Wow, been over a month since I last updated the blog. Somehow I just keep forgetting that I have one to update, even if there’s so much to tell!

FOSS.IN was organized to be held Nov 24th - 26th, and it was a resounding success. I wasn’t able to attend it (because of my final semester examinations) but from what I hear it was pretty good.

Christian got this nice idea of mapping PHP-GTK users on a map. The idea was soon extended to PEAR too and here’s the result. Talking of PHP-GTK, it seems that interest in the project has really grown. The number of people on the #php-gtk channel on Freenode now touched a double-digit number, and we now have our very own community site. PHP-GTK 2 even has a framework called Callicore for you to work with!

Linkblogs are turning out to be popular. Or as Wikipedia calls it, a Linklog. Considering I don’t maintain bookmarks (hell, I don’t even have digg account yet!); I don’t think I’ll maintain one, atleast in the near future.

The GNU Parted developer mailing list had some interesting discussions in the recent past. We also moved to using Git for version control, and it’s really fun to use! Debarshi Ray, a student from NIT Hamirpur (from what I could gather; they even have their own GLUG) made some useful contributions and earned himself commit rights. The project finally has enough developers to give it some momentum and all focus is on 2.0; codenamed “Edge”. I managed to get Trac up and running on Alioth so that we could have a Wiki, and it was simply hell. I’m still waiting for the Alioth admins to come and revoke my shell account!

And now, for the eternal question. Is Flash evil? So it’s not an open standard and all, but I was very impressed with what Flex can do. As a web developer I think it’s a really promising platform for you to be building your web applications in. (Students: Have a look at Adobe India’s developer olympiad if you’re interested in Flex). If you’re a FOSS fanatic, have a look at OpenLaszlo; it’s pretty amazing too. Especially the fact that they’re working on a pure Javascript output in addition to traditional flash under “Project Legals”.

Stuart Herbert, my mentor during this years Summer of Code; announced his resignation to the Gentoo Council on 29th November. It was sad to see him go; but ah well. My new mentor for the Gentoo recruitment process is spb (also known as Stephen Bennett). It’s nice to work with him, and I’ve made it past the ebuild quiz. Got to get cracking on the end quiz, which isn’t as easy as the first one!

I’m right now in the beautiful campus of IIT Kanpur. I’ve come here to attend a 3-day workshop on algorithms for data streams; and I must say that 2 days into the workshop, I’ve already picked up so much. I’m lucky to be amongst the Crème de la Crème of the data streams scenario, and it’s been an amazing experience so far. I leave tomorrow, and shudder to think of the 40 hour train journey from New Delhi to Bangalore which I have to spend all alone!

Anyway, if you’re looking for something really funny to read (FOSS enthusiasts only!), you have to check out this webcomic. It’s a must read!

I guess that’s it for now. So until next time, keep smiling!