Am being kidnapped by wife to some interiors exhibition at the Kanteerva Stadium. Please send help!

In the meanwhile, have fixed the CSS error on this site that had some of you climbing walls. And I also replaced the image at the top with a GIF (yes, I know it is evil – let’s see Unisys try to get me to pay!) to placate those lost souls using IE 5.0 or earlier (guys, you *really* should consider coming over to this side of the century line!)

Later

Well, that was interesting. The exhibition shuts at 8pm, and at 7:15 we were still looking for the entrance to the stadium! Thanks to the Bangalore Traffic Police turning *yet* another road into a one-way street, we ran around in circles before we finally found a way in.

The exhibition was fairly interesting, though perspectives may differ. 80% of it seemed to have been about “decorations” – which turned out to be outrageously garish “paintings” and “sculptures” that only a blind man would buy with any degree of comfort. If I would have to live in a house that had something like that hanging in there, I’d be a basket case!

However, some of the exhibits were really nice. In the 45 minutes that we had to traverse it, we saw a good many things we will eventually want to have in our house (once we start and finish building it, that is). Saw somenice kitchens and some nice bedroom furniture, and some of those “old world” desks and furniture that I am especially fond of (and can’t afford).

There were also some nice things there that I might want to pick up immediately – a beanbag, a foldable foam-only bed for the guestroom, and an automatic garage door. The last one is something I am going to run past my present landlord.

Kept my mental calculator running as Shubha, Anjali and I ticked off things we would like, and arrived at the hefty sum of Rs.650,000. Hmmm…..

A while back, I had mentioned that a lot of people ask me for the archives of my old PCQuest column, COMversations.

Over the past few days, I have ressurected most of them, and you can now find then in their own place of honour under Writings. Hope you enjoy them, but please remember that they are from the last century, so don’t write to me about “how out of sync” I am.

(sigh)

That was a different me. I was younger, had more fire in me, and actually had the time to write about technical stuff that I could play around with. Today, I still play around with technology when I can, but the time I have to “play” is way below acceptable standards.

I was casually browsing through a mailing list I am on, when I stumbled across one of those obnoxious anti-Linux-on-the-desktop notes that pop up every now and then.

I couldn’t help myself, and the result was this article.

Some people (you know who you are) may argue that I am a geek (hell YES, and proud of it!) and that is why I can do what I do.

For these people, I have only this to say:

Happy Software Assurance Day!

If you haven’t understood this yet, you are either very rich, or a pirate.

The fact is – Linux on the desktop is as easy to work with as any other operating system (including Windows). It is just a question of setting it up. Which is easy enough if you know how, and even easier if you do not (which applies to the vast multitude of Windows users as well) – just ask someone set it up for you.

Whatever it may be – don’t knock it until you try it. The fact that millions of us do it proves it can be done.

I have been driving (and been driven by) a number of communities over the past decade.

And one thing that continues to amaze me is the effort it takes to get people to participate in any meaningful fashion.

When I ran my BBS, I was constantly trying to make people stop downloading files, and getting them to start messaging in the forums.

Today, with the Internet becoming the world’s biggest BBS, and with countless mailing lists, web forums and other modes of amss communication, I find that just about everyone likes to stay in “lurk” mode – i.e. read-only.

Then, when a community dies for lack of participation, they look for all sorts of reasons.

Excuses there can be plenty, but there can be only one truth:

If you don’t participate, the community dies.

The thing that applies to mailing lists also applies to things like User Group meetings and other community related activities. Most people are just happy to take what is offered, but if you ask them to give (in the form of participation), you are met with stone-walled silence.

These days, it is even becoming increasingly difficult to make people attend community meetings! Those ever-enthu students “grow up” to become “busy adults” and just don’t find it important enough to be part of the community.

I call such people hypocrites, because they will be there to partake in the action, but they won’t make the action happen.

The worst kind is the leech. Such people proclaim themselves part of a community, but won’t even read/attend, forget about post/present! For example, someone will call himself part of the Linux community, but will neither use nor recommend the use of Linux, knows basically nothing about it, and only shows up at big events, when he wants to be treated as a “senior member”.

Another kind is the “pseudo gurus” – these are guys who say “but I know all this stuff, it is so boring to participate”. If these guys are so good, why aren’t they on the other side of the microphone, teaching others?

Simple – because they just don’t care. As long as they can take, they are there. If they are asked to give (even in terms of their presence,), they are history.

Bah!

Let me tell you guys (yes, usually guys, rarely girls) something – you are pathetic, and the less we see/hear of you guys, the better.

What we need in any community is people who actively participate, who make the time to help out in the growth of the community, and who care.

What we do not need is people who turn the whole community concept into a joke.

For me, it is a major rush to attend a community meeting or participate in a mailing list, and seeing faces (or reading poster’s names) that I *know* are genuinely busy people, but who care enough to pitch in with their presence and participation, encouraging others to do the same. Seeing them encourages *me* to do more, because for me, there is no bigger joy than working as part of a team that works well together.

OK, a quick note to say that I am alive, that EPLAWS went extremely well, that the kittens are growing and have opened their eyes and that I am busy with tons of stuff, and have not been able to update the diary with any regularity.

PC at home died with a bad hard disk – that was the last time I used a Seagate IDE drive of *any* capacity.

Would love to stay and chat, but gotta go….

I am busy as hell with getting ready for the Exocore Professional Linux Administrator Workshop that starts on the 18th.

We have been in office every night till around 5 a.m., and back to work by lunchtime, working on various EPLAWS related things.

Lots of client related work as well.

Was pleased to see that Tally finally released their Linux port of their package. This is going to make a major difference, and I am glad that we are involved.

Yahoogroups is heading for a publicity nightmare, as dozens of moderators I know (me included) are getting ready to make a public statement about the issues that have plagued Yahoogroups for close to a year now. The groups have in effect become unusable, with less than 50% of subscribers actually receiving mail from their lists or being able to post to them.

More on this once it hits Slashdot and other places.

The final piece of news comes to you from the HoneyTheCat department – our promiscuous feline got pregnant again, and two nights ago delivered four little kittens in Shubha’s sari shelf. Mother and kittens are fine – three orange ones and one black one. Genders to be determined.

“Ungle” Judo was less than thrilled.

A while back, I had a heated discussion with someone who referred to my online diary as a “weblog” or “‘blog”.

I was most offended – the person clearly also lumped Slashdot and Beyond 2000 under “educational news sites” because both appear on the web and publish news.

A few minutes back, someone sent me a link that I *think* sums it up nicely. So please give this a good read.

So ya, thought ya, could crash out tonight…..

Hah!

Spent the whole day at home yesterday, but by evening, old friend Harsha lured me out of my lair. Picked me up in the evening, and we headed for the Windsor pub for a man-to-man chat, with me at the receiving end.

We reached there by 7pm, to an amazing sight – on a saturday evening, the Winsor Pub was *empty*.

IAC, we settled in a corner, and started vaccuuming each other’s minds. A while later looked up, to see the pub *crammed* to capacity!

We continued chatting, talking about business, lost opportunities, stuff to do in the future, comparing business strategies, swapping tales from the trenches. Before we knew it, it was almost 10pm – and we had ingested an unholy amount of food and drink (coke and mineral water!), and were beginning to slow down.

Suddenly the pub door opened, and in walked Samyeer Metrani, wife, kid, cousins, friends, their wives/SOHs…. and the place was *full*.

Since we were leaving anyway, we gave up our table to them – great fun to see 8 of them crammed around a single small table!

Paid our bill and almost made our escape when the door opened again and in walked Khader. He looked around, and his face grew long. Apparently, Shanu and Sony were also on their way. And no place!

We scooted from there, and headed for the Richie Rich icecream parlour, where we talked some more, and gorged on “Large Elvis” and “Mango with icecream”. Drool.

Got home and realised that I had missed 50% of one of the most important episodes of Star Trek Voyager – Scorpion 1, the one that leads to the introduction of 7of9!!!!!! Waaaaahhhhh!!! Will have to see both this episode and the concluding part today.

Woah! I am bushed! Am staying at home and relaxing today!

Last night, Shubha and I went to Allen and Sandhya Mendonca’s anniversary bash – way out Whitefield side. This was a bash with a difference – BYOLM (Bring Your Own Live Music)!

Everyone was encouraged to bring their musical instruments and gear and show up, prepared to do battle.

So I packed assorted gear (two guitars, a 100W RMS amp, mixer, echo unit, mike and stand, bunches of cables, guitar stands) into the 500 litre booth of my car, and we headed off.

The trip to the place took us more than 1.5 hours, thanks to the lovely Bangalore traffic. IAC, we reached there by 7:30pm, along with lots of rain (the party was open-air . Set up equipment quickly, and we were up and running by 8pm.

More guests trickled in, and the next time I looked around, we were 6 guitarists, several keyboard players, innumerable singers, stacks of equipment.

And we played. To be precise, we played from 8pm to around 2:30am – without a break (we used to spell each other to get some food and drink in, but otherwise no breaks).

Needless to say, by 2:30am, I was *dead*, my hands were falling off my arms, my feet were aching and my back was killing me.

The drive back took far less time, thanks to empty roads. I was in bed by 3:15pm.

What a night!

Last Friday gave a talk at the IPv6 Forum’s 6ig, which went off quite well. Announced the BLUG’s new IPv6 Deployment Effort, which should start bearing results in July.

I have been asked to speak at several other events in July, but I think it is only fair that I concentrate on EPLAWS for now.

Saturday was fun. Nikhil Datta (aka “El Cid”) flew in from Hyderabad on a nostalgia trip (triggered by seeing all the photos of IT.COM ’99).

Saturday’s BLUG meet went off well, with interesting stuff being discussed and shown. Lots of “old” faces there, including Mrinal, Kalyan, Naim Kazi, Nikhil, (the usually absconding) Shanu and Sony. And of course Jessie, without whom *nothing* happens (or works). It was almost like old times.

Post BLUG-meet, the Exocore gang (including honorary members Nikhil, Kalyan and Mrinal, and guest Kiran) headed for Windsor Pub, where we were given a display of utter favouritism (in our favour , when the owner saw us walk into the completely overcrowded pub, and quickly freeing up a reserved table for us, before ensuring that the pride-of-place center-table was cleared for our benefit in a short while. I *love* it when someone makes gestures like that, and it explains in part why we go there so often (the other parts being, of course, the excellent food and atmosphere). Vaibhav eventually couldnt make it because no auto-rikshaw was willing to take him to Vasanthnagar.

Nikhil crashed the night over at my place before returning to Hyderabad, because he was keen on getting back to work (I’d like to tell you where he works, but his company shredded the nameplate, amongst other things….

But it was good to have El Cid around, though it was sad to see him going so corporate (he internalizes core competencies in a strategic manner to achieve optimum synergy) that he only uses Linux to play MP3s, and still uses Netscape 4.x instead of Galeon or Mozilla.

That’s one techie gone to seed…

Today is the Football Worldcup Final, Germany v/s some also-ran South American team. Naturally, things being as they are, our cable guy isn’t showing the Worldcup, so I have a choice of going to the office and seeing it there, or catching a re-run on some channel later. Since the result is a foregone conclusion anyway, I’ll think I will stay at home.

Update: I am glad I stayed at home. Turns out that our cable guy *is* showing the Worldcup (in fact has always been – my TV wasn’t tuned!), and Shanu warned us just in time. So I get to see the match at 29″ and at home. Catch you guys later!

Later: Bah. Gloom. While many people may have had no reason to cheer for either side, I *did* have a reason to cheer for Germany. Sad that they now have to wait another four years to get back the place they deserve.