Planet dgplug

Kushal Das: Fedora 11 and artwork by Shreyank

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:11:50 +0000

The artwork by Shreyank:

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Kushal Das: The developer of Pem

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:00:03 +0000

pem is the expense manager.

The developer behind this magic

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Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay: Fedora 11 Release Party at Pune on 04-July-2009

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:48:06 +0000

This weekend we are organizing a small gathering at Pune for the Fedora faithful. Details about the Release Party are here. Besides getting the Fedora folks to hang out together and share notes, we hope to have some fun, get some show-n-tell going. Photographs and event reports would eventually follow as well.

As an aside, I am posting this using gscribble – a yet another offline client for Wordpress blogs being developed by Roshan. I had to rebuild it to get it working for F11 and, the truly bleeding rpms are here

Koyel Banerjee: THE DAILY CHORES

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:47:12 +0000

well this is a documentation on the advances that i made these two days after deciding on a project.not exactly “a project” for the sense of the word but after i got the category of my project fixed.This is my 1st summer training with dgplug and i learn here loads daily.The irc sessions are really [...]

Stéphane Péchard: First commit!

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:28:29 +0000

I made my first commit today, with the primary infrastructure of the code and the only basic feature of adding and removing directories in the database. You’ll see that there is already a bug as the ‘Cancel’ button of the Collection Dialog does not cancel anything… but I’ll think about it Anyway, if you [...]

Kenneth Gonsalves: twitter

lawgon@thenilgiris.com — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:14:49 +0000

I joined twitter - no, I have neither lost my mind nor entered my second childhood. My conference management app needed the functionality to tweet, so I had to get an account to test my code. I have not tweeted, will not tweet and the only tweets you see there will be tests.

Kishan Goyal: Project : Subtitle Downloader

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:51:39 +0000

SubDownloader is an application used to download/upload subtitles for videos(movies). Click here to visit the site and here for the project homepage. Download the tar.gz here. Basic Features:- Two operating modes . First, scans a directory for video files => based on the names, searches subtitles from opensubtitles.org => lists all available subtitles => one can download [...]

Kushal Das: lekhonee 0.5 released

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:22:23 +0000

You can downlod it from here.
Lekhonee is a desktop client for Wordpress.

New features:

Tag support
UI improvement for editing last entry
Bug ~~#507518~~ fixed

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Arun Sag: My Summer Training Task:Kannel SMS setup on fedora

noreply@blogger.com (Arun SAG) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:26:07 +0000

I came to know about dgplug's summer training when kushal announced it in ilugc,i didn't know mbuf will be there to guide us [:)] ,my task in summer training is to setup a SMS gateway on fedora with kannel, test it and document it.

With the help of kannel you can send/receive sms from your GNU/Linux box.(Don't just think of some third party text message sending sites [:P], its more than that )

Here are the use case scenarios i am trying to address:

* User sends us a text message.

* We might send them a reply after processing it (web application is used to process the text message).

* We might also periodically able to send the user text messages.

I successfully completed testing the last use case and in the process of documenting it.

I always wanted to create a desktop app for GNU/Linux with GTK+ ,i am thinking of picking up another project after finishing this task [;)].

Apart from summer training i am now teaching php in a private training centre for free,you know what teaching is the best way for doing some GNU/Linux advocacy [:D].

btw: Switch to firefox 3.5 ;)

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay: Random bits about community

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:23:05 +0000

Of late there has been a significant increase in the number of texts talking about “community”. This could well be a perception bias as well, since I have been looking around trying to see what others are writing or, thinking about groups of people, communes and so forth.

Some of the common aspects of the texts I have stumbled across include attempts to have a model defined, description of a rudimentary framework of tasks, an analysis of infrastructure that facilitates collaboration and, a broad overview of the character of a community. Either way, I am a bit tired about “community” as a word and, I feel that it is beginning to suffer from over-use and under-statement. A primary driver for that feeling is the tendency to look at “communities” as if they were thriving specimens on a petri-dish, isolated and unperturbed in their own imaginative evolutionary cycle. That is simply untenable as a hypothesis and, impossible in real life. Communities are constituted by groups of people and, people react to the push-pull of daily life around them – the political issues, the personal issues and, the social intricacies. As much as communities try, other than a basic tenet that binds them together, there isn’t much difference between the growth of a community and, the evolution of family. The same basic principles of Belief, Responsibility, Accountability and Trust ensure that the forward momentum is not stalled.

The paradox is that having stated the above, I ended up attempting to box-in the “community” into some nice tangible parameters so as to enable explanation. Fun !

The decline of a community or, even a sub-aspect of a community can also be traced to a larger sense of hubris and, a lack of plan in terms of moving forward to embrace change. The hubris part is perhaps derived from moving away from a central core idea that was the genesis of the community and, attaining a false sense of being indestructible to external forces. Statistics are important – but statistics are external representations of symptoms – for example, wiki edits; commits to version control; activity on mailing lists; number of contributors; mass of consumers all these indicate how the community (or, tribe) is moving forward. They do not capture whether the general direction is based on the central core theme and, is moving across a wider spectrum without getting too diluted.

Why can’t “communities” be replaced by “tribes” ? Makes for a better understanding of the complexity of interaction that ensures a sustaining environment for a group of people who perceive a need to exist. And, would be able to come together to arrive at decisions that ensure sustenance. Most communities/tribes are specialized formations of people who find a common space to talk about and extend their areas of interest. As such, the need to “fabricate” a community is somewhat redundant while the need to work on providing a “commons” is important.

ps :The post is rambling in essence, at some point I’d like to re-visit this and, collate the other thoughts.

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Kenneth Gonsalves: the good, the bad and the ugly

lawgon@thenilgiris.com — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:58:45 +0000

A is a good guy. A member of the FSF and a faithful reader of the scriptures. Always falls asleep accompanied by the soothing voice of an RMS lecture. He is also a kickass developer of GUIs and releases his software under the GPL v3.

B is bad - a heretic. Has never read the scriptures and thinks GPL is restrictive of freedom. He is a kickass developer of backends and has no use for GUIs - a real old time Emacs groupie.

C is ugly - an evil proprietary software developer. Knows nothing of of open source and a great believer of software patents. His company markets slick looking proprietary shrink wrapped packages.

B has developed a fantastic application, but has only a CLI. B doesn't care. He has enough takers for his app who use it as a backend for their apps. B licenses it under the new BSD license.

A offers to develop a GUI for B's app and asks B to switch the license to GPL. B declines and asks A to fork it. A forks it, renames it, licenses it under the GPL, and builds a classy looking GUI on it. People flood to download A's app. A, not being a backend guy, periodically pulls code from B's app and updates his app with it.

B of course, cannot take code from A's app so sits and gnashes his teeth but is helpless to do anything else. Being a dutiful programmer, he answers all A's queries on his mailing list. B is happy.

Then C sees B's app and immediatly offers to buy it and employ B at a huge salary. B refuses and tells C to go ahead and use the code as long as he changes the name (in accordance with the new BSD licenses). C does so, spends a few lakhs and builds a slick looking GUI and starts minting money selling the package. Whenever he has problems he posts them on B's mailing list. B is unable to answer many of C's questions because C is reluctant to show him the relevant code snippets. Or if he shows them he obfuscates the code so much that B cannot determine whether it is a typo in the obfuscation or a bug. C in desperation gets into the habit of paste binning his snippets (making sure that the expiry time is very short) and B is able to debug a lot of C's code. C then moves to version 2 of his package and has a brainwave - he donates his version 1 GUI to B's project. B is thrilled because though the GUI is slick looking it is full of bugs, quirks, backdoors and all the other crap that comes with proprietary software. And there is nothing an old time hacker like B likes more than squashing bugs, ironing out quirks and closing backdoors. B has a ball, and so does C and his developers who grab all the changes and apply them to version 2.

A, meanwhile is not happy. B has started integrating his backend more closely with his shiny new frontend - which means A has to work much harder to modify B's new code to his GUI. His app becomes less popular and a lot of his users shift to B's app.

C also finds his sales dropping off and realises that with his wide support network he can make more money supporting B's app than in developing and supporting his version 2. So he calls a press conference and hands over version 2 to B and dedicates a set of his developers to help maintain it. C's business improves, his developers become better programmers as they are exposed to the Open Source methodology and mentored by a kick ass developer. And for his generosity, he is honoured by the local Rotary club too.

Moral: the good go to heaven, but the bad and the ugly flourish on earth.

Debayan Banerjee: gscribble post

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:29:57 +0000

This is a test post created using gscribble http://sourceforge.net/projects/gscribble. The author Roshan Singh is a fellow college mate and heads all technology related issues in at NIT Durgapur. I have a feeling I will blog a LOT more now

Roshan Singh: My first big contribution to FOSS

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:28:40 +0000

I really feel proud to announce that I have written a client of my own today for posting contents on my blog. I am really looking forward to fix problems with the interface very soon. As I am new to GUI development, it will take some time till then I ask you to be patient. The project [...]

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay: A trail over the weekend

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 05:05:34 +0000

Yesterday a couple of us (well, 11 of us actually) took a trail organized by Trek’Di to the Tamhini Forest. It was something I have not done before and, the completely different nature of sounds within the forest took me by surprise. Some photographs are here. There were elements of fun as well which is bound to happen in a diverse group of folks. The photographs have been from mobile phone cameras mostly, an indication of showers (which were heavy) did not encourage me to take the usual point-n-shoot along

Kenneth Gonsalves: back to kde

lawgon@thenilgiris.com — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:33:16 +0000

upgraded to FC11 and shifted back to KDE from gnome (gnome sucks big time). I had shifted to gnome in FC10 because KDE did not have a graphical network management tool. The KDE in FC11 has such a tool, so I am now quite confortable. The biggest headache in gnome was that I used KDE apps a lot and could not set the default browser to firefox, so had keep cutting and pasting urls which is a huge PITA.

Anurag: todo item ticked off!

nospam@example.com (Anurag) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:58:10 +0000

Another TODO item ticked off a while back! It wasn't what I had originally planned, but the goal has been achieved nevertheless.

I didn't know I made myself a bucket list, long before watching the movie.

Kushal Das: Summer Training 2009 started

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:18:35 +0000

So, we started Thank you all for participating. IRC logs can be found here.

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Ratnadeep Debnath: Resolved ATI issue in Fedora

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:24:02 +0000

System Specifications : hp compaq 6515b,business series processor-AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology tl-50,clk rate 1600 mhz hardisk -80gb ram -1.5gb Video Video card features ATI Radeon X1250 Video Memory Shared video memory (UMA) Max Allocated RAM Size 512.0 MB Issues : Problem with the Graphical User Interface. System used to hang a lot. Moving and clicking with the mouse was a pain. Even there [...]

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay: One browser too many

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:33:53 +0000

It struck me this morning that I end up using too many browsers. For example, at this precise moment, I have Firefox, Chromium, Seamonkey, Epiphany and Opera being used for all the content that I need to take a peek at. Which is a far cry from the days of having shell access and, using the console to browse. These days, I tend to complain about the browser experience on my e71 more than on the Maemo. Which says a lot about what I am using to be online.

And, all because at some point in time I had a kickstart that pulled in Firefox, Epiphany and Seamonkey. Chromium looks to be a decent enough browser in spite of that annoying bit about not being able to handle Complex Text Layout. Remember to read this fine blog post if you want to set it up for Leonidas/Fedora 11.

Speaking of Firefox, at some point recently, I was using a boatload of add-ons to aid my browsing habits. The one that did come in handy was the Tree Style Tab add-on. It did reveal interesting patterns in the paths that I follow while browsing. Another nifty add-on is the Split Browser one, couple it with Tabs Open Relative and, you have a much more intuitive experience while browsing.

Update: The comments led me to Feedly, which I find to be awesome.

Samarjit Adhikari: How do i write blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Samar) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:42:05 +0000

I am a blogger. I write blogs everyday... well truly,... every month... strictly speaking at least once in 2 months... well,surely once in six months :-)
All most everyday i sit down to write something.. something which could be published in blog ;-). I scratched my head for finding out interesting topics to write in blogs so that you people read those bullshit and praise me :-D I put on my computers, opened a notepad and tried to write something...sommmeee... thing ... and then either i felt sleepy and dipped into Harry Potter's world or i started counting seconds :-(.
Though the above story was not always true. A day when there was no power at evening... in the middle of darkness... a mild breeze was blowing..., putting a candle on the study table i started writing blogs. The darkness gave me the power of thinking, the breeze made me relax and the light gave direction to write blogs. .... i went into a world of unknown, a world of dream, a world of thoughts. I started thinking about INDIA, Mr Gandhi, OBAMA, and then ..... suddenly to Bebo(karina Kappor), Bipasa, Katrina ..... ;-)

All of a sudden door bell rang... call for dinner . Everything (sweet dream) goes away ... :-)

Guys, in short...this is all about my blog writing. :-D

Kushal Das: How to change page size in Publican ?

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:21:47 +0000

I want to change page size in publican generated pdf. How to do that ?

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Kushal Das: It is raining outside

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:33:50 +0000

It is raining outside.

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Amrita Mukherjee: cutie fairy on inkscape

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:42:11 +0000

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:09:16 +0000

তুমি কেমন করে গান করো হে গুণী,
আমি অবাক্ হয়ে শুনি কেবল শুনি ।।
সুরের আলো ভুবন ফেলে ছেয়ে,
সুরের হাওয়া চলে গগন বেয়ে,
পাষাণ টুটে ব্যাকুল বেগে ধেয়ে
বহিয়া যায় সুরের সুরধুনী ।।
মনে করি অমনি সুরে গাই,
কন্ঠে আমার সুর খুঁজে না পাই ।
কইতে কী চাই, কইতে কথা বাধে –
হার মেনে যে পরান আমার কাঁদে,
আমায় তুমি ফেলেছ কোন্ ফাঁদে
চৌদিকে মোর সুরের জাল বুনি

Sayamindu Dasgupta: Read and Epub and beyond

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:03:06 +0000

For the past few weeks, I have been spending most of my time implementing Epub support for Sugar’s Read activity. Epub is gaining increasing acceptance, and a few weeks back, Project Gutenberg started distributing many of their material in the format, and Google + Sony also seem to have started to distribute a large chunk of public domain books as Epubs.

Today I finally reached the stage where the work could be tested on an actual XO, and here’s how it looks:

The rendering is done using WebkitGTK (the Python bindings) and I was a bit concerned about the possible performance issues on the XO-1 (which has a relatively ancient processor, slow filesystem access, only 256 MB of RAM and no swap). The biggest worry was the loading time – since it involves pre-rendering the entire book to gather metrics for pagination (most Epub books I have come across do not have clearly defined page-breaks, so that has to be figured out), but to my surprise (and relief) the load time turned out to be quite acceptable.

Right now, the viewer supports a very limited subset of the Epub standard (and works only with XHTML based Epubs), but so far it has managed to handle all the files I have tested it with. The viewer is a standalone widget used by the , which should make it possible reuse the work to develop a Epub reader for GNOME as well.

Once the Epub support in Read reaches an acceptable state, the plan is to start working on implementing support for the draft Open Publication Distribution System specs, which allows ebook distributors to distribute e-books via XML catalogues. It makes sense to support this in Read, as well as in the school server, to ease the e-books distribution process. For example, if we have a large e-book collection for a particular deployment, it may not make sense to put all of them in individual laptops – instead allowing the user to browse/search the catalogue and download the books as and when required would probably be a better option.

Kushal Das: Lekhonee v0.4 released

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:27:08 +0000

I am happy to announce the release of Lekhonee 0.4 .You can download the source from here. RPM(s) for Fedora 11 are available in the project homepage.

The main features of this release:

Simplified configuration system
Fixed bugs on creating new blog entries
Editing last entered entry related issues fixed
A new front-end for Gnome is introduced
A small self advertisement message will be added at the end of the blog posts, can be turned off using ‘Edit’ menu.

The main change in this release is of course the front-end for Gnome. I tried to keep both KDE and Gnome based UI(s) look alike.
Btw, you have to enter password everytime you run the application as I am not saving the password any more.

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Kushal Das: Chinese translation of pym

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:50:44 +0000

李建盛 is working on Chinese translation of my book ‘Python for you and me’ aka pym. You can find current work here.

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Kenneth Gonsalves: bajji wars die down

lawgon@thenilgiris.com — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:34:11 +0000

MIT gate is the great meeting place of Chromepet. Everyone passes that way. And there was this old woman sitting on the steps of the bakery and frying bajjis. Good custom. So good that another old couple started frying bajjies in front of the temple. Good custom for them also. Then came a gang from Madurai (or somewhere south). 4 of them, young and hard working with a huge variety of bajjies. The bajji war was on. In fact, in the evenings there were so many people eating bajjis that there was no place on the road for traffic. Then one fine day the southern gang vanished. In their place a big notice: 'Bajji Master wanted'. The old people are still in business - and there is now more room for traffic.

Debarshi Ray: Fedora elections

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 02:47:00 +0000

Did you?

Debarshi Ray: Booting Fedora 11 on Apple Macbooks or iMacs

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 14:54:00 +0000

Red Hat Bugzilla #505817 has some information on how to boot Fedora 11 on Apple hardware. Thank you Eelco and Jurgen for the information.

Debarshi Ray: Solang added to transifex.net

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:13:00 +0000

Solang is going to use Transifex.net for accepting translations.

Many thanks to Dimitris Glezos for quickly adding Solang as a new project and clearing some of our doubts; and to Runa Bhattacharjee for suggesting Transifex.net in the first place.

Debarshi Ray: Why solang?

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:30:00 +0000

As was mentioned before, there are a few reasons why we decided to write Solang. One of them is that the current crop of Gtk+/GNOME image management programs seem to be quite resource heavy. To illustrate this, we did some real life comparison between the the pre-existing choices and Solang using the same set of photos. To simplify things, the applications were restarted after importing the photos and then the observations were noted.

Eye of GNOME

Not an image management program this one, but an image viewer, but we like its simplicity and thought it would be nice to know how we match up against it. What we found out was a pleasant suprise.

F-Spot

GThumb

JBrout

Solang

It must be said that Solang is still in a nascent stage and have a long way to go, but we already have a bunch of things in place to feel slightly positive about it.

Kenneth Gonsalves: should volunteers be professional?

lawgon@thenilgiris.com — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:55:12 +0000

I see this again and again. A guy volunteers to do something - maybe help out in running a golf tournament or pitch in to design a site. And, at a crucial moment the guy vanishes. Either doesn't do the job or does it in a half baked way which entails double the work rectifying what he has done. Question him? Hey, this is voluntary work - its up to me to decide what to do and how much to do. Sheesh.

Kushal Das: Eternal Love

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 11:10:43 +0000

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Rahul Sundaram: Moving to WordPress

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:21:13 +0000

My new blog is at http://mether.wordpress.com/ . See you there.

Kushal Das: Pony v0.2 released

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:14:19 +0000

I just released Pony v0.2 . It is still under constant development and will go some db changes before v1 release. Please delete .pony.db under your home before using the new release.

$rm ~/.pony.db

Among new features one can now see the EXIF information of an image.

Deleting tag option is also added.

Get the source or rpms from here.

Now I have to add TODO file as too many things need to be fixed. If you have any suggestions please mail me or file a ticket.

Rahul Sundaram: Gnote replaces Tomboy for Fedora 12

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:25:47 +0000

A while back when I saw Hub announcing Gnote on April first, it just seemed like one of those jokes but with a predictable weekly release schedule, this application has now improved in leaps and bounds. One of the great things of being involved in Fedora is that you can watch applications and technologies grow from a nascent immature but promising state to something that everybody is in awe about. Gnote is no different. When I first imported Gnote 0.1 into Fedora, it did the basics but had no plugins, no documentation and crashed now and then. Since then, almost every Wednesday there is a new release with a Fedora build that I pushed in soon after. While there is still some room for improvements, Gnote now is in a fairly good shape. I use it on a day to day basis to jot down thoughts for the day and some quick notes and it is working remarkably well.

It is great to see that Gnote will be the default for Fedora 12 replacing Tomboy including in the Live CD which hasn't had a note taking app by default for the past couple of releases. Thanks to Hub for dealing with my bug reports and fixing them quickly. I have added some release notes for Fedora 12 Alpha release ahead of time. Btw, Fedora 11 is shaping up to be a good release. Have a blast.

Debarshi Ray: CNR

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:04:00 +0000

Kenneth Gonsalves: second time in 9 years that I wore a blazer

lawgon@thenilgiris.com — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:05:26 +0000

blame my daughters for it:

http://picasaweb.google.com/abineshv/OOTYSUMMERGOLFMEET2009PRIZEDISTRIBUTION#5342237988938555858

Sayamindu Dasgupta: ভাল আছি, ভালো থেকো

Sat, 30 May 2009 16:13:32 +0000

Listened to a wonderful rendition of ভাল আছি, ভালো থেকো by an old school-friend of mine, and I couldn’t resist posting the lyrics. Apologies to my non-Bengali readers.

আমার ভিতর বাহিরে অন্তরে অন্তরে
আছো তুমি হৃদয় জুড়ে।

ঢেকে রাখে যেমন কুসুম,
পাপড়ির আবডালে ফসলের ঘুম
তেমনি তোমার নিবিড় চলা
মরমের মূল পথ ধরে।

পুষে রাখে যেমন ঝিনুক,
খোলসের আবরনে মুক্তর সুখ
তেমনি তোমার গভীর ছোঁয়া
ভিতরের নীল বন্দরে।

ভাল আছি, ভালো থেকো,
আকাশের ঠিকানায় চিঠি লিখো
দিও তোমার মালাখানি,
বাউলের এই মনটা রে।

Debarshi Ray: Coming soon to a PC near you

Sat, 30 May 2009 12:17:00 +0000

Kenneth Gonsalves: coding again

lawgon@thenilgiris.com — Fri, 29 May 2009 11:19:12 +0000

after a long gap I have been doing some coding. I revived AVSAP and updated it to run on current platforms. Maybe someone will actually start using it ;-) In case anyone is interested it is a financial accounting application I had developed and released in 2003. People at that time found the installation so difficult that no one used it. Times have changed and installation is now much easier. In case anyone is interested, it is here:

https://svn.nrcfosshelpline.in/public/helpline/branches/avsap/

also my conference app was chosed for the up coming Indian Python User's conference and had to do a lot of frantic work to get it ready for use. It is now ready to roll - and the great thing is I have got a designer to make it look good. (He hasn't started yet so it still looks crappy). The prototype is here:

http://greenchilly.in/

Kushal Das: Who wants a pony ?

Thu, 28 May 2009 12:09:50 +0000

If you want one you can grab from here.

Pony is a simple image manager written in PyKDE4.

Few weeks back I lost my external hdd where I kept most of the photographs I took in last two year. It is kind of heartbreaking. But first thing came in my mind is not to get into this kind of situation again. So, decided to backup photos also in DVD(s).

But the problems started at the same time, if I do so, how can I figure out which photo is in which disk ? I know digikam is having a feature like this (to have external collections) but last time when I tried that it never worked. Though I am mostly a KDE user but I was using gthumb as image viewer except when I click on dolphin which opens up gwenview.

My workflow:

Take photographs
Copy them in hdd using File browser (Dolphin)
View them using gthumb
if required right and edit using gimp
Upload the image to flickr

As I keep my photographs ordered in directories, gthumb is very helpful and I like the UI as it does not provide most of the fancy stuffs other image managers do.

After looking for few days I decided to write my own image manager which can suite properly with the simple workflow I follow.

The design goals:

It takes some amout of time to create thumbnails when the user visits a folder first time, but after that it stays fast as I really don’t mind for the time on the first view. I tried with a folder which contained 13GB images.
Currently shows only jpeg images as we generally keep photos in that format
One can add tags to the images, currently no edit tag option is available
One can search based on tags (implemented), name or EXIF data or based on dates
Even if the file is in an external media it should show the thumbnail
It is having a flickr uploader. Currently it only adds title,tags,description. Photosets and privacy&safety will work in future releases
One should be able to add/edit/delete external medias as catalogs

Now this is a very basic form of the code base continously being hacked. Most of the planned stuffs still needs to be written. To get the thumbnails fast I kept them in db (still the db seems to be small ) and used a web framework based ORM to do so, yes it is Django :p. I know one may complain of this dependency but it is so nice that I couldn’t leave it

MathStuf and Kevin_Kofler in #fedora-kde , #qt and Riddell ,pinotree, annma helped a lot to learn different pieces of KDE and Qt. nicubunu did extensive testing from the very beginning. Thank you guys for your support.

I still need to improve the UI so any help is welcome

Btw, the name of the project came as suggestion from sankarshan and mether.

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay: Elections, candidates and questions

Tue, 26 May 2009 07:43:46 +0000

The final list of candidates for the GNOME Foundation 2009 Elections are out. The statement(s) from each of the candidates are somewhat shorter than what they used to be. However, given that it is as good a time as any to ask questions to the candidates, I figured a couple of them below (the appropriate forum has the questions already) would not be out of order:

What are the specific areas of the Foundation’s focus and strategy where you think you can contribute as a change agent ?
What, in your view, are the top 5 requirements (from a strategic perspective) of the GNOME communities/tribes/groups world-wide ?

As always, it would be an interesting year for the Foundation with lots of coolness coming up.

Arun Sag: Nerd or Geek?

noreply@blogger.com (Arun SAG) — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:35:07 +0000

I had an interesting conversation with my school and college mate , whether we both are nerds or geeks...

Conversation with mafriend@gmail.com/gmail.26A0C263

Conversation with mafriend@gmail.com on Wed 13 May 2009 03:21:44 PM IST:
(03:21:44 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: just looked at ur fotoz awsome dude
(03:22:08 PM) SAGA: yaaa
(03:22:09 PM) SAGA: :D
(03:22:13 PM) SAGA: thnx da
(03:22:20 PM) SAGA: thats uvari
(03:22:21 PM) SAGA: :D
(03:22:27 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: gracylyne is rit (gracelyne started it all, she commented on my photo , and called me NERD)
(03:22:32 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: u r nerdy guy
(03:22:32 PM) SAGA: hehehe
(03:22:33 PM) SAGA: :D
(03:22:36 PM) SAGA: illaaa
(03:22:38 PM) SAGA: geek
(03:22:41 PM) SAGA: :D
(03:22:42 PM) SAGA: hehehe
(03:23:11 PM) SAGA: did u saw that thing on back of ma tshirt? (there was a nice sentence abt linux in my t-shirt, which i uploaded in a social n/wking website)
(03:23:36 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: u r a GEEK i agree
(03:23:44 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: s that was awesome
(03:23:49 PM) SAGA: yaa
(03:23:57 PM) SAGA: nerds are bookish ppl
(03:24:13 PM) SAGA: there is lot of difference b/w geeks and nerds
(03:24:23 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: ok :-)
(03:26:26 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: nerds are not bookish
(03:26:46 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: they are the people with above average IQ
(03:26:57 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: geeks are imaginative
(03:27:04 PM) SAGA: yaaa
(03:27:42 PM) SAGA: http://www.wikihow.com/Tell-the-Difference-Between-Nerds-and-Geeks

(03:29:32 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: "geek" is someone who is a nerd without "skillz."
(03:29:38 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: this is perfect
(03:29:44 PM) SAGA: :D
(03:29:48 PM) SAGA: yaaa
(03:30:11 PM) SAGA: i never had probs with socializing with ppl as nerds

(03:31:14 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: Hobbies involving Calculus, Quantum Physics, and other theoretical sciences are good indications of a nerd, while an obsession with Japanese Manga or some form of technology puts them in line with a geek.
(03:31:25 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: this is another perfect short
(03:31:52 PM) SAGA: yaaa
(03:32:01 PM) SAGA: so your are a nerd
(03:32:07 PM) SAGA: and SAG is a geek
(03:32:09 PM) SAGA: right?
(03:32:41 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: i dont agree
(03:32:45 PM) SAGA: yy?
(03:32:49 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: im a lame man still
(03:32:55 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: nerds may speak in layman's terms for your benefit because you may not understand the basic concepts of their area interest. Geeks may speak in detail about their own interests, unconcerned with whether or not you truly comprehend it.
(03:33:13 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: this point is little obstarcle 2 me 2 be called as nerd
(03:33:21 PM) SAGA: hahahaha
(03:33:22 PM) SAGA: :D
(03:33:25 PM) SAGA: whatever
(03:33:36 PM) SAGA: but nerd and geeks are complicated terms
(03:33:38 PM) SAGA: :)
(03:33:58 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: ill say the most complicated
(03:34:03 PM) SAGA: yaaa
(03:34:04 PM) SAGA: :D
(03:34:07 PM) SAGA: correct
(03:34:08 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: im 80% nerd and 20% geek
(03:34:19 PM) SAGA: i am the opposite
(03:34:20 PM) SAGA: :P
(03:34:27 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: s :-)
(03:34:41 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: all coz of daniel thomaz (daniel thomaz is ma school )
(03:34:49 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: theve made people like that
(03:34:55 PM) SAGA: hey , i saw pearl 2 days back (pearl is a girl, and my school mate)
(03:34:55 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: blame them
(03:35:01 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: Ho!
(03:35:03 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: gr8
(03:35:04 PM) SAGA: but didnt have chance to speak wit her
(03:35:15 PM) SAGA: she looks same
(03:35:20 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: she became lean and black
(03:35:21 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: ma mom said
(03:35:23 PM) SAGA: yaaa
(03:35:29 PM) SAGA: she became lean
(03:35:31 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: she saw her a year back
(03:35:35 PM) SAGA: oh
(03:35:39 PM) SAGA: i saw her in a marriage
(03:35:42 PM) SAGA: tvl
(03:35:47 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: Oh!
(03:35:51 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: whos marriage
(03:35:52 PM) SAGA: she stared at me from a long distance
(03:35:53 PM) SAGA: lol
(03:36:02 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: did she know u
(03:36:07 PM) SAGA: ADJ family marriage function
(03:36:10 PM) SAGA: i guess so
(03:36:15 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: Oh!
(03:36:25 PM) SAGA: i look the same right?
(03:36:45 PM) SAGA: u have her email id or something?
(03:36:50 PM) SAGA: she never uses computers?
(03:37:10 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: no
(03:37:19 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: i dont have any of her contacts
(03:37:21 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: Nerds may not feel the need to defend attacks against their areas of interest, since their fields are far too advanced to be toppled by simple arguments. However, geeks may find the need to defend their interests when attacked. The interests of geeks are often ridiculed or put-down by those who do not fully appreciate them. For nerds, they know that their interests are beyond normal peoples' understanding, so they just accept that as a natural phenomenon.
(03:37:40 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: this is little interesting abt NERDY behaviour
(03:37:52 PM) SAGA: yaaa
(03:37:55 PM) SAGA: Nerds dont care
(03:37:56 PM) SAGA: :D
(03:37:57 PM) SAGA: yaaa
(03:38:11 PM) SAGA: but i care if my opinion is harmed
(03:38:13 PM) SAGA: :D
(03:38:16 PM) SAGA: i am no nerd
(03:38:17 PM) SAGA: :D
(03:38:37 PM) mafriend@gmail.com: i wont care
(03:38:45 PM) SAGA: :)
(03:38:47 PM) SAGA: :D
(03:39:19 PM) SAGA: mafriend its an interesting conversation
(03:39:23 PM) SAGA: i am gonna save it
(03:39:24 PM) SAGA: :D

So All guyz and gals Dont call me Nerd call me Geek ! I am not a Nerd, I am the Geek :D

Kenneth Gonsalves: Prabhakaran meets his end

lawgon@thenilgiris.com — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:43:26 +0000

The 30 year saga has come to a close. Prabhakaran was arguably one of the greatest military geniuses of the era. His failing was political. Successful guerilla leaders were also expert at building up a united front with a fairly wide spectrum of support. The classic example was Mao. Prabhakaran failed miserably here - he was unable to distinguish between friends, enemies, potential supporters and neutrals. And it was this rank terrorist aspect of his operations that lead to final defeat. He wiped out a whole generation of moderate (and some pretty radical) Tamil leaders and any one of his own cadre who was perceived to oppose him. His biggest blunder was the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi - his movement was doomed the moment he did this. It took 18th years, but the end began then.

The LTTE had a number of firsts - not all of them laudable. They invented the suicide belt bomber. They were also perhaps the first guerilla army to field an air force, navy and even submarines. This showed great creativity and resourcefulness among the cadre. It is a real pity that one man was allowed to subvert this into rank terrorism.

I had contacts with many Eelam supporters back in the 1970's and at that time their cause was genuine as Tamils were being treated as 2nd class citizens. That is: the Eelam Tamils, as the plantation Tamils had no rights at all. After 30 years of killing and suffering, I hope that at least this is rectified. I wonder. Chauvinism is a terrible thing - hats off to the Indian voter for showing the local chauvinists their place. If I believed in God I would pray for the Tamils of Eelam. Maybe readers of my blog would?

Kenneth Gonsalves: choking

lawgon@thenilgiris.com — Mon, 18 May 2009 08:24:41 +0000

how does one prevent choking? I choked 4 times in the last 6 matches and ended up second runner-up (meaning no prize) on each occasion when I had the trophy for the asking. After being a chronic wooden-spooner, it looks like I have to work on making winning a habit.

Kushal Das: Reliance NetConnect NetworkManager and data usage

Fri, 15 May 2009 10:30:16 +0000

As I moved into a new apartment I am using a Reliance NetConnect these days. It is having a 10GB data usage per month limit. I was looking for a way to keep the record data usage by this device. There are couple of applications which shows current usage very well, but they don’t provide proper solution to record and query the usage records.
So I started poking around nm-applet to find a way to record the data usage, Dan Williams helped a lot by reviewing the patch and we continously discussed to imporve in this area.
Dan will probably make this feature available in future by NetworkManager codebase itself.

So, for the time being if you are using any mobile broadband device and want to track your usage record, I have patched versions of network-manager-applet available (patched against the latest svn trunk).

Download: the patch, NetworkManager srpm, F-10 rpm, F-11 rpm
Dan is having a better verion of the patch here which I will put in a later release of the rpm.

Now this is a old version as of RPM release is considered. You have to remove your current NetworkManager-gnome package then install this new one. After that you have to relogin or reboot.
To gather the data properly you have to “disconnect” through nm-applet only.

To view your usage use this python script.
./nm-data-usage will give you today’s access record, if you want to have current month’s usage record ./nm-data-usage -m

Access record for May 2009
——— Connection Date ——— reliance 08/05/09 reliance 08/05/09 reliance 08/05/09 reliance 08/05/09 reliance 08/05/09 reliance 08/05/09 reliance 08/05/09 reliance 08/05/09 reliance 09/05/09 reliance 09/05/09 reliance 09/05/09 reliance 10/05/09 reliance 10/05/09 reliance 10/05/09 reliance 10/05/09 reliance 10/05/09 reliance 10/05/09 reliance 11/05/09 reliance 11/05/09 reliance 11/05/09 reliance 11/05/09 reliance 12/05/09 sm 15/05/09 ——— 212;——————————————————————————
Started Stopped Data IN Data OUT
212;——————————————————————————
12:12:45 12:12:55 0 KB 0 KB
12:13:39 12:21:32 7.46 MB 680 KB
12:56:25 14:49:45 46.73 MB 4.95 MB
17:34:49 17:36:38 804 KB 104 KB
17:47:56 17:55:19 3.48 MB 919 KB
17:55:22 18:22:40 6.17 MB 1.57 MB
18:35:46 18:39:59 821 KB 77 KB
19:23:07 01:12:02 55.71 MB 9.70 MB
08:22:49 08:37:26 4.18 MB 996 KB
08:37:57 09:34:09 13.14 MB 3.82 MB
09:34:11 09:46:55 13.86 MB 3.98 MB
07:56:21 11:12:18 7.73 MB 2.63 MB
12:15:53 12:18:16 944 KB 222 KB
12:18:47 12:19:30 5 KB 0 KB
12:19:35 12:52:21 4.52 MB 1.35 MB
12:52:38 13:08:07 6.03 MB 1.59 MB
13:08:09 13:24:03 10.18 MB 2.60 MB
19:32:38 21:11:37 14.71 MB 2.94 MB
21:12:11 21:13:15 753 KB 71 KB
21:22:41 21:33:53 714 KB 69 KB
21:41:12 05:41:15 65.19 MB 9.41 MB
06:24:25 08:19:35 1 KB 1 KB
12:42:55 12:44:34 242 KB 93 KB
212;——————————————————————————

Total data usage : 310.00 MB in current month

I will improve this script to do better query in future.

Kushal Das: New release of lekhonee

Fri, 15 May 2009 04:31:53 +0000

I am happy to release lekhonee-0.3.1

lekhonee is a desktop client for Wordpress.
The new features of this release are:

* Add Category
* Spell Check enable/disable
* Edit last entry

I never blogged about a few last releases, I moved the codebase to PyKDE4. It is using KWallet service to store the password. If you don’t want to use kwallet (like you are a gnome user), it will ask you to type-in the details every time.

Download tarball, F-10 rpm (pushed to stable), F-11 rpm

Kushal Das: The mail which made my day

Wed, 13 May 2009 05:31:03 +0000

You can read it here.

Update: edited using lekhonee.

Kenneth Gonsalves

lawgon@thenilgiris.com — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:19:46 +0000

fake IPL player is doing a good job. A little overdone - but then that is probably necessary considering the blockheads he is challenging.

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay: pem and the art of expense management

Tue, 12 May 2009 06:26:13 +0000

I was looking for an alternative to keeping track of expenses via a spreadsheet. Given that it isn’t too intuitive, the alternative was scribbling it on pieces of paper and then collating them when I have time.

Somewhere along the way came pem. This command line tool is elegantly simple to use. Having the developer nearby also means that I can “demand” features in the software. Prasad has blogged about his recent release. I just love the fact that it allows me to publish a simple report of expenses by category. Comes in very handy to produce a report for Max. I have been using it for a while to keep track of the “Community Architecture” related expenses that I am accountable for.

Highly recommended. By the way, this blog entry is being written with the offline client for Wordpress called Lekhonee. If you have been using Wordpress and, desired an offline client, give this a try. The developer could do with some feedback as well.

ps: Contrary to rumour, pem isn’t pjp expense manager

Kushal Das: Hugin

Tue, 12 May 2009 04:28:44 +0000

After reading Richard’s entry, I decided to try hugin again with autopano-sift-C package from rpmfusion.

The result: 360 degree view of my apartment area

Sayamindu Dasgupta: Updates

Mon, 11 May 2009 14:16:56 +0000

A global dictionary for Sugar:: While working on the bookreader capabilities of the XO, I remembered how on almost each and every birthday during my primary school years, someone would give me one of those “pocket” dictionaries. Even in college, I would see students coming from Bengali medium schools studying their engineering textbooks with a dictionary by their side. Thinking that it would be useful to have such a dictionary built into the Read Activity, I started coding, and after sometime, I had a utility which worked for not only Read, but for any random Sugar Activity. Just select some text, hit a shortcut key, and you get a model dialog with the definition of the highlighted word(s) (we are considering whether instead of only a shortcut, this should be triggerable via a persistent icon on the frame). Here is a video of the (prototype) feature in action.
L10n infra migration::Over the past few weeks, we migrated our Pootle based translation system to a new server. The transition seems to have succeeded without major hiccups, and I also managed to sneak in a feature which would show the status of a PO file (results of msgfmt –check, as well whether the file has been committed to the VCS or not) in the statistics view.

Kenneth Gonsalves: virtualenv

lawgon@thenilgiris.com — Wed, 06 May 2009 07:53:49 +0000

virtualenv rocks - how did I exist without it?

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay: A letter for Sayamindu

Fri, 01 May 2009 23:00:43 +0000

Dear Sayamindu,

It is good to see you blogging after a break. Now that you have got the rant off your chest, I hope you are feeling better. Catharsis does work.

You ask, somewhat rhetorically, as to why you should bother ? There are a lot of layers to that question really. Should you bother about coaching your peers and juniors in the “right” things ? Or, should you be bothered about the employment bits that make all the education and years spent so irrelevant ?

I firmly believe that you should bother. In fact, I hold on to the theory that you should get agitated enough to be bothered more than you are currently. There is no escaping the fact that the world is changing and, with it, the patterns of employment. Traditionally, Indian IT companies of the SWITCH and now TWITCH group have hired freshly minted software engineers by the ark-load. In fact, there are times when I have wondered about how do they end up managing the task of the massive hires. When you hire at that quantum, the focus is less on skills and, more on whether there is “aptitude” as measured by some tests devised by the departments involved. And, since there is an extensive “training” of the new hires involved as part of the cycle, it is comfortable for them to assume that basic knowledge would be drilled into them eventually.

It isn’t really about Python. I guess the issue here is do the folks whom you guide and, for a very valid reason, feel responsible for, realize and accept that there are opportunities outside of the traditional TWITCH group ? Or, that, given accomplishments, they can actually be spoilt for choice in terms of assignments they land up with ? Sadly enough, my experiences have been somewhat negative. Since getting into a services sector job hasn’t been too difficult, students seem to have become complacent (and, yes, I know that this is a grossly general statement) and, decided not to exercise their choice to “be excellent”.

Choosing to become a zombie is an easy decision. Choosing not to and thus striking out a path for themselves requires courage. So, the question I ask is – what can we do to instill that courage in the folks we encounter ? What can be done so that they can be brave enough to reject a call to mediocrity and, embrace the discipline and strength needed to really “innovate” ?

It is a sad fact of life that B players generally hire Cs. So that they can appear smart to the outside world. How can we coach the students to aspire for nothing less then being an A and, demand the very best of their employers ?

So, the question isn’t really “Why should I bother ?” – it is “What can we do to change the system ?”

The number of comments on your blog does prove that there are a large group of people unhappy with the current state of things. The larger that group is, and, the more work that gets done, would be the starting point of things changing.

~sankarshan

ps: Be bothered. That’s the only path to sanity.

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay: Of books again

Fri, 01 May 2009 22:35:01 +0000

Spent a greater part of the day reading A Better India, A Better World by Narayan Murthy. And, for better or, for worse, re-read a few parts of Imagining India: Ideas For The New Century by Nandan Nilekani.

There is nothing much to be said about the book from N Murthy. A collection or, more aptly, a collation of his speeches and writings these are collected around various themes. A basic point which the publishers might have considered is the selection of font and size. A book that is wholly text matter based requires a much pleasant font and comfortable spacing rather than the close-spaced result that one sees in the book. There are a few things that stand out when one reads the collection:

his speeches tend to have repeated imagery and quotes and, a bit of sameness that becomes jarring if the book is read as a whole
while the speeches employ rhetorical flourishes, the writings, especially in the columns of business journals have a much sharper edge and clarity
“Be the change you want to see” is a theme oft repeated and, provided for via various examples. And, I did end up liking a number of the anecdotes.
The sections on Values, Leadership and, various addresses to the students are worth a re-read.

All said, I had a different set of expectations from the book. Probably, that was one reason I ended up re-reading segments from Nandan Nilekani’s book. Narayan Murthy has been somewhat “up there” and, expecting a bit more insight in terms of vision isn’t asking for the moon. So, whereas Nilekani’s book does a thorough overview of a situation and digs dip down into nuts and bolts operational parts, Murthy’s writings tend to remain a bit on the “preachy” side. And, somewhat dispassionate. The book is worth reading if one has heard or, read him infrequently, else, borrow a copy to read up the section on Values. Might be worth it.

Atul Chitnis: How companies shoot themselves in the foot while recruiting

Fri, 01 May 2009 05:28:09 +0000

This SOOOOO reminds me of the 1980s :)

In 1985, after I graduated, I looked for a job in Mumbai and Bangalore. I had, for the past 4 years, learnt a number of "computer languages", but I was most productive in dBASE II and III. I had already written full applications, and I could see that this would become a common thing soon (Clipper and Foxbase were still a while in the future).

Not a single job offer. Not one of the "computer companies" knew what dBASE was, and hence I was rejected everywhere.

I was so disheartened that all my abilities were going waste that I joined a "computer course" at DataPro to learn COBOL and stuff like that, which was the only thing in demand.

Then I saw an ad in the papers for programmers, and one of the languages listed was dBASE. The ad was for qualified programmers with a couple of years of professional experience, and of course I didn't qualify as a fresh mechanical engineering graduate, but I wrote to the advertiser and thanked him for at least recognising that dBASE was a "computer language" that could be used to write business applications. I sent off the letter (snail mail, no less!) and promptly forgot about it.

A week later, my dad called me saying that there was a letter for me. It was a reply from the CEO of the company I had written to, asking me to drop in.

Not expecting much, I hoofed it to Cuffe Parade, and met up with the man.

I walked into his office, and he looked at me, and asked me who I was, and I told him and reminded him about my letter. He spun around in his chair, handed me a bunch of papers, and said "I have been working on this problem for the past 24 hours [and he looked it!], see whether you can crack this in dBASE". He pointed me at a free machine, spun around, and went back to what he was doing.

Not having anything better to do, I sat down, and went to work. By nightfall, I had cracked the problem, written out the app, tested it against test data, then live data. All that time, the CEO of the company sat on the desk next to me, working like a maniac on another problem.

When I was done, he checked my code, showed me how to correct my coding style, corrected a few things I had assumed wrongly, showed me how to speed up a few routines, etc. Then, with both of us near collapse with exhaustion, he asked me to come back in the morning.

We didn't speak about salary or anything else for nearly a month after that. We just worked. And I had the time of my life. I learnt new stuff, and was introduced to Clipper, and used my dBASE skills to the hilt.

A month later, I was handed a cheque - my first salary - which was far higher than I had ever expected for a first job. And my boss, seeing my surprise, told me "I have been looking for someone like you who understood how important dBASE as a development environment was - I don't want to lose you over a silly matter like money".

That was 1985 - 24 years ago.

And I owe my entire life and career to the foresight of Ashok Hingorani, the CEO of Compu-tact. Whatever I am today, whatever you know me for, whatever spirit you see in me - it is because this man had the vision to recognise that something that no one else here had heard of would become something very important in the future. And he was right.

In 1985, my skills at dBASE were the thing that made me better than others.

In 2009, it is knowledge of python and other tools from the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) world that show you who the smart guys are.

A company that doesn't know that a python developer is usually more productive, proactive and knowledgeable than a cookie-cutter "C/C++/Java" programmer who has done a 6 month course at some "computer institute", is a company that will forever be doomed to be mediocre, non-innovative, and a place I would never recommend to any student as a place to work.

Wake up, corporate India! You need to re-evaluate your evaluation criteria if you want to remain relevant! Do you have any idea how many competent developers you are losing because you don't have a clue what development in the 21st century means, or what its tools are?

p.s. This rant is a spur of the moment thing, and I am going to refine it after a couple of hours. But I needed to get this point out NOW.

p.p.s. This is NOT a rant against C/C++/Java devs, or FOR python devs - it is a rant against companies whose recruiting policies don't recognise that a person who teaches herself python (or any other kind of 21st century development medium) is precisely the kind of progressive, self-starter, innovative developer that you are so desperately looking for!

Kenneth Gonsalves: TV

lawgon@thenilgiris.com — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:34:58 +0000

don't usually watch TV, but being unwell and unable to concentrate on anything, I watched a fair amount. Two full movies - both strangely enough on the same theme. One on a bunch of ghetto kids forming a swimming team and winning a tournament. And the other on a bobsled team from Jamaica. Old fashioned stuff, but enjoyed it. And then that IPL match that ended in a tie. The only good thing about IPL is that one can watch good players play without worrying about loyalties. Like Mahela Jayawardene - or even Shane Warne.

Sayamindu Dasgupta: Why should I bother ?

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:35:34 +0000

Warning: This is a rant. Feel free to ignore

I love coding in Python, and in spite of some of the occasional issues it can cause, I feel that it lets one accomplish whatever one wants to do with the minimal amount of magic incantations. So naturally, I have been trying to convince my friends from college to try out Python, but after a few incidents I’m not so sure if I have been doing the right thing. Couple of events will explain the situation:

Scene I – Interview for positions in one of the “big four” Indian IT companies:
Friend of mine has Python listed under the skills sections in his CV
Interviewer: ওরে বাবা তুমি তো পাইথন জানো। (TRANS

:Wow (in the sarcastic sense) – you seem to know Python)
Friend: হ্যাঁ (TRANS:Yes)
Interviewer: আচ্ছা Java জানো কি ? (TRANS:So, do you know Java)
Friend: যতটুকু কলেজে পড়িয়েছে, ওইটুকু, তার থেকে বেশী জানি নাহ (TRANS:Not much, just whatever they have taught in college) (the college course covers Java as an example of a Object Oriented language, so it does not go very deep)
Interviewer: আচ্ছা, এটা বল তো… (TRANS:All right then, answer this)
Interviewer: pretty convoluted question from Java – involving complicated API stuff and such
Friend: বলতে পারবো নাহ (TRANS:Sorry, I can’t answer this)
Interviewer: যা, এইটুকুই জানো না, আর পাইথন ফাইথন কী সব শিখে ফেলেছ ? (TRANS:Bah! You don’t know such basic stuff, and on the other hand, you have learn’t Python and whatnot!!)

Needless to say – the guy did not get selected, and got rid of Python from his CV.

Scene II – Yet another interview, this time for a “research” position in academia
Friend of mine has been learning PIL, PyGTK, etc and has Python listed in his CV
Interviewer: আচ্ছা, এই পাইথনটা কি ? (everyone in interview panel make weird facial expressions) (TRANS:So, what is this Python “thing”?)
Friend: <explains>
Interviewer: আচ্ছা এটার এরকম বিচ্ছিরি নাম কেন ? (TRANS:So, why does this have such a weird sounding name?)
Friend: <explains, mentioning Monty Python, etc>
Interviewer: দেখো, আমরা তো এসব জানিনা, আমরা সাবজেক্ট জানি। তুমি বরং কি সাবজেক্ট জানো বল (TRANS:Look, we do not know these things, we know “subjects”. What “subjects do you know ?)
<..and the interview continued with some very standard (and stupid, IMHO) questions (most of which, I believe are lifted from this particular book). My friend answered all of the questions, except for one.>

Friend later tells me: ওইরকম মুখ বানালো – ওই দেখেই বুঝলাম হবে নাহ্‌ । আমি আর কোথাও পাইথন জানি বলছি নাহ্‌ । (TRANS:From their expression on hearing the word Python, I knew I was not going to crack this interview. I’m not going to mention Python in any future interview.)

When the first incident happened, I thought it was a isolated case. But after the second one, I don’t think it is (and there has been at least one other similar case as well). In fact, when the campus recruitment started for our batch in college, a very senior and respected faculty member told me that my chances of getting placed from college was very slim. I did not appear for any of the recruitment programs (and almost got fined by the college authorities for being “absent”), so I did not get the chance to test out his theory – but that’s a different story altogether.
For the second incident, one may claim that the interviewers were perhaps looking for someone who had a good “theoretical understanding” or had “strong fundamentals”, but I have my doubts (primarily due to the generic crappy questions that were asked afterwards). The first incident on the other hand, points clearly towards something being very wrong with the interviewer.
The question that arises after all this is, why should I ask people to learn Python, or for that matter anything that is not covered by the officially sanctioned syllabus ? On one hand, our “progressive” political leaders and leaders of our various industries speak about nurturing and enhancing “talent” to build a better India, and what not. In the real world on the other hand, at the very ground level, the same institutions that the leaders are supposed to be the patrons and creators of, encourage nothing but mediocrity. End result: each year, thousands of bright young students get turned into zombies. What a terrible waste… what a terrible waste…