mere funde

Randy Pausch (1960-2008) - Brilliant orator, awesome teacher, and above all - an amazing person. RIP.

The Last Lecture.

Comments welcome

When I was upgrading the Wordpress installation, I noticed that the particular version was code named “Tyner” after McCoy Tyner, a jazz pianist. Wordpress releases are mostly named after Jazz musicians, like Ella Fitzgerald, and saxophonist Stan Getz.

These codenames have always fascinated me since the good old days of Prithvi and Agni, at the Insti’s IPC - not International Patent Classification but Information Processing Center. Prithvi was the codename for the Linux server, and Agni for Unix. Vi used to be the editor of choice. Pine for email. Cat and Man were commands, rather than species name. Anyways I digress.

I was always fascinated by the way “Valhalla” used to appear on the terminal (screen) when we tried to log on to the network. And since then I have tried to follow these release names for various softwares. Below is a quick look at the names used by RedHat Linux.

1. RHL 7.0 - Guinness
2. RHL 7.1 - Seawolf
3. RHL 7.3 - Valhalla
4. RHL 8.0 - Psyche
5. RHL 9.0 - Shrike

I think post this RedHad became Fedora, or atleast a part of it did, and they used different names. Maybe I will follow up with some other interesting ones later (Ubuntu follows a cool method).

The blog now runs Wordpress 2.6 and I will be in Hyderabad over the weekend and plan to have a lot of fun

… after a brief hiatus. I have been away for almost a month, mostly due to increased work load. But I am firmly and surely back again. I recount below some of the more interesting things that have happened over the past month.

1. BarCamp Delhi 4 was attended. It was my first BarCamp and a very nice experience at that. It was held at the Amity Incubator in Noida, and they were excellent hosts with brilliant WiFi and lunch. Met a lot of interesting people. The event was low on tech and more on networking I was slightly disappointed. I personally delivered a talk on “Software and IP” and Akshat one on “Folksonomies”. After the camp clicked a couple of snaps at the India Gate and got caught in hail and rain. Thankfully the lappie and the cam were unaffected. Photos here.

2. The Quiz at office was won. The Bong (Aditya Chakrobarty) and me - named as “Two Bongs or Not” - defeated three other teams by a huge margin and got ourselves coupouns for Landmark worth a grand each. Luck played a huge part, but I am not complaining.

3. Gurgaon experienced a week of “Awesome Mausum” - I phrase I can claim to have invented. Rain pounded and the temperatures fell so low that the fans were switched off! In the middle of May - who would have thunk!

Fell in love with Poets of The Fall - Carnival of Rust. Other than that I have been twittering quite a lot. You can follow me here.

I am back from the trip home. However, due to the work that has piled up, I haven’t had much time to post or do pretty much anything else. Plus we (Bansal and me) are shifting to a new flat over the coming weekend.

Good news is that the new place has broadband so the internet activity would hopefully see a surge. Also, I saw The Bucket List yesterday; will review once I am free.

.. SIliguri.

I am home for the entire next week. See you folks once I am back. Meanwhile, don’t forget to check out the F1 race in Australia this weekend.

We (our IP group) are off tonight to the foothills in Uttaranchal to the Jim Corbett National Park for a weekend full of fun and uncontrolled fun!

More on the trip once I return. Have a great weekend everyone

Comes from TED 2008.

The Tibetan monks told us: “we don’t really believe that you went to the Moon, but you did; you don’t believe that we can achieve enlightenment in a single life, but we do.”

TED is a conference which gets together some of the most brilliant minds of the world. Someday, when I have the money or am as important, I will attend one of these TED conferences.

I feel in love long back. And we got into the relationship exactly 2 years back. She has been with me through the thick and the thin, and has never given up on me. No tantrums, and has never asked anything in return. She remains my true love.

Happy Birthday Darling! Here’s to many more to come.