The Evolution

They were a group of several hundreds, flying fast and very close to each other. From far, I couldn’t notice any Leader among them who stood up to motivate and guide, yet they were in perfect unison. Did they have a target? I didn’t know. But it sure looked like they knew their destination and all about the journey. As they came close by, I watched in childish amusement. I walked over to the other side, not daring to come in their way. To my mind, they were just a swarm of bees. But to my heart, they were one beautiful example of the Nature’s grace.

Driving my way to work, in the chaotic traffic. A bike from my left wants to overtake at all cost – never mind the SUV ahead. A car from behind honks – the only way i could give way is to fly up And he knows that! A Traffic Police desperately tries to bring the traffic to order at the heat of the day on a busy junction with failed traffic signals.

I started to remember the swarm-of-bees.

Human Beings have the most advanced brains of all organisms. It is several hundred times the size of a Bee’s brain. It can manage several things at once. Perfectly! Yet we need Police, rules, protocols to regulate our driving.

It makes me wonder about the Evolution theory taught at school. Period.

A Windy Reminder

Five thirty in the morning, finding myself awake was relatively very early. The sky was full of dark clouds, on a normal day the Sun should have peeped out by now. I stood out in the balcony enjoying the cool breeze. The breeze quickly picked up and turned into a strong wind swaying trees and throwing dust and dry leaves all over. It was no longer enjoyable.

I came in, waiting for the newspaper, the wind still blowing strong. Suddenly i felt i was forgetting something, something which i kept reminding myself since quiet some time. It was as if the wind was trying to remind me, but in vain.

Two hours passed and i kick started my bike, off to a hair saloon that was hardly a matter of a 10-15 minute walk. Before i drove off, i could hear loud shouts that were rather unclear but as they got closer i found school children holding some banners and shouting out some slogans. I could hear one word ‘Pollution’.

I felt a neuron in my head almost fuse off with that ‘sudden voltage remainder’.

‘World Environment Day’. Ashamed, i put back the vehicle and started to walk my way to the saloon. It was almost a month back that i read about the theme the United Nations has set for the WED 2008 – ‘ CO2, Kick the Habit’.

We are habituated to many things that directly impact our environment. A Television running unnecessarily for an hour could mean several Kilos of CO2, a few minutes around on the vehicle, even worse !

The only way we could mend the environment is to first mend ourselves, our attitude towards the environment. Even small things matter a lot !

As a famous quote goes,

“When all the trees have been cut down, When all the animals have been hunted, When all the waters are polluted, When all the air is unsafe to breathe, Only then will man discover we cannot eat money!“

The best time to do something to protect our earth was a century ago, the second best time is NOW !

A Sophisticated Distraction

It was a week back that the Training camp on Linux began. There were about 200 participants in our center, most of them deeply committed to the FSF Philosophy. Seeing so many like minded people in one place, it simply pushes your energy to whole new levels.

It was a great start to the camp, on 16th, with the opening session by Shakti Kannan, a Free Software Developer. Being the first day, there were apparently a few technical glitches. Even with an improper microphone and an absent power point presentation, his session on OS basics was just spellbounding.

That session reminded me of an article i read in Readers Digest. It was regarding a competition by NASA to develop a submarine, open to various schools across the United States. There were many schools competing and the focus of the article was on one charity funded school, while most others had corporate funds to acomplish the mission. Interestingly, that school with limited resources, took itself to the final round which involved demonstrating the design of the submarine.

This is where it gets interesting, while all other schools presented their design over a projector, this school dint. All they used was plain chalk and a board. When asked the reason by the judges for not using the projector, they asserted it was a ‘Sophisticated Distration’. Quiet rightly so, unless a proper use is made of the Projector, it will be deemed as a ‘Sophisticated Distraction’.

That session by Shakti, even without a projector (which is considered a standard) is by far one of the best i’ve ever attended so far.

The missing Month…!

More than a month since my last post…!

Not a great start to my blog, thanks to a chain reaction. Ah! I’m not talking of Chemistry but instead a chain of events that kept me screwed.

It was in March when i came to know of Microsoft S2B, a Project Contest at a National Level. I immediately pitched myself, i expected that would give me a hands-on and it did! While we were on it, we had our college Technical Symposium coming up and while the core team was being formed, i took up making up the Website from the knowledge i gained of Web Technologies from S2B, the website was up very soon and it was the day of our Symposium.

We had the first set of winners announced that meant it was my job to bring it up on the website. While we were discussing on it, we saw two guys holding some posters and looking lost, we went up to them to realize they were people from GNU a.k.a Free Software Foundation. They were there to give a seminar.

We introduced them to our HOD and then we squeezed in time for their seminar which was not on the schedule. It lasted for about an hour, and when i thought ‘Seminars’ usually meant ‘Boredom’, this one changed all that. Simply the content in that little seminar was overwhelming, it kept us all glued to our seats.

In the end we were told they were going to conduct a training camp based on GNU technologies for two weeks. The seminar was done with, it was time for questions. I raised my hand only to find out i was not at all alone, suddenly everybody seemed to fight for the microphone. Everybody obviously had profound interest in the camp.

We wanted to involve ourselves in Free Software Movement – AP, they were already doing some really exciting things like e-Swecha, a Linux OS for Engineering students. They suggested us to form a GLUG (GNU/Linux User Group) to start up things. We wanted to, but we then realized it was better we start to ‘Use Linux’ before we form a group (Thats the only way, in fact)

That very chain reaction meant i was finding myself riding on a single wheel cycle (S2B), having to balance a Table on my NOSE! (Linux) While that was not enough, there was a Lion that was let loose (End Semester Exams) !! Okay, i acknowledge the exaggeration. But i wouldnt be off by much.

And talking of exams, one more and i’m done. So there it goes, ‘The missing Month’ in my blog.

‘Computer’ Graphics – without a Computer

You find yourself chasing a big bodied beast, armed with a rail gun in an expanse floating dangerously in space and the next moment inside an F-22 targetting an enemy tanker and all that in front of a little square shaped box on which you are seeing this. Yes, we’re talking of ‘Computer’ Graphics.

We were all pumped up when we heard we were going to study it as one of our subjects. We could hardly wait for the professor to enter the class room and once she did, she received a very very warm welcome from our class (could have very well been one of the loudest ‘Good Morning’ she ever heard).

She took the marker into her hand and moved towards the board, was she going to draw on of those race cars we see in those games? Heck No, she was writing something and wanted us all to note it down – ‘History of Graphics’. We thought it would take some time before she moved to those really exciting things in graphics.

A week passed, i was still holding on to my pen, noting some points from the board. What this time? Well, ‘History of Graphics’ again, but this time we moved a little ahead, were in the 1960s. A month later, nothing changed, except the date.

Two weeks before our end semester exams, we were finally done with the history. A new day and a new class, whats more, a New Topic! ‘Future of Computer Graphics’ but wait a minute, when are we going to deal with the ‘Present’ of Graphics? Never, we dint even touch the computer in our so called, ‘Computer’ Graphics course. Thanks to the no lab session ‘Computer’ Graphics course – which taught us, well, nothing ‘practical’ !!

The semester was over, vacation time and i was sitting in front of the ‘Computer’ playing NFS – wondering of ‘Multimedia development’ which we have in the coming year

Hello World!

This is the first post in my blog.

So, Welcome all…!