking place at

Hotel Shan Royal
85, Poonamallee High Road,
Near Koyambedu Circle, Chennai , India

And here is the place on Google Maps.

I am planning to take Yuvi with me, so you are sure to get some interesting photographs too

Happy Piping.

Tags: Chennai, Events/Camps, Pipes, Yahoo

As promised, here is the photo which I took as part of the 3:11 PM event.

You can also view the file at smugmug

Description of the Photo

I took this photo from the terrace of my home in Old Washermen Pet (Chennai - 21). I have been watching these brothers for some time. The younger brother was trying to fly a kite, while the older one was teasing and discouraging him. The younger one was trying for more than an hour in the torching sun and finally succeeded. Next time I needed that extra push, I am sure to view this photo.

I wished I could record the whole incident as a video.

Tags: 311PM, Chennai, Photography

Note: If you are from Chennai and interested in photography please proceed. Others might not be interested in this post.

A unique photography event is talking place in Chennai to capture one instant of this metropolitan forever. It is called 3:11 PM and this is what you have to do. When the clock strikes 3:11 PM today (Nov - 3rd - 2007), stop whatever you are doing, and click, shoot, snap, capture or photograph that moment, just hold that one instant frozen in a picture and send it to the 3:11PM team. There are no requisites to do this, other than that you be in Chennai, whether it be a fancy SLR or a VGA mobile camera, get the clearest, cleanest shot you can that will suggest what you were doing or what was going on near you, in our lovely city, at that one instant. This is not a competition and so there is not going to be a winner or a looser. It is an event and all are just participants.

If that suits your passion, go ahead synchronize your watch, and be ready for the moment and snap it. Once you have taken the photo attach a note, in fewer than 50 words, with your name and where you were when you clicked that snap and upload it using this procedure.

I have to go to Santhome today for a small work and I guess I will be in near the Marina Beach at that time. You can see me in action with my camera.

Thanks Aswin for the info

PS: Planning to take Yuvi with me.

Tags: 311PM, Chennai, Photography

I brought a new computer as planned after my recent computer crash.

Thanks guys for the recommendation and here is the configuration of my new computer. (If you are weak hearted then stop reading. Yuvi is already envious )

Ok so here it goes

Processor

Intel core 2 quad Q6600 2.4 Ghz, 8 MB L2 Cache, 1066 Mhz FSB. This is the latest one which is available in Chennai.

Motherboard

I wanted one with support for DDR3 RAM so that I can upgrade my RAM to DDR3 once it is available in Chennai. In P35 chipset only P5KC supports it. After much search I got hold of one. But later I found it to be faulty and so finally I settled for P5k-VM with only DDR2 support.

RAM

Since DDR3 RAM is not available in Chennai, I didn’t have any other option apart from DDR2. I had 4 slots in my motherboard, so went in for 4 GB of DDR2 RAM (800 MHz)

Graphics Card

Since I am not an avid gamer I settled in for a cheap GeForce graphics card. Model number is GF 8500GT PCI with 512 MB RAM. The only criteria which I looked for was DirectX10 support.

Monitor

I went in for a ViewSonic 19 inch wide screen monitor. The wide screen allows me to view 2 windows simultaneously without shrinking them.

DVD writer

I didn’t have much option for DVD writer and I went in for the standard 20X Liteon DVD writer.

Hard Disk - HDD

Here comes the big one. Can you guess what is the storage capacity of my computer? I have crossed the GB limit. It is 1.11 TB. Yes Terra Bytes.

I bought one 500 GB Hitachi HDD and two Western Digital 320 GB HDD’s. I am going to use one 320 GB HDD as a dedicated backup drive. More details later.

So far it’s been a thrilling experience and even Vista seems to be running fast. Below is my Windows Experience Index (Max 5.9).

• Processor: 5.9
• Memory (RAM): 5.6
• Graphics: 4.6
• Gaming Graphics: 5.1
• Primary Hard disk: 5.7

I am yet to get used to Vista’s interface and I am busy installing/customizing software’s for my computer. I am yet to get the data from my old computer and so things are little haphazard now. I will share with you my experience with my computer once things have settled a bit.

PS: Do you know the name of the cabinet? It is called Sivaji. I couldn’t control laughing after hearing the name. (You need to be in Chennai to understand this)

Tags: Chennai, Computer, Quad

There is no better place than home and today my beautiful city is celebrating its 368^th birthday.

Happy Birthday Chennai.

More details about Chennai and Chennai Day is available in Wikipedia.

Tags: Chennai, Day, Madras

Every now and then I used get a call from a new number in my mobile. When I pick it up the person on the other side of the line, usually greet me with my name and ask me whether I am interested in getting a credit card or personal loan. Only then I can realize that it is a telemarketing call from a bank. I usually say no and the person at the other end ends the call. But some guys get really creative and will start the conversation by saying that I have been chosen by there XXXX bank from a lucky draw (which I know about only now) and have been awarded a free credit card or a new account. Sometimes they even know my personal information like my full name, where I work, my full address, my mobile number, sometimes even my official desk number, my salary and sometimes even my age.

I usually stop them by saying that I am a student and don’t have a monthly salary and they will promptly say that the offer is only for a person who works and earns a decent salary. This can be an amusement if I am in a good mood or free at that time but can get really irritating if I am in a meeting with my clients or was in a very bad mood.

I do know that as per RBI regulation, every bank should have a mandatory ‘Do Not Disturb Me‘ page on their website. But I was too lazy to go to every bank’s site and find the page. But just now I found that Vadivel has done it and here are the links for the top banks. Thanks a ton Vadivel. At least now these banks will leave me alone.

• ICICI Bank - http://www.inuonline.com/dnc/donotcall.asp
• Citibank - http://www.online.citibank.co.in/portal/cbol/CLS02L06.htm
• Deutsche bank - http://www.deutschebank.co.in/1078.html
• Standard Chartered Bank - https://play.standardchartered.com/smail/in/IN15/index.html
• HDFC Bank - https://www.hdfcbank.com/applications/misc/dnc/dnc.htm
• ABN Amro Bank - http://mail.abnamrobank.co.in/do_not_call_service_contact_from_home_1.asp

Update (26-Feb-2007): Few more

• Airtel - http://www.airtel.in/dont.htm
• Hutch -http://hutch.in/bottom/dnd.asp

Tags: Banks, Chennai, Telemarketing

Well if you

• live in Chennai
• a bit savvy about technology
• read Decccan Chronicle this Sunday

then you must surely have heard about BarCamp hitting Chennai. Yes the next BarCamp is going to take place in Chennai on April 8th and 9th.

If you haven’t heard or still wondering what is BarCamp then here is the text straight from the official site.

BarCamp is an unconference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. The BarCampChennai focusses on Web 2.0, Social Media and Next Generation Internet.

BARCamp is an open, welcoming, once-a-year event for geeks to camp out for a couple days with wifi and smash their brains together. It’s about love and geekery and having a focal point for great ideas, like FOOcamp but open.

The event will be free or very close to free. But there’s a catch! Partipants are expected to contribute back to the conference by participating actively. “Active participation” might mean giving a presentation, helping with a presentation, blogging or podcasting the event, or whatever other creative ways to contribute people can come up with.

There is no audience. Only participants! This is unlike any conference you have been to before. It’s new, it’s different and it’s going to happen in our city. Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join. When you come, be prepared to share with barcampers. When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.

Wanna participate ? no registration, no fees, no need to send email nothing, just go the BarCampChennai page and add your name to the confirmed Participants list. It’s a Wiki and if you are not comfortable editing it then check out this tutorial.

Wanna present a topic? Just select your topic from this list and add your name to the Confirmed Participants list. Again it’s a Wiki so just edit it.

Wanna organize? Here is the list of things to be done. Select one and continue working on it.

Happy BarCamping..

Tags: BarCamp, BarCampChennai, Chennai