Awesomeness!

There have been a lot of people complaining about the Fedora community (Not planning to name any) and the way it works. I am not going to say that everything they say is false or made up, its their opinion and everyone should have one.  Well from my opinion the Fedora community is just plain Awehellovcarfun (Yes I made a new word just to prove my point [Awesome + helping + loving + caring + fun]) Its like a fun family where there are all kinds of people, sure there might be some weird people around, but thats what a family is made up of.

I have been around since around the release of Fedora 11. That was my first interaction with the #fedora IRC channel, I came around for some help, and my problem was solved in a few minutes (odd nvidia configuration on an external screen) and the trip from there has been fun filled. With all the awesome people being so helpful. To recall a few names there have been thomasj, nirik, DiscordianUK in #fedora, mmcgrath, nirik, jds2001 in #fedora-admin, stickster, jsmith, mchua, rbergeon in #fedora-mktg, mizmo, ricky, sijis in #fedora-websites and loads & loads of people in #fedora-social (sorry if I haven’t named you, I have a really bad memory)

I recall a time when I was really low and I came into #fedora-social whining about how bad and unfair life was, but in no time I had people making me smile, esp Sonar_Gal who has always been like a friend and mother to me and all the other people in #fedora-social including (but not limited to) EvilBob, dcr226, nirik, thomasj, mock, DiscordianUK, FranciscoD, rrix (well I could go on and on)

You could wander into any #fedora{,-*} channel or mailing list and ask the stupidest question and you will have people answer you (or atleast show you the right direction) And again I could on and on about the awesomeness of the community and its members, but I not gonna take anymore of your time. Experience it to know it.

P.S. Hats off to all the people in every channel doing the awesome work, and esp Paul Frields (the last FPL) and Jared Smith (the current FPL) for the awesome distro.

GSoC – What goes around comes around

This past week my mentor Juan posted about our GSoC project (http://k3rnel.net/2011/04/27/gsoc-fedora-events-system-2/) and Paul Frields came up with an idea to integrate the events system into drupal instead of writing a new webapp from the ground up, and after a lot of discussion with my mentor we agreed to use Drupal (and Fedora Insight) as a platform to develop the new Fedora Events System. Since we were also planning on a more generic system so that it can be used by everyone, this change wont affect it instead it would make it better since people could integrate it into their websites [Quite a few people use drupal for their websites] (or just use drupal for the events part).

So this past week I worked on the basic UX and UI Diagrams for the users. They are still under work and would slowly expand.

UI Diagram :

UX Diagram:

Accepted into GSoC

I have been accepted into GSoC and will be working on Fedora Events System. Fedora Events System is a webapp designed to move away from the wiki-style event management to a solid webapp, it will do everything the wiki did so far and better. My mentor Juan “Nushio” Rodriguez who welcomed me with open arms will help me get this done during the summer.

P.S. Thank you Ryan Rix  who has always been an awesome friend and mentor.

Komedia – What would you like to see in it

So now that I am starting to add support for multiple comics I am starting to wonder what comics are read by people and what feature would you like to see in a comic reader. I will try and add as many comics as possible and also look at the feature requests.

Komedia – First release

Komedia is a Comic(currently xkcd only) reader written in python and Qt. It is very basic at the moment. It downloads the images and alt text and stores them in ~/.komedia. It uses webkit to render the images. I am working on adding support for more comics. You can get the source from http://github.com/hiemanshu/komedia. If you want to report bugs or request for features contact me via email mail at theindiangeek dot in. If you have a bugfix or feature you want me to add, patches and pull requests are welcome.

GNUnify – Day 0 to Day +1

GNUnify is an event hosted by the Pune LUG at SICSR, Pune (Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research). Its usually a 2 day event and this time it was on the 11th and 12th Feb.

Day 0
I reached Pune late in the evening, just in time for dinner. After getting acquainted with Suchakra (whose place I was crashing at), we went out for dinner and had a nice long talk about the things we do and things we like. After getting back home, I started working on komedia (an XKCD[working on adding more comics] reader written in PyQt.)

Day 1
We reached the venue just in time for the first talk, but it turns out that the Fedora Track schedule was mixed up from last years, and the people who were supposed to take the talks weren’t at the venue. So me and Neependra went ahead and completed the first two talks according to the schedule which was “How to contribute to Fedora” and “Virtualization on Fedora” The talks went pretty well even though we weren’t really prepared. We had a nice feedback from the people(mostly students) and expect at least a few to make the switch from user to contributor.  We then had a GNOME 3 Preview by Tanushri and Setting up Linux Kernel Debugging Environment by Neependra. Both the talks were really informative and got to learn a lot of new stuff. We then got the schedule for the next day changed and I volunteered to take the RPM Packaging session because Rahul wasn’t well and couldn’t attend GNUnify. I had two talks the next day, one was Python + PyQt = ❤ and the RPM Packaging Session. I wasn’t prepared for both, and had to spend some time preparing for it. For the PyQt talk I decided to rewrite pyqrdesktop that suchakra had written. It is gui for qrencode (generates Qr Codes, Android Market anyone? ).
Later that day there was a dinner party organized for the Speakers by Mozilla which was pool side had a really nice ambiance and a lot of new faces.  Everything was great, except the food (This is something the team really needs to work on) Once the party ended we were back, and I was working on pyqrencode and some more of komedia before heading to sleep.

Day 1
Since our talks were starting at 10am, we had to reach the venue early and finish up the preparations for our talks. Suchakra was talking first and he going to talk about PyGTK and pretty much the same app. His talk was nice, though being a morning talk  (and having an android session running in another room) the audience was low, but everyone in the room was genuinely interested which was a really nice thing. Once Suchakra was done I went on to talk about PyQt. It was again a low but interested audience. Suchakra then had a talk “Tux under the hood” which was about Linux on Embedded devices. This was something I was really keen on attending because I have slowly started in this direction. I must admit here Suchakra is a great speaker, has everything in his mind and really knows his stuff well. After the talk was a quick lunch and them my RPM Packaging session.
I had a nice full audience in the lab where the packaging session was being held. The session went on for about two hours and I showed people how to write a spec file, create a FAS account, use koji, and a few basic things people need to know while packaging any given software. Neependra was around for the first half of the session and helped me with managing all the students. With a huge audience it gets tough to help each and every person. Once the session was done I met up with suchakra and a few of the PLUG people and we all had a nice little talk. I had to leave the venue slightly early was I had to meet with an old school friend. The two days had been really tiring and I ended up falling sick the next day.

Day +1
I woke up early (I had slept really early) and we started the day with playing Counter Strike for a few hours. Suchakra then took me to his college mess for lunch, and I walked around the college campus, which was huge and nice. Back home, we were off to sleep again (for some reason I can only sleep well when I am unwell). While Suchakra was working on some LoveCode (I have no idea what it is, or what it does) I had an idea of writing a GUI for cowsay with uploading facilities so people could upload a cowsay output as a “Thought of the day by Mr. Cow Say” (or something on the similar lines) to facebook/twitter. (Still being worked on, will put up all the code on github once I am done with it). The next day I was to leave back home, but not before I saw Suchakra’s Lab.

Back home safely and still recovering from the illness as of now, also add the college stuff that I have to do after missing the college for almost a week.

Finally made the move

After having a lot of problems with a self hosted blog and a few other personal issues. I have finally made the move to wordpress.com and hoping it stays this way.