Category Archives: Photos

GSoC Mentor Summit ’09 Roundup

November 1, 2009 By in FOSS, Fun, Gentoo, Google, Mozilla, People, Photos, Plan9, SoC 1 Comment

The grand Summer of Code Mentor Summit of 2009 concluded last week and I had the fantastic opportunity of being able to attend on behalf of Gentoo, Plan 9 and Mozilla. What follows is some indication of how awesome the summit was:

(Photo courtesy of warthog from Etherboot)

I met so many folks I’d only interacted with online so far (the classic nickname-to-face matching), but even better was the opportunity to meet folks powering open source projects from so many diverse backgrounds. I met many of my personal rockstars, and learned about a bunch of open source projects I’d never heard of :)

Also, one of the things that is only possible at an event like the summit was the ability to get a whole bunch of non-linux operating system groups in one room. We had a great discussion, and it resulted in the creation of the “rosetta-os” special interest group. Look for more activity on the common device drivers for non-linux operating systems front soon!

Other sessions worthy of special mention were Open Source Security, Recruiting and Retaining Awesome People, Advanced Trolling (yes, you read that right), and of course the always welcoming Casablanca where I spent most of my time. We discussed everything from our SoC experiences to the Afro Celt Sound System in that room, always full of creative energy and warmth.

After 4 years of participating in the Summer of Code, I am super happy to have finally met the faces behind the program. Every single person I met over the course of last weekend was friendly, intelligent and just generally awesome; that sort of thing doesn’t happen by chance. I feel warm and fuzzy inside to think that I’m actually a part of the revolution that is free and open source software, three cheers to everyone that made it possible!

My first meal!

December 17, 2008 By in Food, Fun, Life, Photos 6 Comments

Today, after roaming the earth for 21 years depending on someone else to cook my food for me, I made a giant leap: I cooked my own meal. Right from buying groceries to cleaning up the dishes afterward :)

Here’s a picture of the modest beginning:

It looks a lot more delicious than it really was: just boiled vegetables with garlic bread – dressed with salt, pepper and a dollop of butter – rather bland for an Indian tongue. But, oh well, it’s a start ;)

Of bears, landslides, powercuts and cancelled flights

August 3, 2008 By in Conferences, Food, FOSS, FOSS.IN, Life, Mozilla, People, Photos, Places Leave a comment

Bear with me for this long post (no pun intended) describing the awesome Mozilla Summit at Whistler. The short version is that it was supercalifragilisticexpialidoceous. Ok, that’s a nonsense word but there’s no way I can put the experience in just one word :-)

Monday
All the interns got up fairly early to catch a shuttle to SFO, and we arrived in Whistler after a pleasant 3 hour flight and 2 hour bus ride from YVR. The scenery was fantastic all along the way, and the hotel was overwhelmingly comfortable. Nothing much happened except meeting some familiar as well as new people at dinner.

Tuesday
First day of the summit started off with keynotes by John Lilly and Mitchell Baker. Mitchell’s analogy of what she thought of Mozilla was especially intriguing. A great way to kick-off the sessions that were to follow over the next few days. The UX talk on the history and future of browsers was especially a good one. Highlight of the day was Gary spotting bears. Apparently, there were a few that were brave enough to jump into the room balconies too.

Wednesday
I spent most of the early part of the day in the Emerald room, attending sessions on Mozilla’s Technology roadmap, Fennec and the Labs concept series. I ended the round of session-attending with Myk’s talk on Snowl, which is another cool labs project (well, all labs projects are cool!).

The big news of the day was the rockslide on the road connecting Vancouver with Whistler. ~350 at the summit suddenly had to change travel plans to accomodate for this… um… natural disaster. The contingency plan involved 8-hour long bus rides on a longer, more scenic route or float planes.

The labs team spent wednesday night hacking at Chris’ room, in preparation for our presentations the next day. Prior experience led us to believe that relying on the WiFi network in the hotel was probably not a wise idea for our demos, so I setup a local weave sever with a few demo accounts and changed the bookmark sharing code to not depend on XMPP to notify the receving user of the share. It was 3 am by the time I got to sleep so I responsibly set an alarm because the weave talk was the first one on the next day.

Thursday
Except the alarm didn’t go off, and I woke up 45 minutes after the scheduled time for the session. My first reaction was along the lines of oops, I screwed up. But as I became fully awake I realized there was no power in the entire hotel and breathed a sigh of relief because all the morning sessions were postponed. So the story was that a laundry truck ran into a transformer and it would take a few hours for power to be restored.

The Labs sessions were moved to a conference room run by our friendly neighbors (The Hilton), and we started off shortly after lunch. The Labs sessions on Weave and Ubiquity went off really well and I think they created a lot of buzz. Especially with ubiquity, some of the demos were mind-blowing!

Though I really wanted to attend the session on HG, I decided to take a nap instead and prepare myself for the grand dinner atop Whistler-Blackcomb (which are, incidentally, codenames for Windows editions). The dinner was a fine end to a fine summit, and I was especially excited to experience snowfall for the first time in my life :-)

My plan to get back home was to catch a Floatplane with the rest of Labs the next morning, in time for the YVR-SFO flight at 3 pm.

Friday
But NO. All the floatplanes had been cancelled due to fog and low tides, so Dan & Chris put me up on the last bus out of Whistler at 11 am, and kindly provided a goodie bag full of food and coffee for my 8 hour bus ride.

The ride itself was not bad at all, the scenery on the way was well worth it. As we approached Vancouver (around 6:30 pm), Melissa Shapiro found me on the bus and informed me that she would try to catch the 8:15 pm flight to SFO (which was the last one out of YVR) and recommended I do the same. The bus didn’t go to the airport, but to the Sheraton at Wall centre instead, so Melissa and I took a cab and rushed to the airport.

We managed to get standby tickets on the plane, and went through US immigration, customs and security check (where I was “selected for random screening”). We did make it to the gate on time, but not on the plane. Technically, I had to re-enter Canada through immigration, but I had a single-entry VISA. Thankfully, Melissa was there to vouch for me, so I was able to make it back in.

Chris had rooms for us at the Sheraton and we headed back. After a great dinner with Bret, Brad, Melissa, Chris and Dan, I tucked in for the night watching Vancouver’s great skyline.

Saturday
Quite an uneventful day, considering the last week, because everything went as planned. All of us had confirmed tickets on the 11 am flight to SFO.

Melissa, Chris and I stopped for a while at Stanley Park on our way to the Aiport, while Dan had to leave early because he had to pick up his bag and passport (which he left at the party on Thursday, there’s another whole story!)

Phew
Well, I’m back in Mountain View now; and only have a week more to go. I’m really going to miss everyone, and the summit just made it a whole lot harder for me to say goodbye. But as Chris Hoffman had said in a brown-bag sometime ago: “This is Hotel Mozilla – you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave!”

Just want to convey a big Thank You to everyone at Mozilla; especially Dan Portillo, Tiffney Mortensen, John Lilly, Julie Deroche, Melissa Shapiro, Maria Emerson, and most of all, Chris Beard, for making my experience at the summit an experience of a lifetime!

(Pictures up on Flickr)

Back from Goa

December 23, 2007 By in College, Fun, Google, Hacks, India, Life, People, Photos, Places, Plan9, Python, SoC Leave a comment

My Goa trip was simply fantabulous. Apart from the fact that Goa is a great place for a vacation, I was accompanied by 7 of my college friends which made the trip one that I will cherish for a long time to come.We left Bangalore by bus on the 15th. The journey was pleasant and the view next morning was absolutely stunning:

The bus dropped us off at the Panaji bus terminus, and we took a shuttle from there to Vasco – where Ameya (our host) lived. After a nice lunch and a nap, we took off to the beach closest to base camp – Bogmalo. The beach was a quiet and clean with relatively few people around, which made it possible for us to play a game of beach football. We returned home after jumping around in a sea for a while.

We hired a couple of Activa’s the next day (this seems to be the norm for transportation in Goa) and reached Old Goa in an hour or so. We visited the really old church, which was really impressive – it also contained the remains of St. Francis Xavier. The archaeological museum next door was fun too, very informative about the history of Goa. We proceeded to the capital city of Panaji next, and after booking tickets for a river cruise aboard the Princess de Goa for the night, had lunch at the QuarterDeck.

After lunch, we visited Donapaula, a popular Jetty, which was unfortunately under renovation or something. The view was great though, and we enjoyed a nice little ride on the water scooter. After hanging out in Cafe Coffee Day for a while (These places are *everywhere*, I think they’re trying to become the Indian Starbucks :) ) we reached the Panaji river coast to board the Princess de Goa. These river cruises seem to be a popular attraction, they basically consist of a few dance shows, a dance floor and an amazing view. We got to see the (in?)famous floating casino on the way too.

My Summer of Code mentor, Matt Lawless, happened to be in Goa too, so we scheduled lunch for the next day. We met at the Calangute post office (which was somewhat close to Matt’s home) and proceeded to the Calangute beach after lunch. My friends, meanwhile, reached the Baga beach, which was just next door to the Calangute beach (the two most famous beaches in Goa). We splashed around in the water for a while, joined by Matt, and then a second lunch :)

Matt decided to leave, and we went on to try some of the water sports at the beach. We went for a banana ride, a water scooter trip, but the one that took the cake was the parasailing. Nothing like a gentle ride in the sky to rejuvenate you. Flying over water with the beach behind you and the sunset in front is an experience I can’t put in words :)

The third and last day began with a long ride to south Goa, where we first visited the Benauli beach. This beach was beautiful, the sand was different than the others, and the most fun part was when I was buried by the others:

The rest of the day was spent at GoaKart, which was apparently a national Karting track. Parasailing was great, but karting was really the most exhilarating, especially because we raced and went for 4 rounds :D

Flickr didn’t let me upload more than 100MB of photos at once, so I moved to Picasa Web Albums instead. I wrote a small script: backr.py that uses James Clarke’s flickr.py to back up all my photos and uploaded them to Picasa Web, which allows me to create as many albums as I want (unlike Flickr).

So, I guess that’s a few more items off my “list of things to do before I die”!

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.