Fireball

Meet Linux is a 5 day course conducted by Glug-T .This course starts on next monday to friday. I’ve got lots to do. This is my dream-event. We are expecting a participation around 50.

I’m taking LaTeX & GNUplot in that course! Phew! I’ve never had a public-talk before. I’m a big-time flopper as far as public speaking is concerned. To increase my confidence, this time a presentation will stay along with me to make me go along the line.

I announced about the course in the mailing list today evening around 4. And when I came back at around 10:30, I found 13 mails waiting in my Inbox to be answered!!!

The mailing list traffic got increased because of errata in the announcement. We belong to GNU/Linux user group and the course was titled “Meet Linux”. That was the first blunder.

We had bad experiences of people arguing over free-software-philosophy in each courses.So, we thought of adding an essence about the power of GNU in each talk.We didn’t have a separate philosophy talk.That was the second one.

To fix it, I had to say that “Meet Linux” is rhyming! And I added a separate time for Why GNU?

# 37, Pearl Hostel,
National Institute of Technology,
Thanjavur Main Road,
Trichy - 6250015

This will be my address for next two years! Finally, I got settled with myself in my room.

Though single rooms are good-for-some, it makes me sick. I had a bad time pushing myself to sleep for the past three days,though I spent the day-time in arranging the room and thinking of how to make the room fit for living. My room is pretty cozy one in ground-floor.

I_hate_solitude.

I’m losing my mental health. Hoping to find some useful distractions.

Recently, I got to read Angels & Demons by Dan Brown, the much talked about Author of “The Da Vinci Code”.

Dan Brown is typically straight forward. He reveals facts through his novels. The best part I loved in the book is as follows:

“I have people here at the lab very adept at extracting user information from the web.”

Langdon was skeptical. “Sounds like your lab knows a lot about the web.”

“We should,” the man fired back. “We invented it.”

It took around 5 minutes for me to relieve out of that shock. I was thinking that Tim Berners Lee invented WWW in America! World’s first website, by Lee lies here! Even Brown stresses this ignorance, also he quotes in many other places where people think that Americans were the bosses. A lot of advertisement has been given about CERN, the Council for Nuclear Research.

I have a habit of researching about the topic of the book after reading it. After reading Da Vinci Code (which my friend Abhay spelt as Da Vinki!) , I spent around a week searching about the presence of Priori of Sion and its history in internet.

I went out on a google-cum-wikipedia hunt for CERN, and I landed up in CERN site, and the following are my findings:

• CERN is not a Nuclear Research Centre in particular. If you read The Hindu’s Editorial, you should have noticed this message. The story is like, President Kalam went to Geneva recently, “The Hindu ” had an article on the visit. The Director of CERN himself wrote a letter to the Hindu! This letter was regarding the inaccuracies in the CERN, and here is the quote directly from that article:
  
  

  With reference to the report “Kalam arrives in Geneva” (May 26), on the visit of President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to Switzerland, I would like to clarify some inaccuracies regarding CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Your article appears to link CERN to nuclear technology, a point that is thoroughly inaccurate.

  CERN’s field of study is fundamental science in particle physics. Although containing the word `nuclear’ in its title, CERN does not deal with nuclear power for energy production, for other civilian uses, or for military purposes. Moreover, any research for military purposes in explicitly forbidden by the Organization’s convention. All results of research performed at CERN are published openly, and are freely available to scientists the world over.

  Isn’t that great? If you are interested, read the whole mail.

• Scientific Linux CERN 3 - A linux distro by CERN! I never new Nuclear Research Centres made Linux Distributions . I later compromised myself from the fact that even WWW was invented there!
• CERN has got a ocean of websites under the domain cern.ch! Practically, it will be my largest post if I included the list here!
• CERN has got a document server called CDS(CERN Document Server) which runs on a software called CDSware(The CERN Document Server Software) which is GPLed! Boy, this is getting great! It is freely downloadable
• CERN is called a particle physics research centre, but it develops many softwares. For eg. CERN Webmaker, a popular doc-maker was designed in CERN .

Thats what I found till now, may be many things pop-up in time-being. Besides, I found to read “Mr.Sampath, the printer of Malgudi” by RK Narayanan. The story is really practical. Narayanan has portrayed a life of a printer and an editor of Malgudi, the imaginative town by Narayanan. Personally, Srinivas the editor of Banner is an impressive character. I couldn’t review much about it, because the story is very simple, no special features.

Updates:

Give your message to the inhabitants of the world after 5000 years. KEO Project, a project supported by Unesco,Hutchinson and European Space Agency, is sending a satellite, with your message which will return after 5000 years!

My 5th Semester has started, but I’m still in Bangalore! Since the training is still going on, I’ve extended my stay here. Bangalore is becoming really cold these days.

Last weekend, me and my sis celebrated my parent’s silver anniversary. We had a family photo (A photo took after 18yrs!)

Me and My sis presented 25 gifts to our parents! Then, I enjoyed the luxury of inactivity for 3 days. Finally, I’m back @ IISc, continuing my training. I managed to take a photo of the main building, using Olympus Digital Camera.

IISc Main Building

Two weeks before, we enjoyed a lot in Bangalore. The pictures are here.

We first went to the Vishweshwaraya Technological Museums under National Science Museums(NSM). The museum was excellent, highly illustrative. We took pranky snaps over there.

My Sister holding Columbia Space ship in her Left-hand!

Then we went for watching Chandramukhi (I’m watching this for the second time!) in Forum, Kormangala.

PVR Cinema Hall, Forum, Kormangala.

The tickets were pretty expensive(100Rs). Till then, the maximum amount I spent on a movie was 30Rs! Though it was expensive, the show was excellent, the clarity of the audio was impressive.

I took this snap accidently!

Check out my flickr page for more images!

Allagappan

Hello everyone,

First of all,welcome! Well,since i’ve decided to start posting,i may be posting once or twice a week. This post is from the Computational Aerodynamics laboratory of the prestigious Indian Institute of Science , Bangalore. The IISc Campus is excellent when compared to National Institute of Technology Trichy.

This post,I’m going to have a short review about the book Parthiban Kanavu,by Kalki.

Story-Outline

• Parthiban Kanavu is a novel, basically on Tamil History.It is about the Chola and Pallava Kings.
• Parthiban, a chola king whose rule is suppressed by the dominant pallava king Narasimha Varma(Mammallan) has a life long dream of bringing up the Chola Dynasty the best in the world.
• He dreams and draws in a building called Chitramandapam (if i’m not wrong!)
• Finally there is a war between the cholas and pallavas where cholas fight bravely.
• Parthiban, in his last breath gives his wishlist to a Sadhu, who turns out to be Narasimha Varma in disguise.
• The rest of the story is all about how Parthiban’s son, Vikraman gets back to the throne.

Being my first Tamil novel, this is a red-carpet welcome for the starters. The language used is as simple as in daily magazines. The role of Narasimha Varma is excellent. If this novel had been a play in my school, I would try to act as him!

It proceeds like a advetureous english novel,where the Pallava king comes in various disguises, including a role of secret service man. Besides the story, a lot of interest has been given on the situation of Tamil Nadu in that time. The Island(I forgot the name!) where they mention as the place where Vikraman takes his throne has been splendidly described.

There is also romance involved, i.e Vikraman is in love with Kundavi, daughter of Narasimha Varmar.But most of the pages goes along with dreams of people(Though the book is about dreams). The part in which Vikraman thinks a lot in the ship is rather unnecessary.

Besides, this book costed Re.1.50! (From my grand-father’s library!)