Tag Archives: Chennai

Goodbye Bangalore, Hello again Chennai

Published Oct 27, 2015 | In Random/Personal

After being in Bangalore for about six years, I have finally moved back to Chennai, my hometown, this past weekend.

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Joining Yahoo

Published Jun 13, 2009 | In Random/Personal

Well guys, got some good news for you all. I am joining Yahoo Research, Bangalore next week.

I am relocating to Bangalore and may not be available online for a couple of days, so if you have sent an email, you may have to wait for some more time for reply.

This is the first time in my entire life, I am leaving the comfort of my home and Chennai, so a little nervous about it. But I guess everything should be fine once I get settled there.

So Bangalore, here I come 😉

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Celebrating Failures – FailCamp

Published Nov 1, 2008 | In Events/Conferences

The guys behind BarCamp Chennai, are putting together another event titled FailCamp.  If you are wondering what a FailCamp is, here is the quote from the official wiki.

FailCamp

We all make mistakes and learn from it to become a better person. Won’t it be great to learn from other’s mistakes so that we don’t make the same ones!

The focus is really not about the failure. It’s about why we failed and what lessons we learnt from it. Let’s not be ashamed about failing. Let’s celebrate failure. Let’s look straight into its eyes.

If it sounds interesting, head over to FailCamp wiki and register yourself. Here are the details about the event.

Date

November 16 2008 – Sunday

Place

Tenth Planet Technologies Pvt., Ltd.,

#807, P.T.Lee Building, 6th Floor, Anna Salai, (Opposite LIC building)

Chennai-600 002

Driving directions and parking information are available in the wiki. You can also find some pictures of the venue here.

Unconference

Failcamp is also an unconference like BarCamp and everyone will be participating rather than just attending. Even you can help in organizing the event. In the wiki, you can find the list of items that needs to be done and you can pick any one of them that interest you.

I will be attending the event and if possible will talk about the lessons which I learned from one of my pet project King Ping. 

Let me know if you are coming and we can meet up and celebrate failures.

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BarCamp Chennai 2

Published Oct 21, 2008 | In Events/Conferences

As planned, I attended the second edition of BarCamp Chennai and it was very good. I missed the fun on the first day but made up for it on the second day. We had some very nice sessions and above all I really enjoyed the discussions which we had during the sessions.

Dream Moment

I experienced a dream-come-true moment when I shook hands with Kiruba. I have been following him in the cyber space for nearly 2-3 years, but it was only now, I got a chance to talk to him in the physical world. 

Sessions

There were lot of talks which took place on day two. Almost all of them were very interesting and lively.  I will try to brief on some of them which I attended and found interesting.

First was the session titled “Indian Education System Sucks” by Viru. The session was very interactive, partly because of the title and partly because of how Viru handled it. There were lot of points which were discussed and towards the end almost everyone agreed that there are some major flaws in the system. Once the problem was identified and accepted the discussion shifted towards finding out the possible solutions to make it better.

Next was the session titled “Global Financial Meltdown and IT Industry” by Sukumar, Ganesh, Raj and Syed. Out of all the other sessions this was very informative and I personally learned a lot out of it.  Sukumar gave an insight about the core reasons behind the meltdown and how it might affect India. The following are some of the quotes which I noted during that talk.

 

The world nearly came to an end in 2008

 

 

If you borrow 5 lakhs, you will be afraid of the bank, but if you borrow 500 cores, the bank will be afraid of you.

 

 

There is one more time bomb which is waiting. US has around 1.6 trillion dollars in credit card balance.

 

 

The western press is misleading. They talk only about ideology and not about common man.

 

Aswin anand has a nice write-up about the other sessions, so I am not going to repeat them here. Thanks Aswin, you saved a couple of key strokes for me. 🙂

Wifi

If you ask me, one thing which really sucked was wifi. It was very slow and most of the time it timed out. I was planning to do live tweeting during the event, but because of wifi and my laptop battery, I only managed a few.

Photos

I took a couple of photos during the event with my amazing Powershot S5 and you can view them in Flickr. You can also do a search in Flickr with the term bcc2 to get other photos.

Verdict

Overall, it was a very nice event, well planned and executed. Without any doubt I could say that it was a huge success. The credit goes to the organizers for taking extra effort to make the event a success. Thanks guys and eagerly waiting for BarCamp Chennai 3 🙂

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BarCamp Chennai 2nd Edition

Published Oct 17, 2008 | In Events/Conferences

The second edition of BarCamp Chennai will happen this weekend (Oct-17 and 18) at IIT Madras. 

BarCamp Chennai

The first edition which happened in April 2006 and was a great success and I hope it will the same this year too. It has already started to get some press coverage and you can find the article from Decaan Chronicle here, kudos to the organizing team.

I will be attending the sessions scheduled for the second day and let me know if you are coming and we can meet up.

More details about the BarCamp can you found at the official BarCamp Chennai Website.

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The Chennai Photowalk

Published Jun 15, 2008 | In Events/Conferences, Photography

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 😉

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WebCamp – An unconference about web frameworks

Published Feb 3, 2008 | In Events/Conferences

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.

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pipesCamp

Published Dec 21, 2007 | In Events/Conferences

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.

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3:11 – My Photo

Published Nov 12, 2007 | In Photography

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

Sudar's 3:11 PM Photo

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.

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3:11 PM – Defining a moment in Chennai

Published Nov 3, 2007 | In 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. 🙂

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