Monday, February 26, 2007

Sun Tech Days & Wikicamp

Yay! the last week was easily one of the most exciting weeks for me. Three days at Hyderabad, for Sun Tech Days, was 3 days well spent. Met a lot of cool people from Sun and more importantly, Moyeen and myself provided some tips to some Hyderabad based college students who wanted to do their final semester projects on their own; using java and ofcourse netbeans.

Here are some cool things that happened at the conference:
1. There was a netbeans contest stall on day 1. Moyeen and myself participated and completed the given tasks right on time. We won the contest with full score :D
2. On the second day, right after the keynote and before the java jacket give away, we were called on stage (audience > 4000) and given a small kit that contained an ultra cool netbeans t-shirt, netbeans ide field guide, some dukes (duke is the mascot for java) and some sun bucks that were supposed to be exchanged at the stalls for more goodies.
3. Day 3 had me unexpectedly flying without wings :-). I'm a fan of Geertjan's blog since a long time and yup! I met him and had a short chat.
4. He got my tech blog URL, visited there and made a post on converting this two minute web browser into an app that is integrated into the netbeans platform :)
5. Finally, met some of my own college juniors... was shocked to see a girl in the gang though :D cos' most of the times its an all-guys show. Kudos to the girl who has shown interest in technology.

Wikicamp was an astounding success :D. It went on very well. I loved the way Jimmy Wales moved around with the crowd. Considering the popularity he has, its surprising that he is so unassuming and was always willing to join the fun, which ended up being many of us showcased in this article by The Hindu. I wasted no time in networking with the attendees, which at the end of the day proved very valuable. Photos of wikicamp.

Thus, comes to end, an excellent week. Have fun !

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Blogging from mobile :-)

This is my first post from my very own k300i. Staying connected is a boon :-D. Im on the way to attend an event called sun tech days at Hyderabad and this low res pic is from central station, ofcourse captured from my mobile :-). Catch you guys when I'm back home.

;-)

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Monday, February 19, 2007

This is scary

I read an article in GigaOm. It's scary, but its the bare truth. I loved this paragraph :)

...... lot of churn at companies like Infosys is a result of dissatisfaction with being just coders and engineers are switching to jobs with bigger challenges. A Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) executive acknowledges that the outlook is gloomy. The question then is that if the top outsourcers cannot attract the best and the brightest, then how are they going to stay competitive?

That was a point well emphasized. Read the full article here.

Friday, February 16, 2007

8th Standard Adventure

I was in my 8th grade ok... and there was this doom(amn)ed subject called Social Science. So much so that I used to fail, without fail, in that subject in every possible grade. But magic happens atleast once every year... they promote me to next grade by making me pass in social science. Don't ask me how.

Ah! Coming to the point, a small incident happened during the 8th grade that makes me laugh if I remember it even now.

It was one of the routine special classes after school hours for me. Myself and 4 others who were perennial failures in social science, were waiting in the class for the Sir (teacher) to come. He tucks away the textbooks under his arms and walks like a fat doll to class... the very sight that would make us go ROTFL. Coconut hair oil would leak from his hair and as he walks near our class, all the guys would identify him through the distinct stink that encircles him all the time :)

That fateful day, as usual, he came to our class. All the 5 of us sat on separate benches. The minute he walked in, he announced, "Dei.. today civics 1, 2, 3 lesson test da. I come in 10 minutes da. If not all writing test, you get beating da. I coming back in 5 minute. You all start study da." So saying, he left the class and promptly came back in 5 mins. I was sitting in the bench that is straight opposite to the teacher's bench. As soon as I sat down, I started laughing. He noticed it and told, "Dei.. once more you laughing, I hitting you." But ofcourse, the laughter hadn't died down and the other 4 guys were so curious as to know what was happening.

Soon, one of them threw a pen near my desk (yup! that same old trick), came near and asked me why I was laughing. I told him, "Machi, sir zippu podla" (Sir hasn't zipped his pant) and he went ROTFL. Soon, the other 3 guys also came to know... and we all were laughing like hell. Now, the sir also got curious. When 5 of them are laughing, there ought to be some reason and so he questioned us.

I gathered a little enough courage and amidst my laughter, told him that he had forgotten to zip his pants. He face became tomato red... hands cold... expression changed to a cold stare... bits of anger popping up... but we were still laughing. He looked down, looked up again.. smiled.. and then zipped it up. LOL! No test that day and you know what, when he came to class the next morning, the whole class laughed at him he he he... !

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Announcing... aswinanand.com !

Yup! It's www.aswinanand.com from now on :)

Blog: http://blog.aswinanand.com
Tech: http://tech.aswinanand.com

You need not update the RSS feeds url because the old feed url exists. And the new email id is aswin[at]aswinanand[dot]com. Ofcourse, the old ids will continue to exist.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

New post on tech blog

After a long time, I have done a post on my tech blog. The post is about "sc.exe"

Read about it.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

India's first Wikicamp

Yes!!! The Knowledge Foundation team that was behind the success BarCampChennai, Blogcamp and proto.in is now organising India's first Wikicamp :D and you know what, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia is attending the event.

When: Feb 25, 2007
Where: Tidel Park, Chennai
More Info: http://www.wikicamp.in/

Thanks to the BarCamp phenomenon. It has transformed Chennai into THE happening place for technology.