Fireball

This is going to be an interesting weekend. I’ll be leaving for NIT Trichy to attend Pengufest – the foss festival by GNU/Linux User Group of Trichy (Yes, after a long time, Glug-T has chosen to come out public) and Pragyan – NIT Trichy’s annual technical festival.

I’m not planning to participate in any of the competitions, but I’m going there for something more exciting – the Guest Lectures. Me, Shashank and Jyotsna along with a team of 10 organized Guest lectures during Pragyan’07. And it was one of the most memorable experiences that I would cherish forever. I couldn’t blog about Pragyan’07 which I regret(But, I did it for Pragyan’06).

I was there with Pradeep for Pragyan’06 where we saw Ankit Fadia. Pragyan’07 saw some real good speakers – Jimmy Wales, Dilip Chhabria, Sivathanu Pillai, Guruswamy Ravichandran and some Nobel Laureates too!

We slept in the auditorium, I was roaming in my 3/4ths during Rudolf Marcus’s lecture and we were an awesome team. There is so much to recall about Pragyan Guestlectures – I’ll save it for some other post(hopefully). Have a look at the Pragyan’07 pics.

Crowd listening to Jimmy Wales

This time, the pragyangl(as we call it) has done an nice job. First – Noam Chomsky. I was literally jumping when Vijayprakash told me that Noam Chomsky has accepted to talk at Pragyan. If you are near Trichy (or anywhere in Tamilnadu) – don’t miss his lecture. Next, Philip Lebrun – the head of CERN’s LHC. We approached him last year, and he accepted to talk this time.yay!(yes, He is coming down to Trichy). And, Mark Shuttleworth – Ubuntu’s founder and first space tourist is speaking at Pragyan.

More importantly, there is an alumni panel – moderated by Sidin Vadukut. And big list of speakrs – all listed here

Ok, now – Pengufest! GNU/Linux User Group of Trichy started by Vijaykumar was almost dead(to the public) after he left college. After a long time there is something happening public with Glug-T(after Hackercrackdown). It is going to be an install fest – as Taggy says. Besides install fest, there will be some talks as well.

See you at Pragyan’08. (Will I have wifi?)

PS:Hopefully, Glug-T will have a Foss Conference soon(But, please not between September and March. There are too many foss conferences during that time)

I was happy to see David Myriam putting the entire Guest Lecture team’s Photo in his website.

It was a pleasant surprise.

Contraption

Me, Kaly and Aalu were in the Barn today. Contraption was a really good event. The participants were supposed to design a machine to light a bulb with the maximum number of steps and energy transformations possible. My department HOD, Dr. M.Udaykumar was one of the judges. There were many interesting models. Some interesting transformations were like:

• A sensor and light on the either ends of a bottle. The bottle contains KMNO4, which is opaque. The circuit is actuated by pouring oxalic acid into it, which makes the liquid transparent.
• Dominoes
• Soldering machine cutting a thread, etc..

Me, Kaly and Aalu participated in Sanrachana, a creativity contest. The contest problem was to design a enclosed hollow surface, using thermocole. We thought really high(like making a minar or church), but finally our model turned to be a crap. We couldn’t close it finally. It was opening out like a sunflower. It was really stupid and wierd to see people pointing at our model.
Kaly submitted the model to the organiser. He said “Its not closed, you’ll disqualified” . Aruva Kaly replied “Close it yourself buddy!”

Fourth day of Pragyan was a bit boring. We had valediction at 6:00PM. Barn was house-full. Piran gave a speech which was hated by most of the public(save the marketing team). There were groans all around. Director was meanwhile preparing for his speech in the stage. He came to the stage, and appreciated the organisers, and of course announced holiday tomorrow. Dr.Sonde, the guest of honour, came and started talking meaningless stuffs. Public was happy when he left the stage. Dr.Chinna gave out the overall trophy to SASTRA.

Laser Show
The laser show started of well. We were waiting for that since long time. The lights danced for music which was partly synchronised. As the same thing was going on, the crowd got really frustrated. They changed the songs and displayed the sponsors and Pragyan logos which was really good.

The events got over by 8:30PM. Everybody rushed to the stalls for having food. As usual, flirtmasters and giggly girls filled up the ground. Ponni and his gang were shouting slogans like anything(“No pragyan without ponni”,”Ponni vazhga”,.etc..)

Finally, Pragyan’06 got over.

Stephen Wolfram

Vaibhav woke me up today. Its bad to have video conferences in the morning. Can’t help because of the time difference. After inital setup, Stephan Wolfram appeared on the big screen of barn. We got the connection of his desktop through Macromedia Breeze. I couldn’t listen to the first half of the lecture. He explained the techniques of computation and the ability to trace the behaviour of nature using computations. He showed us images of mollusc and the growth around its shell. His topic was about “A New Kind of Science”. The lecture went on well but that I couldn’t understand half of what he said.

We were able to record his video and the screen grab of his system also.

The rest of the day, I spent roaming around the campus watching various events. I saw specifically designed vehicles for the contest Fuel Bird. Fuel Bird infact was planned in a different way, but because of some snag, they changed the plan and used rockets instead. The event went on well.

Later on, I moved to the lecture hall complex. Venice Grand Prix, a robotics event was going on. Participation was really good. Bhaskar and other third years were conducting the events. The model by PSG students was really good.

Along with Karthik, I attended the Hacking prelims which turned out to be an ultimate flop. We weren’t shortlisted in that.

Sky Shows and Movies

The rest of evening was really interesting. The ground was really crowded. A coimbatore based company demonstrated a aero-modelling show, first time in NIT Trichy. The show was really impressive, especially for enthusiasts like me. They explained the technical specs when the model was in the air. It was there for around one hour. One of the model made a emergency landing and its wings got cracked.

The main ground was a place for all the years to eat,flirt and play. It was always crowded. The snacky-extension people made a good profit out of Pragyan. Hussain had a good play with the mic. He used it effectively to bring back the big-time flirts to the communication desk. I went to Barn to make some arrangements for the movie. As soon as it got dark, I left Bismay in the Barn and I went to ground again.

I joined Manju to watch the Pyrotechnic show. Pyrotechnic show was splendid. The beautiful sparkles decorated the sky with all colours. There were some amazing fireworks display. First a bright “Pragyan ‘06″ . Later on, the sivakasi people lit a series of fireworks, which was going on for half an hour. The public really enjoyed the show. Many had opinion that it was creating pollution, though I enjoyed it.

Stumble
After Pyrotechnic show, we assembled in the Barn. There was a talk show, where the public got bored. Prakash Belawadi, the Director of Stumble was there in the talk show. Along with him were his friends. They answered to the questions to the public. Belwadi’s friends were talking some sense, but he started talking arbit stuffs.
Finally, Bismay cut-shorted the talk show and they started the movie. We got a huge projector for the movie. The screening was really good. My eyes were drooping. I was sleeping in the first row. Karthik and Vignesh were near me, who found the movie to be interesting.

Chris Gill
Bismay woke me up today. The Video Conference talk by Chris Gill of SVASE was scheduled at 8:00AM. I reached Barn half an hour late. We tried recording the videos of the Video Conference using TV Tuner cards. Since I have never been into recording-editing stuffs, we couldn’t record the audio of the conference.

The lecture went on fine. He talked about entrepreneurship and a few questions were also posed to the audience.

I spent the rest of the morning session watching the robots in the Robovigyan contest. Students tried out their line followers. The systems that they employed were really impressive. A Sastra student won the first prize. We later moved on the ground where Unesco Club had organized a mini science exhibition for school students. Avishkar, functional modeling contest was simultaneously going on. After sometime the Aero-modelling company demonstrated one of the models which was simply amazing. He flew the model just above the stalls.

Prof. Yash Pal

The highlight lecture of the day was Prof. Yash Pal. Director came down to receive him from the car. Yash Pal looked a sort of really old scientist. Though aged above 80, he started walking over the stage.His lecture was a very casual and interesting one. He talked about the importance of questioning. Some of his thoughts:

• Children are the best resource for questions
• Believing astrology is safe, unless it does not pamper with your progress

His lecture was not prepared, but was well organized.He gave good explanations of some basic natural activities which impressed me. After Prof.Pal’s lecture, we had a movie by IGCAR, Kalpakkam and later on after dinner, we started setting up for testing the video conference with Dr. Wolfram tomorrow morning. We got a mail from his Secretary saying that they will be ready only tomorrow. We’re meeting Dr.Wolfram tomorrow morning 7:00AM.