How we conducted The Mini App Days @Amritapuri – Part 02

If you are blank here with the part 02, go back to part 01  anytime and get the basics done :) so back to the topic - 04 August - The main day

Just looking back, I still remember the warden shouting at us, at about 12:15 am for again disturbing his ice, I think 3rd time in a row. Somehow he got cool and even gave us some cake to make sure we felt comfortable (nice man).

Next morning I was awoke by my phone ringing at 7:15 am by my friend and when I inquired when she had slept yesterday, since it was too early, she told me that she had lost her sleep long before :P ha. We went to the mess, after waking up all the crew-members and taking with us the flex and posters the Reps have given us the previous day mid-night. The girls too joined us from the College and we were startled to see outside participants arriving at 8:30 am onwards.  We had an awesome guidance team set-up near the main gate to redirect all the arriving participants to the Ammas hotel for their breakfast, and they did it well. I still remember Durga and Maneesha waving the only available App-Day poster at the arriving participants so that they recognized something fishy was going on. Fixing the postures was another mess. The team somehow found some thread somewhere, cleaned it up and put up almost three flex here and there in the campus. Just to get that feel :). Meanwhile, the prayer and coir team along with Santhosh somehow arranged the traditional lamp (nilavilakku) somehow and made it available in the lab. The registration desk was set-up on the ground floor with Roopak, Pooja, Anirudh's laptop and Akshay's Tab. Passing through the registration desk later, I saw them busy playing games :) after their work though.

The Reps arrived in the lab by about 10:00 am and Br. Bijuji was grateful to come and light the lamp for us. The reps too lighted the lamp in the tradition and there was one more wick left and Biju ji asked me and Tina to light that one. Lighting a lamp for the first time experience was great :). The event started and we had some problems with the Wi-Fi due to low coverage. Somehow, we could find an alternative, by sharing on of the lap PC connection via WiFi with Tina's laptop. Later, we went down to get the tea and snacks ready and that went too well. Again, as coordinators, we had to wash all the cups to make them drinkable and return the same in time, no worries. Biju Ji came to us in the meantime, appreciated our works and was happy to see our students interacting so nicely with the outside participants. Welcome to Amrita :)

The session was going fun, we distributed the swags, stickers, badges and to add to the surprises, we had the best rain of the year roaring outside, and it was again a tough job to get the participants out till the Ammas hotel to get their lunch ready.

How we conducted The Mini App Days @Amritapuri - Part 01

For a start, let me warn this is not from a developer point of view, but just ignore if I go too technical somewhere, as that happens.

The FOSS@Amrita, or our FOSS Club conducted The Mini App Days @Amritapuri, basically a technical workshop, which involves registered attendees hanging around to build apps for the newly out geek OS - The Firefox OS. The Browser technology gecko, along with B2G runs simply coded HTML files along with little JScript to add to the calculations and JQUERY, HTML5 and other technologies to style them up. The Amrita event that we hosted had almost 15 outside participants and a 35 of Amrita students itself and 3 Mozilla Reps coming in order to color thing up ! namely Naresh, Mithun and Saurabh. Detailed reports of the event is successfully hosted here :)

Coming to the organization point of view, it was of-course a fresh experience for our organization team to conduct such an event, as basically we were new to conducting anything in our college, and since it's Amrita, we have to run around a lot to get a lot of permission letters signed, and again we were in our Second Year only and we got discrete and Integral Maths :\. When I mention permission letters, I would like to mention that at one time, we had about 9 pending letters in our hand, which were all required to reach their destinations within an hour.

[gallery type="rectangular" ids="228,230"]

For the Pre-App days on 28 September, we needn't had to worry much, expect for some lab booking problems, which arose due to one international event which got scheduled on the same day, save us! The Main day event was really an experience. Since our mentor in charge got ill, our sole hope was on our CIR head, Br. Bijukumar, who guided us throughout  the event. It was the first time, I understood, how much hurdles I need to pass even to arrange one time coffee for all the participants. We got the posters printed out somehow for free and pasting it throughout the college was lot fun, specially with my friends Bhagya, Amrutha and Pooja, selecting sensitive areas (mess, water coolers) and pasting stuff!

Pre Mini App Days @Amritapuri

We could successfully conduct the Pre-Mini App Days session yesterday, July 28th 2013. The event was basically aimed for the registered Amrita participants and the new FOSS members in order to introduce them to looks and style of HTML and CSS, so that they could get an edge over others in the upcoming main App Days (04th August). The event started with Aditya's session on HTML, followed by Durga on CSS and an afternoon session on codeacademy. The participants were introduced into the Firefox OS interface and writing apps using HTML, CSS and Javascript on the evening session by Tina and myself. The event concluded with a roughly 45 mins hackathon, in which participants were asked to build up a simple BMI calculator, which many could finish, earning them goodies :)

[gallery type="rectangular" ids="214,216,215,213"]
About 30 participated in the same, and they could come familiar with the basic concepts of designing and scripting. Gallery and description by Jackson Issac :- http://foss.amrita.ac.in/site/2013/07/29/mini-app-day-hackathon-amritafoss/
Thanks to each and everyone who helped us in co-ordinating the event.

The Azheekal Trip

The Azheekal beach is located about 15 minutes to the North of the Amritapuri Ashram,Kollam, and when the FOSS Entertainment team, prepared a plan to visit there, as part of Take-A-Break program during the Vacations, we never expected this much fun. We had been planning for this for a while, and it all took place on June 29th Evening.
We left from the Ashram about 5 in the evening, after our tea, about 8 of us, with our faculty in charge and our dear Bithin from Amrita Cyber Security. We invited our Java instructor from Google, Sandeep Ghuman, who was really bit tired after his Panch-Karmas in his early twenties,and his Dutch friend, Mathewlls (as I heard it). Managing such a team was a bit difficult for our in charge, and we understood the same, keeping ourself in our best.
We waited a lot for a bus, which never came, and had to finally go by two Auto's, as the place was near. Being a resident of the Ashram for a year, I had went to the place already, the second day I reached here, and the feelings were mixed.
Introducing Azheekal, the place is famous for its walk-through of about at least 200 metres into the ferocious sea. Ferocious in the sense, we had a Tsunami, hitting a couple of years before. The walk is serene, specially for the calm river on your right side and the waves of the ocean on your left side. It attracts a lot of tourists, and little of native people, as it's a not so uncommon place in Kerala. All we want was an evening out, and we had it.

Getting into the linux root - grub editing

As this page says root is the user name or account that by default has access to all commands and files on a Linux or other Unix-like operating system. It is also referred to as the root account, root user and the superuser. Getting into the linux root is a necessity when talking about privileges and let me show you how to get the easy access.

You shall need :-

1. An Linux operating system -(Ubuntu ,Fedora or anything .. )


2. Direct access to the system, ie you need to restart it alright.


3. The Recovery mode enabled in the GRUB is not a necessity.

The steps :-

1. So, the vector is the GRUB boot loader, we see just after booting on our system :-


2. Here, select the first option , and press 'e' as it says to edit.(Ubuntu,with LINUX )

Sreesanth- How the Media did the 'FIXING'

The Other Side Of the Story !

Seriously, If you ask me why I am writing this post, again against the media, ' It just irritates me'. Not a humble excuse for an Engineering student for not reading the NewsPaper though. This time , the topic is the IPL Spot-Fixing and Sreesanth- The so called 'Mallu Fixer'.

IPL Spot-Fixing and Sreesanth ? The topic looks matched uneven. Its a fact that the majority of the media seems to ignore, but what hurts me is that the modern educated Indian is too,ignoring it. Firstly, I would like to confess that I have no personal sentiment to this Sreesanth guy other than he is from Kerala, and used to make Kerala and India proud.

Where the media is taking us: -ve popularity

Today when we talk about freedom of the media and serious stuff like that, we often forget or seem to neglect the influence it is having on the society.Here is the front-page of one of the top daily Newspaper in my state, Kerala. I hope many of my non-keralaite readers wont have got the clue, I will make the things clear. The man who is portrayed on the front cover, posing like a superstar is Mr Bhitti Mohanthi, as wikipedia states    'is a high profile criminal sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for raping a German tourist at Alwar, India and was since absconding after he was released on parole on 20 November 2006 to meet his ailing mother at Cuttack, Orissa.' He was arrested recently from my place, Kannur, where he has been working in a Nationalized- bank via fake id's and in fake name.

The point I need to bring to you is not about the capture of this big fraud, but how our media celebrated the arrest. Should he be thrown into the spotlight, like where the newspaper had just put him right now ?. Should the tens and lakhs of readers of the paper be forced to consider him as some war-time hero or whatever. Seriously, I am not envious about someone getting into the front page, but I am bit mad at some criminal like him getting crowned that way.

This is not just standalone instances but the enthusiasm of our media to exploit and celebrate these type negative popularity is getting strong day by day. A month ago it was the intelligent thief - 'Bhandi Chor' issue getting hot every where.Newspapers where explaining each and every steps he took in his missions like a detective novel with a star villain. Even the cunning actions by the police was not appreciated in getting this guy behind the bars.

The effect it has, especially on the coming generation is infinite. Weak people are motivated by the fame they gets, the complexities in their planning and the way they executes the same. They end up rehearsing the same live and often end up in jails. As our former president, Dr. Abdul Kalam quotes in his visions for INDIA speech in IIT-H ," Why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why? " .

Hoping for an unbiased-ethical-passionate media, but even the statement looks corrupt. :D

Cheers!

International Women's day @Amritapuri

March 08, the International Women's day, and since the rest 364 days of the year, never were the Men day, we decided to celebrate it out. In this days of discrimination and abuse, when girls are getting assaulted irrespective of age, our spiritual head and Chancellor, Mata Amritanandamayi requested, we form a Human-Chain from Karunagappally to Vavvakkavu, about 6 Kms. in length. The sky was hot outside and many of us, didn't felt like moving out, yet we went, considering it as a little service from our part to show the protest to the recent happenings to women abroad.

We left from our college, about 10:00 in the morning, and this time, it was the girls sitting and the guys standing, you know, 'Its womens day, right ?' The bus trip was awesome, like its always is, when a bunch of college youth gets into :). We reached our spot by about 10:30, the Karunagappally town, got down and spread our hands forming the long chain. Lucky for me and some of my classmates, we found our shelter under one tree and it actually saved us from the intense heat of the sun. We stood there for about an hour enjoying for ourselves, with our classmates, and also keeping ourselves in the venture. Later by about 11:30, we returned in another bus, again we sang and howled a lot and the day became again a memorable one.

Today, the question is again, "Are our women safe ? ". I know I am not any huge writer with wit or wisdom, yet having a sister of age 21,  I know the risks. My view is different and I like to think that things happen wrong to us due to our own wrong doings to a certain extent. Seriously, I am not  a sadist, yet that's my opinion. Small children getting raped, teenager molested and killed in the bus, all are of-course not at all due to their own fault, and I am at the point that the culprits should be punished severely and not hanged, you know hanging will make things too simple.

Sorry for the diversion in the topic again, like my each and every post, this too ends with an apology :D. Once again a Happy Women's Day and I would support for more womens day in an year :D. How would that look like ?

FOSS MEET@NITC

NIT-Calicut was always my dream college, and this time, when our mentor told us about the the ' FOSS meet' , we had little hope that things would turn out well, and above all that we would be going.To elaborate, we left from Amritapuri on 22/02/13 morning by the 7:00 a.m bus and it was nice too see all the long and tiresome meetings and speculations regarding the trip coming to an end .Yes, we were going at last !. Our team comprised of 21 members with about 9 boys and the rest of them girls, with our P.hd scholar- Giri and our sister Sowmya. Somehow, we managed to catch the Parasuram Express (or was it ? :\), the ladies made it into their compartment, and since there was no gents coach, we made it on our legs for a few hours. #giri was trending in the compartment and we never felt bored. Later, we arrived at Calicut at about 4:00 pm in the evening.  Little refreshments, and we set out to the prestigious NIT-C canteen and the college :D ;yes, we were damn hungry. The canteen was cool, yes.!

Seriously, I had seen people who never feared for anything in their life, getting too shaky and shut once they are on the stage. I was/am no exception, but for the blog's sake, consider me a little comfortable in the stage :). I still remember that old nursery boy Tony, called to the front in some nursery-story telling competition at some event and crying all over infront of the public, not able to utter a word. My parents did see this and, instead of critisizing, they asked me to try events again and again ; I never heard :. I enter this high school, and still carried away by this feeling of complexion, how the public see me blah-blah, stages of-course became my enemy. I went through many orientation classes, this and that many events, not making any mark, and things greatly changed when I passed my X th. In XI, for their mistake, my team elected me as the House-leader and at the time, a house leader was a man, who with his companion should make sure his fellows are participating in each and every events, and if any slot remain vacant, volunteer him/herself. Things began to change when  discovered a lot of empty slots. The next part is like Filling the slots as in ' Connecting the dots '.

No to RAGGING :\

Today, one of my friends rang me from Pune, NDA. He had been to there for barely a month after clearing all the SSB and things which involved even a minor surgery, you know determination matters. The first thing he told to me was " Tony, if you ever have a child, don't send him to NDA". I was deeply moved by this (not the child thing though :) ) as I knew his mind.He told he was asked to run for about 12 miles in the sun and each day the push-ups he needs to take for the seniors was difficult to count. Little sadistic, but my favorite was standing on two hands, legs high, and asking to count back from 120 :o.  He said how first years were to treat seniors as God, not look unto the eye, share the same pathway like the unaccountability age and so on. The authorities are pleased to call it, 'Hardening the Firsties' and look blindly at things. I couldn't believe how these could ever happen in the prestigious institutions of INDIA, and how they would be able to bring out better personals.

This is not obsolete  with the NDA. Things are much worse throughout. Money and fun is the usual provokers, often led by crude sadists who just need to enjoy the chaos. The laws are strict on the other side, yet as always implementation is the trouble. Examples of ragging are all over the news and I don't want to bore you with it. The thing to be asked is what can be done ?

Why are our seniors provoked to rag the juniors? The answer is simple, they too got ragged badly when they were Juniors :). So, if this chain continues, things will never get down. This is not a right act to be passed through generations. If we decide to NOT DO IT on our juniors, they wont be intimidated to do the same to their siblings. Exceptional cases are there, which can only be dealt with Laws and Decisions.

Fortunately for me, Amrita didn't do any such ragging to me and the last time I was caught and asked to sing in front of them seniors, I opened my mouth, reached for two lines, and they were forced to stay STOP :P. you know, quality matters. Share your experiences below. Take the pledge, NO TO RAGGING!.

Cheers!

 

Thenmala Trip_FOSS

When the Faculties coded an one-day tour ,we never thought Thenmala would turn out that awesome. The tour was well placed and well planned and really was a 12 hour enjoyment. Thanks to our Team.

We left from our campus, about 6:15 am in the morning, with the prayer. Things changed when they turned on the JBL , couldn't believe my eyes when all my red-tagged faculties jumped on the floor, screaming and dancing their life out. The 40 Kms till the hill top was simply awesome. We reached the hilltop, pulled out our breakfast, and we suddenly got company from the monkeys circling us. Scene changed when they turned aggressive and tried snatching our breaks, wait we evolved from them they say right? we were better at snatching things back :D.

Next was the Thenmala waterfall, or Palaruvi, famous for the steep crystal clear water-fall ; and believe me it was long time since i had seen one since my hostel life (Clear water). We took snaps from the rocks, sitting, standing, lying, ... Things were heaven up here. My faculties including Adhiyettan, Rahulettan, my friends too jumped into the same. It was nice to see people who never thought about bathing enjoying the water out ..:)  Obvious right ?

We left from there, and the next destination was the Adventure zone, and like it said, it was adventurous. We entered the forest and amazing rides awaited us there. The plastic free zone was well maintained and reflected natures perfection. We jumped on trampoline, did lake ride on boat, rope riding, rope gliding and lots lots more. The big thing was we were not having any restriction and, thats when the genius comes out right ?. We enjoyed that the best way. I personally took myself into some big risks (:P) and ended up aching my back though.

It was 2:00 and food time, it was a nice change from the mess , we expected some non-veg though. :D . Then the faculty team came up with the idea of a short-skit with-moral-values-in-5-minutes-5-teams and aghast!! we exclaimed our ( Sheeshhh..!!) .Things changed when we were taken to the Thenmala Dam-Park and  a short preparation time was given. Mine was team 1, and we had like all other groups, awesome guys :D. Somehow, my role was a smoky-drunkard college boy, mislead by the world outside, and how he would've changed, given a rewind. The crowd was amazing and many thought I was a professional drunk :( . I'm not :)

Team 2 came with the idea of how modern medication was being misused and why we should blame the system and not the department.The referral from Neuro to Nephro then to mortuary , all for a wrist ache was awesome. Team 3 came up with a typical FOSS class, which was hilarious with imitations and comments. They also depicted an interview and showed why be an Amritian , say LOL to IIT :D. Team 4 and Team 5 got the challenge of performing in a public look-out place and they handled it well from the Thenmala tower, where we stopped for tea. The view was amazing and the performance too. Team 4 acted the need of values in family, how the children of today go wrong,taking Dad's ATM. Team 6 showed the false cry of todays world, and the cry was far heard, public came up to see what was happening though. They also showed the valueless and clueless government officials, mislead and black-mailed by crazy crews.

When we were asked " PACK-UP " in the end, we packed our bags,  mind still on the hang-over from that awesome day. I thank the invited guests of our trip Br.Biju and K.P sir, who entertained us with their presence. The organizing team with Vipin Sir, my brothers Rahul,Bithin,Sai,Giri,Shanker, and sisters was wonderful. The imitations done by Giriettan kept us laughing for a while. Our Big Brother Aditya was the one behind the total organization and ordination, and Hats-Off to him. Last but not the least, I thank all my FOSS friends, who made the day a huge page in my life.. :) Thank you !

Kannur - my home

Kannur..!, I can assume that the first image coming to your mind on the pronounce of Kannur would be some bloodsheds and party politics fed area where people cut and kill for fun :( . The recent progressions would be confirming but, beleive me, Kannur is not anything like that.!

Everywhere I tell , " Hi ,I'm from Kannur ", I often feel that change in looks and terms followed by  that usual smirk, " Why that's an awful place to be bro , Do they still play with bombs ?" . Naturally, I cant start explaining the entire history of my homeland, the ups downs and blood-sheds which would've been or would not have been avoided ; consider this my apology.

Kannur is seated in the heart of North Kerala or Malabar , famous for it's exports and immigration of early Christians from the mid-Kerala. My family was too from the south-Kerala when they were struck withsevere famine and my great-great Grandpa  had to leave in search of new hope and they ended here ;Malabar never failed them though!. Since then it had been a land of loving peoples (sometimes love can go blind though, as it would've happened here :D ).  Last week I had this conversation with a Taxi driver , he says " yeah . the people of Kannur are so caring ' . Yes. you ask for some route while driving in your car at Kannur, I assure you they would tell you the truth (Not a Big Deal ?.. yes..! , but I got fooled 3 times at Kollam though) .

Even if I provide infinite examples of goodness, blotches the Party politics was able to spill up is not going to get erased, I know. Why always Kannur ? . Of course we have the best and the sharpest politicians of Kerala politics here. The Jayarajans, Pinarayi, A K G , Sudhakaran so and so. Some of the best communists sprouted here. My hats-off to them.! Politics takes a deep stand there, even we had weeks with more than 3 'Hartals'  and 'bhandhs' :o .Student politics running into blood-sheds is a sign of lukewarm attitude to corrections.

Hope things will change ..! Beleive me, Kannur is a nice place to hang out with .

Cheers!

One another Blog

Hi ,   Perhaps this blog would have popped up somehow on a wild Internet surfing ,on a precise google search , or somebody would have passed you this link for fun . Eitherway, I'm happy you're on it and, yes, welcome you to 'my Blog'.

Let me introduce myself. I am Tony Thomas , from a remote village in one of the remotest corner of Kerala , Kannur . I promise that the introversion of that would never be  visible throughout my blog . If found , please report though.

Here I would be writing about my experiences and college life as a student in Computer Science Engineer at Amrita School of Engineering. Here we got some interesting clubs to pursue our interests  and as mine is ,I am in FOSS . We do all the sort of things like creating, coding, executing stuff of our interest. You might think why I'm introducing FOSS here , but most of my best times are in here and here we do what we love, something I can write about .

That was a large introduction ,  but more are coming , less boring . stay connected.

Cheers