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An idea in your head.

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

One thought can change it all. Just one idea in your head. It’s all about how are your ideas. To get context about what I am talking about, let me get into a real event first. For the major part of my life I had this idea in my mind that I am not good looking. When I was child I believed this, I had this idea in mind. I don’t remember where it came from but it was there. It was not that true. I was decent looking. But I believed all this time that I am poor looking. This idea ruined many things in me. I started believing this so strong that I was scared of looking at mirror. I didn’t look at mirror for many years. Sometimes I was surprised when I saw my pictures and find myself good looking, but the other idea in my mind was so strong that it never believed this thing. It was just one idea but it ruined so many things in my childhood.

So, just one good or bad idea in your mind can change hell lot of things. It can change totally how you think or even how you look. You can find such examples in your daily life. Whenever something goes missing in home we always suspect the home servant. It’s an idea in your mind and it changes so many things in your mind. The moment you get this idea in your mind all activities of servant start looking suspicious. And suddenly when you find your thing back you realize how wrong you were. It’s the power of idea in your mind.

I was playing with children in my sister’s play school and it was interesting to see such little children already having ideas about themselves in their mind. They are certainly created by their parents and the environment around them. Some body is shy, somebody is playful, somebody is naughty. At this point we can put in some ideas in their head which can shape them for future. This certainly needs to be taken care about. Colleges and schools should focus on putting in ideas in child’s head instead of putting loads of information. While a few people can generate ideas in their head most of people can’t. And it’s very easy to generate negative idea in your mind rather than generating a positive idea. Because positive ideas require lots of positive energy. And we are surrounded by negative energy around us. Picking up negative ideas is easy, there is so much negative energy around us we can pick it easily. If you are good at cricket in your childhood, most people around says you are not. And this negative energy brings negative idea in your head. And a very few people at that stage get away from this negative energy and generate a positive idea about themselves.

Generating positive ideas is very important. We need to learn this art of generating positive ideas ourselves. If you believe that you are good at something, you have to retain this idea in your mind , somewhere and it will do the trick. Just keep positive ideas in your mind about yourself and you are done.

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Is money that good?

Monday, August 9th, 2010

After college, we are no more students. We are now supposed to work and earn money. This is and idea transferred from one generation to another. We have this great social setting. Either you study or you earn money. There is no other situation. I suddenly wondered. And surprisingly enough I too had this idea in my mind until I thought the other way last night. I was actually conditioned by society.

We are conditioned with the thought that If you don’t earn money you are not a good person. Earning money is considered as the top criteria for a human to be good. But its totally other way around. For a person to earn money he needs to follow some tactics, some tricks, some rules, do something unwanted, undesired, everything that is not a basic human instinct. You have to be clever enough to earn money. So that means if you are earning good money you certainly are doing something quiet inhuman. And the person who is unable to earn money is actually a good person without all these traits. So actually he is the good person. I am not saying that every person who doesn’t earn money is a good person. But a person who is capable enough to earn but still unable to, is most likely to be a good person. It’s very clear. Look at two doctors, both have same degrees and both have equal knowledge yet one earns lots of money and other doesn’t earn that much. So what’s the reason? The first one is clever enough and other one is not. And cleverness is not a good human trait.

Social structure makes this condition even worst. They make the other person believe that he is not good person because he doesn’t earn good money. And people around also believe this. I think a person who can’t earn money is simply more human yet. I have an uncle. And he is good at so many things but not earning money. He is full of ideas, he writes poem, he listens to songs, fond of gardening, he is good looking, he is smart. There are very few person around us who are that good. Seriously. But the only thing is he doesn’t like to earn money. This is simple. A person with such thoughts and ideas, can’t be clever enough to do common jobs and work. It is that simple yet so complicated. For the most part of my life I heard bad things about him just because he doesn’t earn enough. I know there are few bad things about him but that’s natural. There are many people around me who earn hell lot of money yet with sucking personality, no ideas, no thoughts, no interests, nothing. And yet they are considered very good in society. If you want to earn money it’s fine, but if you don’t really want to that should also be very fine.

I know its all about conditioning. We are conditioned to think like that, either you work or you study. If you do any third thing you are considered bad in society. And society is a an old concept. It was required in ancient times when there were many dangers in living alone. Now there are none. Societies should be abandoned. There is no need for them now. Humans can live without them now. Its time for concept of society to expire. There should be interests groups not societies. Why I need to be in a society where I don’t want to? And because of that there are all these problems.

The most disappointing part of all this is that not only the previous generation but also this generation think like this. I am fine with the previous generation thinking like this, but come on, I expect this generation to think the other way. We have everything require to think like that but yet we don’t. Human character and traits should be the highest priority for judging anyone and yourself. I know many people who are great human being but yet live in this idea that they are not good just because they can’t do few things they are supposed to do good like, taking an interview or writing some exam. And why this thing still exists? Why instead of respecting people with ideas and thoughts we are respecting people with money ? Because, at some point of time we all go through this. Some one is poor, someone is not good at writing exams or facing interview, feels bad, changes himself and than become like everyone else. So when his time comes, he behave same way with someone yet to become inhuman. Time to rethink.

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Google and Madhushala

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

क्या करूँ  की तुमको खुश कर दूं,
तुम ने बन क रक्त मुझको जीवन
दिया इतना सरल, इतना सौम्य
कोई और नही बस तुम हो!
जीवन क हर पहलू को तुमने छु आ,
कर दिया एक सपना साकार और
बदल दिया इस दुनिया को हर
किसी को दिया आगे बढ़ने का
मौका जितना कोई सोच न सके
उससे बढ़ के कर दिखाया
हर खोज को कर दिया आसान,
कड़ीयो से जुड़े इस मायाजाल
को कर   दिया सुलभ सब के
गूगल तुम हो धन्य तुमको शत
शत नमन करती मेरे मन की मधुशाला

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Story of Linux Users Group Bikaner

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Recently I was asked if I can write about Linux Users Group Bikaner, I took this opportunity to tell our story. I certainly got nostalgic while writing this. Here’s the mail I posted on mailing list.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: shreekant bohra
Date: Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 9:39 PM
Subject: Story of linux users group bikaner

Hi FOSS Lovers,

Let me start by introducing myself, I am Shree Kant Bohra, final year IT student at Engineering College Bikaner. The purpose of this email is to share our experience with establishing a Linux Users Group here in Bikaner and moving it forward.

So the story goes like this, initially it was three of us, me, Anirudh and Manu Dixit. We were fascinated by cool world of Open Source in early year of engineering. I never used linux personally before I heard about it and decided to give it a try on my compaq laptop, I picked up fedora 7( which was latest at that time) , tried installing it, after trying for almost 4 days, ~100 times. I found that this was some bug with fedora 7 and I can’t install it without working out. So first step failed. Still we loved open source. In our college no one gave damn shit to linux , there were no linux labs. and no one used them for any task other than chattring.

After lots of hustle, we managed to get our college labs opened during nights to work in as we had no internet connection at hostel(we didnt have campus hostel either) so we used to freak out in nights at college labs. Keep searching, doing all random stuff, participating in competitions, gradually people started noticing us, many students turned up for labs, the movement had started. But we were not aware of it, we too were struggling finding our way. But it was a good thing. Then comes the second year, the most of the time we were busy doing random works, participating in techfests. And I must say FOSS kriti played a major role in our revolution , we attended FOSS kriti and it changed everything. I kinda was fascianted with geeks out there and cool things they displayed, listening to Arun was amazing. I got back from IIT Kanpur, full of energy. Such events play a key role in turning students to FOSS, even if 5 students turn to foss from one event, I think thats huge. But we always forget that how we ourself started, its our duty to give back. So I am a big supporter of FOSS events and talks. That year we applied to GSoC , didnt get selected. But learnt lessons of life time. Summer of Code is the best way to learn the FOSS philosophy, whether you get selected or not, you are always a winner.

Then came third year of engineering. The movement roared, more people joined us, the scenario changed completely People started talking about FOSS and Linux. More learning, more win. We didnt realize that many students around were inspired by us. While earlier no one used to go to attend techfests, 100s, literally, students attended techfests outside college. And revolution started. Presently its getting into culture here to attend techfests. And I think thats the most important thing, to get things into culture. Once you do that, you win it. The main reason for the success of institutions like IIT and IIM is that they have good things in their culture and environment. Three of us applied of gsoc, me , anirudh and abhinav, all of us got selected and hence the final kick to the FOSS movement, as big money and name always attracts junta. Linux is all there in labs now, we have Linux labs here now.

Finally, last year, we decided to have a FOSS event parallel to college techfest. We got the idea, but never happened to work upon it seriously.15 days before the fest we decided we want to do it. and guess what ? we saw a large team waiting to contribute to the event, we did exhaustive planning, we used google docs for shared planning, had meetups and were surprised to see so many students interested in FOSS. We made different teams,kudos to our design team, we created hack labs, with all ambience of a hackers den(:P), lightings,posters,banners. And yeah, mid night hackfests. No one could ever imagine that we can do that. As we never have events in our college after 5pm, being in outer area from city, it was a challenge, we fought to the odds, what a FOSS event without hackest! And to our more surprise, huge junta turned up for mid night hackfests, and we had to limit them. Imagine a scenario, while 2 years back we were three of us sitting in labs in midnight, now it was ~100 people! and all with a cause. I could get emotional :P heh. We ignited the spark and its now jungle fire. Rome was not built in a day and I know neither we can do that now.

After effect of the event, we established Linux Users group bikaner! and got resources for its website, made up agenda, we had lots of install fest in hostels, I can say ~60% of college now know what Linux is and have heard about FOSS. I cant expect everyone to go and code or to use Linux as their preferred distro, but now they have the choice. No one told us about Linux and FOSS when we were them but we had a dream that we want to change this, we did it.

Present activity- I will say our lug is naive lug, but right now there are almost ~40 active linux users who use linux as their first OS. And many other uses Linux more often. More importantly people have choice now, the freedom to choose, our lug provides active support to anyone interested in FOSS and linux. We do meetups, talk about latest stuff, encourage students to get involved in some project. Personally what I would like to see is an active community of developers coming out from LUGB, and it will take some time. may be 1 more year. The thing that shows that our lug is active is number of people pinging me all the time with some cool problems with linux( n00bs they are, I love them all ) People are new to mailing lists, irc and it will take some time to pick the idea.

I believe that events and fests are very important part of any foss movement or lug, we are planning more of them.I am happy that the second generation  is picking up and standing tall. Our lug is in safe hands. The continuation of culture is in place and we have put FOSS in culture here.

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to share it with all, I am happy to share our story. May it inspire others! Ameen

Cheers

–
Shree Kant Bohra
Let the Source be open
www.geekybuddha.org
GPG Key Fingerprint – D2E1 A688 FC61 C3F5 DFE5  F972 4E7F 1243 6E23 5F22

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The age of Sahana

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Being a part of Sahana FOSS community since last year. I have learned a lot. Its always wonderful to be a part of FOSS community. Since last summer of code, I worked upon another module for Sahana , worked on some feature enhancement for Haiti deployment and is thinking about a couple of new ideas to work upon. It was very smooth to get into Sahana community. Everyone around is so friendly. The documentation is fair enough. But since the core of Sahana was built 5 years back, it certainly requires to adopt the newer methodology. I havent touched the core of Sahana, I worked on modules and learned the framework. Good thing about sahana is the community people have lots of knowledge and expertise of Disaster Management. Sahana had been deployed in number of disasters and all the experience from these deployments makes Sahana developers understand disaster management much better and hence they can make much better software.

Since Sahana was designed with technologies and methodologies which are not advance enough for current world, it is now becoming difficult for developing upon it. Lots of discussion happened over porting Sahana to some well known frameworks such as Zend, Drupal etc but no decision could be taken. This may be a part of foss development, but certainly not a part of a healthy foss development. Its worthless to blame anyone.

I know the expertise of Sahana developers will not be wasted. We have another project under Sahana Community going along nicely, thats written in python and is led by Fran. I am avoiding giving names to these projects since this is another big subject of discussion inside the community. And the kind of idea being proposed for this years gsoc are promising, which tells that we have a great future ahead.

Still I wish I were good enough to lead the PHP development to revive( ameen). Its not just about code and skills but much more. My journey so far is amazing. I think I could have learnt a lot, but its never less.  I am now in a dilema to where to move forward, to jump into python and contribute to python project ? or wait for some decision by PMC board to take a decision on the fate of PHP. My only regret is that someone need to lead and I could be :( Some day!

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Keep thinking

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Here comes a much awaited blog post. Its been so long since i last posted here, though i post a lot on twitter but a blog post is a blog post. Apologies. Lets now discuss about whats happening around and what i am up to? Short answer: Lots of things happening and I am into lots of things. Long answers, these things varying from deep inside to all outside. At the professional front, if i havent told yet, its my 8th semester of engineering that I just entered. Last semester was wonderfully awesome, from FOSS GN 09 , to Linux Users Group Bikaner to FOSS.in Bangalore , awesomeness. I met Aanat narayan, Fran Boon, Ajay Kumar, Praneeth, Sharath, Pradeepto, Sankarshan, Atul Chitnis, all awesome FOSS people. Life is all good. Living FOSS to the fullest. Learnt one thing, life is about living it your own way and be proud of it. If you get excited everyday by your work, you are doing most amazing thing that you could do. Be happy about that.

Attended lots of talks, sessions, attended hackfests, learnt a lot, there was one thing that was common about all, they give you feeling that how great is the power of thinking. How you think is what remains with you forever, so never ever stop thinking, keeping bugging ideas, explore others, explore yourself, do whatever you can do to keep thinking. This a lesson learnt. I am living it. Bye for now.

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Agenda of this blog unleashed!

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

This is the last off topic post of this blog, I want to share my thoughts about what this blog is for. This blog is to share my daily thoughts about various FOSS projects or FOSS related events occur in my life. My encounter with semantic web, my projects and my GRE( yes right :P ) other than this this blog may also sometimes contain advices and suggestions (:O), specially about the topics people keep asking me like gsoc, gomcha, fedora etc I will soon be documenting my thoughts here so that I can direct people to here( yay!) All in all this blog is all about things and people who  fascinates me daily. Happy reading!

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