Opened up the Times of India today to find myself mentioned on Page 2 (no, not Page 3 .

Interesting topic, though really small article. They refer to an article I wrote in 1995 – Email – The 7 Deadly Sins, part of COMversations – my monthly column in PCQuest from 1993 to 1996.

It is interesting to see how much of this article is still relevant today, which I guess is the reason why they chose to highlight it.

Recently, in a fit of splurgy madness, I went and acquired an Onkyo TX-SR504 AV Receiver (yes Mrinal, that’s what they call an “amplifier” these days and an Onkyo SL-107 subwoofer. This was to replace my stone-age Kenwood audio system that I had acquired sometime in the last century.

I am yet to buy some decent speakers (mainly because I am still recovering from the sticker shock of the purchase), but my old Kenwood speakers are holding remarkably well. In fact, I even managed to get surround sound going and after some tweaking (thanks, Shanu!) for my weird living room acoustics, things sound really good.

The dealer had sent an engineer to wire things up initially, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that he probably knew less than me about what an AV receiver is all about. So I sat down and re-did it. In the process of wiring up the gear, I learned a lot about these new-fangled electronics, connections, optical cables, and what not. I learned not to let any audio connections go to my TV (the aging AKAI 29″ TV, which needs replacing soon, now has a single, fat video cable going into it, that’s all), I figured out the PhD-level Onkyo RC-647M remote control until I could control receiver, TV and Tata-Sky set-top box with that one remote (I am still trying to find the correct code for my DVS DVU-764S DVD player – help, anybody?), etc.

I have been spending the past few days stress testing the setup. A few tiles seem to have fallen off the roof, and I get ugly stares from some of my neighbours (not speak about the wife . I seem to have a problem with the DVD player’s optical link to the AV Receiver, which I shall do some R&D on. But otherwise things are holding out nicely.

In the process, I have also made a few discoveries about music and movies I own. Most of them I could deal with, but this one is one for the books:

In July 2003, I wrote this:

During this time I also received the 5 DVD “Beatles Anthology” set – something I have been dying to own, and finally got thanks to friend Sanjay Ramaswamy. I now own the Beatles Anthology audio CD set (6 CDs!), the book (which is HUGE!) and now the video (11 hours of prime Beatles footage!) – I am happy as a pig in the mud!

Now, I have seen all these DVDs, several times, in fact. While I really enjoyed them, I was sometimes disappointed that large swaths of beatle history were simply not covered on these DVDs, but I resigned myself to the fact that there is only so much you can put on a set of 5 DVDs.

Today, put in the first DVD and watched it beginning to end again. But just as it finished and the titles started coming up (which is when I usually pressed STOP and put in the next of the 5 DVDs), I got distracted into a long chat with my friend Harsha. And after the DVD ended, it didn’t stop – it started again.

Or so I thought.

All of a sudden, I was watching Beatles material that I had not seen before!

It turns out that each of these DVDs has TWO episodes of the Anthology on it! So while I had seen Episodes 1, 3, 5, 7 and the bonus DVD, but I had not seen episodes 2, 4, 6 and 8!!!!!!!!

So in these 4 years that I have owned this DVD set, I had not seen approximately 5 hours out of 11 hours of Beatles footage!!!!

DUH!

I am both horrified and delighted – horrified because for someone like me, who is such a Beatles fan and so deep into technology, this is really an unforgivable goofup, and delighted because I have an entire weekend ahead of me to watch “new” Beatles material.

Now go away, everyone, I have TV to watch!

Whenever I tell people about my paraskevidekatriaphobia, they usually scoff and give knowing smiles to each other, with an implied finger tapping at the temple.

Well, I have good reason for being mortally afraid of Friday the 13th. It began decades ago, involving my friend Jaikishan, a car and a lot of associated factors, and since then I have learned to trust my gutfeel about things like this (big gut, lots of feel .

Usually, I do not go out in daylight on that day. The “daylight” logic came out of the fact that in the days when this happened, I was still in college, and by the time night rolled around, my friends and I were too drunk to care what happened to us. (The “drunk” part ended for me in December 1984, when I resolved to stay away from alcohol because I couldn’t hold it – a promise I have been faithful to all the way till today, and intend to keep).

Anyway, Thursday night I went with Harald to the airport to see Sean off. Lots of people there – and clearly one of them was giving away the bug of death at a discount.

I woke up on Friday the 13th with a raging fever, terrible body ache, a throat on fire and nuclear mushrooms in the head. I wasn’t planning to leave home that day anyway, but *this* was not what I had in mind.

Oh well, I thought, it’s Friday the 13th, it will go away.

Well, it didn’t.

It got worse, then got slightly better. On Tuesday I felt OK enough to go to office, but by 3pm I was ready to drop again. I went back home and have been in bed since then. I hope I didn’t infect half the office!

Today – exactly a week after that miserable Friday – I am much better, which proves the old saying “you can treat a flu two ways – go see a doc, and he will cure it in 7 days, else do nothing and it will go away in a week”.

I am hopelessly backlogged on email, so if you have written to me in the past week and haven’t heard back from me – my apologies. I’ll try and catch up over the next few days.

The weather has been miserable. April showers, high humidity, depressing high temperatures. And add to that load shedding – electricity outage every few hours.

I need a holiday!

If you are an accomplished system/network administrator looking for a challenging position in Mumbai, then we are looking for you.

Details here.

I grew up with this song. My mom made me listen to it. I learned to sing it before I could speak English. When I learned to play the guitar, it was one of the first songs I taught myself to play. It fueled my love for singing. I sang it to my girlfriend when I wooed her.

And as the rain thundered down these past few days, I hear it ringing in my head again.

Listen to the pouring rain
Listen to it pour,
And with every drop of rain
You know I love you more

“Rain” — Jose Feliciano [Listen] [Learn]

Kernel hacker Dave Jones has this to say:

What’s wrong with the word “meeting” ?
Why does everything have to be a ‘summit’ these days? Even if its just a handful of people?

.. and don’t get me started on the absurdity of ‘mini-summit’.

I can only say:

+1!

So you read all about the OpenMoko Project and are dying to learn more?

Here’s your chance:

Sean Moss-Pultz and Harald Welte – the two guys driving the OpenMoko project – will tell interested people all about the project at a special event in Bangalore.

The event, organized by the Bangalore Linux Users group and sponsored by Geodesic Information Systems Limited, happens on April 10th (that’s next Tuesday), at Hotel Chancery, Lavelle Road, Bangalore.

More details can be found here.

If you are interested in attending, please register early (as instructed in the linked mail).

[Update] Man, we are overrun! Please see this message for more details!

Yesterday, Team FOSS.IN met face to face for the first time in 2007, to set in motion plans for this year’s event.

This is the earliest we have ever met (usually, we start around July), but we had decided last year that starting early will ensure that we can consolidate on ideas and make more things happen in a far more comprehensive fashion. Also, many sponsors and potential speakers from abroad have been asking us for details of the event so that they can start planning around it.

The result of the 11am to 7:30pm meeting, attended by almost everyone of the 20-strong team (including some of the non-Bangalore members), was a wide range of suggestions and even some decisions.

I am not yet at liberty to say what we came up with, but I can certainly tell you that the era of the old Linux Bangalore/FOSS.IN format is over.

Based on yesterday’s discussions, we will now be gathering data that will allow us to take decisions on things like the venue, on the scope of things, things we hope to achieve, etc.

One thing is sure – there is no way we can do this all on our own, so you can expect a call for participation real soon now – both for the event and Team FOSS.IN.

Speaking of Team FOSS.IN: I can never say this often enough, but you have no clue what a feeling it is to be sitting in the same room with the team, discussing things, with each member focusing on his or her responsibility area, in turn making presentations, leading the discussion, etc. This is the 9th year that many of us have been working together (1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and now 2007), and beginning the process was like putting on a comfortable pair of old shoes. And over the years, new members have joined in – younger people who in time will carry on the tradition into the future.

We have about 8 months to go for this year’s event. Discussions will start soon on the mailing list, so if you want to be part of this effort and not miss any announcements, make sure you join up now.

Eligibility for talk slots is changing drastically this year as well. The focus of the event has always been to get more people to get involved and contribute to FOSS projects (not advocacy, but real contribution such as coding or writing documentation or testing, etc.). So you have plenty of time to look around, get involved, and be a contributor by the time the event rolls around.

More about all this as things crystallize, but until then – stay tuned.

I am happy to announce that Geodesic has released Mundu IM v4. News can be read all over the place.

Mundu IM v4 is an Instant Messaging client for mobile devices. Initially for PalmOS and Windows Mobile based devices, it will appear on several other platforms as well in the near future.

Using Mundu IM v4, you can (via GPRS, WiFi, CDMA, etc.) access all your IM contacts on Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, AOL and generic Jabber services while on the road – and all at the same time. No PC required!

You can chat with your contacts, send them photos and other stuff from your device, and even (between selected services) do a cross-service chat – you can have a conference with users on different services as if they were all on the same service.

Mundu IM is very special to me. I have been heavily involved with this project since I joined Geodesic, and in fact it was an earlier version of Mundu IM that brought me to Geodesic to begin with!

This version is a complete revamp – with a modern, functional interface, tons of features, massive usability improvements, etc. Those of you who have attended my “Thinking beyond the PC” [pdf] talks will recognize many of the points that I have spoken about.

And we are hell-bent on making Mundu IM the world’s primary Mobile Instant Messenger. There is a free trial period, and once you are convinced, the special promotional price will ensure that you won’t have an excuse not to buy it.

I’d like to say put on record HUGE thanks to the fantastic team at Geodesic that developed Mundu IM, and who put up with my insane pushing and nit-picking, especially over the past few months. You have produced a product that is world class, and you have made us all proud.

Take a bow, Team Geodesic.

Today (technically, yesterday) is International Womens’ Day.

I don’t really want the day to pass by without my pointing to an article I wrote in 1994 (yep, 13 years ago), and it amazes me how relevant it continues to be today, and that’s rather sad.

Women Online