Its been a long time since my last post. So I thought of restarting the habit of blogging again. This is about the FOSS Meet that me along with a few of my friends attended from the 27th feb to 1st march.

Day 0: 26th Feb
On Feb 26th, we ( Me, Madhusudan, KB and Shantanu) left for Calicut. Unlike last time, we were speakers this time. All arrangements had been made and the organizers of FOSS Meet @ NITC had arrived at the station to pick us up, as promised. We left at 5:30 PM by the Ernakulam Superfast Express (if thats super fast, then god help the Indian Railways :-P) and reached Palakkad at 1:00 AM (thank goodness the train was on time). We were to change over to the Mangalore Mail at the Palakkad station, and that train was at 4:40 AM. We were amazed by to see the Palakkad station. It was by far the neatest railways station I had ever seen. Also its very well organized (even better than the Bangalore station) in the sense that it's well lit, there are LED signboards every 10 steps, and there are sign boards that indicate the coach nos. on the platform, and there are ample number of seats to sit. We spent the 3 and half hours, chit-chatting (the kannada term being "kaad harate") about anything and everything. The train to Calicut arrived on time, surprisingly again. Actually, all through the trip, the trains were on time (to make that up probably, the sessions got delayed :-P).

Day 1: 27th Feb
We reached Calicut at around 7:45 AM and there were two guys from NITC to pick us up there. Along with us on the same train, Mr. Sanjeev Kumar Saini was also to arrive. We then went to the guest house to drop Mr. Sanjeev Saini off (we were told that our accommodation was arranged at the international hostel) and then went to the canteen to have our breakfast. We were then informed that the international hostel only opened at 10 and that temporarily we were to be given a room at the guest house and so we reached the guest house. There Shantanu taught us how to use the GPRS from the phone to access internet on the computer. After we had all checked our mails - thanks to Shantanu and Airtel, we got dressed up and left to what was going to be our home for the next 3 days, the international hostel. We were given 2 double bed rooms there. We didn't have much work on 27th and so we all caught up on our sleep. We got up around 4:30 and went to the Mini Canteen and had hot Paneer and Alu parathas and orange juice. We then went back to our rooms and started preparaing for our Python + Django Workshop (after all, that was what we were there for). Me and KB studied the chapters that we were to handle the next day, while Madhu managed to doze. At around, 8:30 PM we went to the main canteen for our dinner and then left for the lab. We sat in the lab till 12 AM checking if the all the software and modules needed for the next day's session were installed in the comps, but the real reason was that the lab had AC and internet (it was heaven for a bunch of nerds like us :-P). Since the lab closed at 12 AM we were forced to move back to our rooms, where we sat down for a final round of prep for the next day. We discussed each other's part in the session and when we had finished it was around 2:30 AM. I then had a shower and fell asleep.

Day 2: 28th Feb
Our session was scheduled to begin at 9. Our Python + Django session had actually 2 parts, Python and Django (obviously!). We had the Python session scheduled at 9 AM and the Django session at 5:30 PM. Having had very little sleep the previous night, we only got up at around 8 but still managed to get dressed and reach the Networks Security Lab by 9 AM. There were few people present so we decided to wait for about 20 minutes and begin the session at 9:30 AM. We did start at 9:30, when there were around 16 people in the room. We had expected around the same number and so weren't disappointed. But as the session began, the people started coming in and by 9:45 we had around 35 people in the lab and the lab was full. Madhu started the presentation with "What is in the language??". He spoke about what kind of a language Python is and who developed it, etc. It was my turn next, I spoke about "Why Python? >>>import this" and then continued on with "Lists and Tuples". This was followed by "Dictionaries" by KB. Then again I took over to cover "Control statements". Then Madhu took over to cover "Strings", "Functions" and "Classes and Objects". We had planned to finish the entire session in 2 hours, but when we actually finished it, it was 12:30 PM. And that too, without fully completing the "Classes and Objects" part, on account of the projector being snatched from us, for over shooting our allocated time. Madhu promised the audience that he'd cover "Classes and Objects" in the evening Django Session and we left for lunch. Me and Shantanu had schezuan noodles, while KB and Madhu went to the hostel mess along with Shravana (Madhu's junior, from high school or PU college I am not sure, who happens to be a student at NITC).
After the lunch we again went to the lab to prepare for the Django presentation but we were all so tired that we all fell asleep, turn by turn, in the lab (blame it on the AC!). At 4:00 PM we came to know that our session had been postponed by an hour (I had earlier mentioned that the sessions compensated for the trains being on time, this was only the beginning). Dejected, mostly because we could've had a good nap in the room, we left for the room to do the same. It was 6 PM when we reached the lab after a small nap. About half of the crowd that had attended the morning session was present, which was good considering the session got postponed by an hour. This time it was all Madhu who conducted the session, since neither me nor KB knew much about Django. I handled the computer and the projector mainly so that I could learn some of it too. The session went well, but again we couldn't complete it within 8 and the organizers were there again to get the projector, only this time they wanted the audience too :-P. It was a video conference by Paul Frields - Fedora Project Lead - and everyone was asked to attend since Fedora were the sponsors to the event. The audience though was very much interested in the session and wanted to learn more. They requested us to continue the session, we discussed about the feasible slots and since none were available the next day, we decided that we'd have it on the same day after the Fedora session at 10:30 PM. There were about 8 people who came back, after the Fedora session. These were the real interested ones and the session went on for one more hour. Finally, it was 11:30 PM when we finished and thanked the people for having shown so much patience. These 8 people had shown so much interest and patience. Its unfortunate that I don't know their names except 3 guys, Pavithra (and yeah he's a guy), Anurag and Dhandeep. Finally, at 11:45 we went back to our rooms, happy that we had done some good work in the day. I was so happy that evening that on our way back I performed the, not so famous yet extremely dreaded, "Python Dance" :-P. More details about it will be given by KB or Madhu. Ah! I forgot to mention one other important thing! Pradeepto had arrived that afternoon and we went to meet him just after our lunch. Its always feels so nice to meet him. It was exactly 1 year ago that we had met him, at the same event for the first time, and now we are huge fans of him. He told us how he'd met Zakir Hussain on a flight to Banaras, a while ago. And after chatting for about half an hour, we headed to the lab.

Day 3: 1st March
On 1st March we had the Qt programming and KDE contribution session by Pradeepto Bhattacharya and Shantanu which was scheduled at 9 AM in the morning. We, being huge fans of Pradeepto, would be there to help him through the session. Madhu had warned me and KB to be up and ready early, and had even said that if we weren't ready by 7:30 AM he'd leave us behind. Having got scared of the threats, me and KB promptly knocked on their door at 7:30 AM. Turned out that, that was when they woke up. And to our misfortune, we received a call saying that Pradeepto's session had been postponed to 10:30 AM. KB took a small nap while Madhu and Shantanu got dressed. At around 9 AM we reached Aryabhatta (The NITC main auditorium), after having had our breakfast, where Sujith was there. We spoke about VV for a while. In the meanwhile one of the volunteers came over to the white board and wrote that the Qt and KDE session was further postponed to 11:45 AM. Pradeepto arrived at Aryabhatta along with Niyam Bhushan (wearing his open source pant!). Pradeepto was shocked to see that his session had been postponed further. Pradeepto and Sujith wanted to have their breakfast, so we again headed to the Mini Canteen. They had puris while the four of us had milk shakes. Finally, we reached the Network Security Lab at around 11 AM. The crowd started coming in at around 11:30. The turn out was more than what we had for our session (quite obviously!). A lot of other speakers later joined in, of course it was Pradeepto who was the speaker! Sujith came after delivering his talk at Bhaskara (another auditorium) on "Hacking the Camera!" (why the '!' he said to the volunteer who wrote the schedule on the white board). Pradeepto started out with a simple C++ "hello world" program. He then gradually introduced Qt by including the QObject and showed us how the applications were to be written. Then he showed us how to compile using qmake. He also showed us how smooth the transition is from Qt development to KDE development. Then Shantanu took over and taught us the use of Qt Designer. He designed a really cool mini text editor then and there using the designer, which we all did ourselves too!
The session got over at around 2 and the interested people (many of whom had been there the previous day) came over for a nice discussion with us about a lot of stuff ranging from getting Qt development to creating a custom distro. After that we had a nice group photo in front of the lab building. We then went to the canteen to have our lunch but to our misfortune found that the lunchtime was over and they had only snacks (Of course! It was 3:30 PM when we went to there!). So we again headed to the Mini Canteen, where we had lunch and a nice discussion about the various social issues plaguing various cities in this country. It was around 4 PM when we received a call from the organizers saying that they were going to have the valedictory function at Aryabhata. The valedictory was a simple event with Deepak Sir giving out mementos to all the speakers (yeah, I too got one :-P). We met Hiran here, Hiran is the creator of a beautiful font called "RufScript". We took a few snaps with a lot of other speakers. Then Niyam, Pradeepto and the others decided to go to the beach. Sujith was disappointed that he couldn't since he was to leave with us in the same train scheduled to depart at 7:30 PM. So we returned to our rooms at around 5:45 PM, packed our stuff and got ready to leave. The taxi arrived at 6:20 along with Sujith. We reached the station at around 7 picking up bread and jam on our way. We had chapathis at the railway mess, and waited for the train that arrived at 7:50 PM. After a very tiresome journey, on account of the foolishly introduced 3 side berths, we finally reached Bangalore at 7 AM on the 2nd of March

Quite a long post, considering I haven't blogged for a while. Anyway, the photos are available on flickr