Akshar Bharati Community Library goes online

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Neependra

Today we made ABCL (Akshar Bharati Community Library) online.  One can access it  from  http://abcl.aksharbharati.org/
We now have more than 3500 books and it is operational for last six months.ABCL Website launch

By making it online now users can:-

  • Search the books online
  •  Put a hold on book online
  •  Get email notification
  •  Suggest a book which is not there in catalog

It is made online using softare called KOHA. It is put on Amazon cloud. Its costs around Rs 3000 per month.

ABCL is a free libary for everyone though we encourage the Rs 100 donation per month for people who can afford.

Delivery model

1. A member can come to library location and get the books any no. of times.

2. Corporate model

A company can sponsor the library for its employees or support staff by donating the amount. In that case a person from the Library will visit the office and issue the new books and take the old ones.

Enabling the corporate model would take some time. So if we can around 10 members from a company then the person from ABCL can also visit.

3.  Housing socities.
Similar to the corporte model we are planning to a model at housing society. Housing society would not be able to sponsor thier members and their support staff.

So if there is any person who is willing to become the ABCL representative then we can deliver the book at the housing societies weekly.
Kids playing games in ABCL location
We will be adding more than 1000 in next two weeks. Apart from reading books kids from nearby the place come to read and play some books.

Some Volunteer from also come here and teach basic Computers to the Kids. Till now ABCL is doing exceptionally well  and with putting Library online we should be able to take it next level.

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Gnunify’12 and Programming Contest

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Neependra

Gnunify was scheduled on 10th and 11th February’12. This year Gnunify has completed 10 years.It has come a long way and I am attached with it since 2006. Since last year I started to more active part by organizing the programming contest for System Programming. We declare the topics for the programming contest one month so that students can go back go back and study those topics which were declared if they haven’t read them seriously till now. The topics from this year were:-

- Process
- Process Control
- File I/O
- Signals
- Locking Primitives(Mutex/Semaphores)
- Multi Threading

This year my company STEC sponsored this contest. We got 100+ registration but around 50 people showed up for the written test.Out of them 10 qualified for the lab test. There were 30 objective questions for the written test and 3 questions for the lab test.Lab test was relatively easier as compared to last year.

Questions for Written Test
 Questions for Lab Test

Judges looking at programs of participants

Shakthi Kannan and Kiran Divekar judged the lab test. Shakthi also helped me with the lab to setup the lab and answer the questions raised by participants. The lab test was for 2 hours and judges went to everyone’s desk in the last half hour to look at their programs.

We had the prize distribution at 2 PM. Apart form me,Vivek and Ritesh were present at the time of prize distribution. Vivek briefed the participants and others about STEC and its India Operation. Judges then distributed the prizes to winners and participant certificate to all participants.

Participants and judges of programming Contest @ Gnunify'12

Apart from organizing the programming contest I gave a talk on btrfs which I gave on FUDCon last year as well. Surprisingly the auditorium was full. There were lots of students so I spent most of the time in explaining concepts like file-system, COW, snapshots etc.

I did not get the chance to attend to other talks as programming contest kept me busy. Though in Lunch time I got time meet few my friends from FOSS community. We observed that participation in Gnunify is getting decreased from last couple of years. This might be happening because now we also very technology specific workshops/events and now people want to attend them. There were also discussion that we should now come with different approach to oraganize Gnunify. Lets see how things shape up in near future.

Long live GNUnify!!!

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Setting up 26 Libraries on 26th January’12 @ Akshar Bharati

Posted on December 25, 2011 by Neependra

Akshar Bharati’s vision is to help achieved India’s Vision 2020 of becoming a developed nation and sustain the growth through development of tomorrow’s citizens by encouraging environment of learning and education. Keeping this in mind we have decided to setup 26 Libraries on 26th January’12. To make this a reality we have to accomplish following tasks:-

- Identifying the locations
Over the years AB team has setup 300+ libraries in different places of India. Because of such visiblity we regularly get requests to set the library at new location. We have few such requests and will set libraries in few place from this list.

We’ll pick few locations from Donor’s request. Few donors choose to donate the whole library which costs around 25K(INR) in their home town or in remembrance of their loved ones. Apart from this AB team members do frequent field visits and suggest the location where we can setup potential libraries.

From above and other sources we’ll select 26 location and will setup all of them on the same day.

- Procurement of the books
As AB always setup the library with new books and donate books according to the need, the procurement team has to go through the the selected location list and then decide the right set of books.

After selecting the books the team will place the order the to the publishers and get them in the central place. Then the team will sort them according to the locations and stamp them. Then the book set will be forwarded to the team which will setup the library at the physical location.

- Fund Raising
And Guess What!!!! Setting all the libraries require funds. We have some funds which was given to AB from individuals and companies like IBM, Symantec, STEC, and ATOS Origin. But we need to collect more funds.

For this we’ll be reaching out to more companies and individuals. As we all know it is very difficult get some money from someone’s pocket. This task will
require some extra effort. People don’t pay until they have 100% faith in the cause.

- Library setup at the location
Not everyone can go to each of 26 locations, so we’ll have a team for each location which will go setup the library. But before setting it up lot of co-ordination is required b/w each team.

I hope we’ll finish all the tasks as expected and setup all the libraries.

If any of my blog reader want to contribute to any of the tasks I mentioned then please let me know. As it is not possible for one present physically I would appreciate any donation which one can make and do one’s contribution to India 2020 Vision.  Indian salaried donor can get tax exemption under Section 80G. Donation can be done online. Details are mentions here. Here is a documentary on Akshar Bharati

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Visit to God’s own country – Kerala

Posted on December 3, 2011 by Neependra

We(Me and Kanika) visited God’s own country Kerala b/w 25th – 29th’11. It was most eventful journey. We had to deal with the  strikes in Maharashtra and Kerala. We catched the flight from Mumbai in last minute. Then visit to  beautiful Munnar, beach and house boat and Alleppey.

We started our journey on 25th Nov’11. Just before a day someone slapped Mr. Pawar and there was band was called by NCP on 25th. We were not sure what to do? I thought it is not a big issue and I should follow what I planned . We planned to take a Bus from Pune to Mumbai and then catch the flight from there. After waking up 25th  I saw the newspaper and it noticed that Pune will be Band on the day. I then decided to take a local from Chinchwad station to Lonawala and then take something from there but local train timing did not match. We discussed and then decided to stick with original plan and then see what happens.

So, we reached the boarding point and took the Bus at 10:20 AM. I did not took printoutof the ticket so I had few heated words with the MSRTC Bus conducter as he was keep saying e-ticket is not allowed you need to have the printout of the ticket. Later he allowed though. Because of this incident I thought let me check the flight details and came to know that Kanika doesn’t have the valid ID proof with her. I called the Airline call center and asked them whether they need ID proof of both passengers and they said YES!!. They said scan copy will work only if it is attested. Now I had to quickly decide what to do??

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As I was  thinking the bus stopped for tea break before Lonawala. We quickly got down and saw another bus is going to Pune. We catched that bus and  thought what’s NEXT?  I then called Akshay(friend) and asked him go to my home and get the ID proof of Kanika’s. Then I called cab  and lucikly he agreed to go in next half an hour.  I asked him (Cab driver) to come at Ginger hotel by12 PM and same I requested to Akshay. So, at 12′o’clock sharp we reached at Ginger Hotel from Lonawala, Cab driver was from his home and Akshay from my home after getting ID proof. Awesome Timimg!!! By 12:05PM we were back on the highway for Mumbai. We reached to Mumbai just on time.  Just before our boarding we saw Mr. Pawar  just landed and he was peacefully exiting from Airport. We landed at Cochin airport at 6:30 PM and went to the hotel where we stayed over-night. Next day on 26th we started at 7:30 AM to Munnar.

On the way to Munnar we stopped at Spice Garden where we got to see different spice plants and did Elephant ride. We also bought few fresh spices from there. We reached our hotel “Tea Valley” around 1:30 PM. As the name suggest it is located in the middle of “Tea Gardens”. The view from the hotel is just awesome.We thought as if we entered in another world.
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We stayed there for rest of the day and enjoy the entire view. Next day I woke up early and went alone for some trekking. After breakfast we started our sight visit for the day. I don’t remember the names but we went to see around five spots .Then we went to see National park “Eravikulam National Park“. It is the located at the highest peak (Anaimudi) in peninsular India. You can see different kinds of flowers. It is best known for Nilgiri tahr.  Its a must visit place for any flower lovers. We then visisted the local market. Later we came to know there is strike tomorrow in the Idukki district in which Munnar comes. So we must leave the distict by 6AM. We woke up at 4AM next day and left Munnar at 4:45 AM to Alleppey.
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We reached Allepey around 10 AM. As our house boat was booked from the noon we went to the beach. After that we went to our houseboatand came to know that now there is strike tomorrow in Allepey and Kochin, So we must checkout tomororw by 4:30 AM.  The boat had three bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining space space and some living room. The interior was Good. Along wth us some other persons were also there in boat like a cook, a captain and a helper. Our boat started at 1PM. After getting ready we sat down in the sitting area and enjoyed the view.  There were greenery all around. Coconut trees were on the sides of the backwater. That view was similar to what we saw usually in Paintings  Galleries. We had lunch around 2:30 PM and then sat down at outside sitting area and enjoyed the view for rest of the day. The boats runs from 12:30PM to 5:30 PM only. In the evening it just stalls at the origin.
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In evening while returning all the houseboats looked like birds are coming back to their nests after a long flight. This boat trip was really a unique experience. One must have it atleast once in a life time. Rest of the time at boat was not up to the mark, as it was hot during evening time and A/C would start after dinner only. The service and  food was not as good as expected. Next time if I come here I will take the boat ride but not spend the night at the boat. Thanks to the strike, next day we had to checkout at 4:30 a.m again. We reached toCochin airport around 6.15 a.m. Due to strike crowd was huge at the airport so we decided stayed at nearby hotel for rest of the day. There I got the time to write this detailed blog entry. We took our flight at 7:30 and reach Mumbai and then cab to Pune.Overall we enjoyed the trip. Everyone should visit the Kerala atleast once.

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FUDCon Pune 2011

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Neependra

FUDCon was sheduled on 4-6 Nov’11 in COEP, Pune.

Because of my other commitments I did not get the chance to attend keynotes or closing talks but I watched some of them online. I did get chance to attend few sessions which were scheduled after my talks.

I subumitted two talks and both were got selected.

1. Debugging Kernel OOPs

2. Btrfs – The next generation filesystem on Linux

I was hoping that I would finish the my slides well before the schedued date. I have already given “Debugging Kernel OOPs” ealrier for GEEP some time back so I did not to worry about that. For my other talk on Btrfs I started prepraring few weeks back but was not able to prepare slides as expected. Its only a week before theschduled date I started the prepare the slides and demo. I haven’t use Btrfs myself earlier but because of earlier ZFS experinece I was able to pick is up quickly. At KQ Infotech(Now STEC) we ported ZFS on Linux.

Both my talks started on time and went as planned. Around 25-30 participants attended the each talk. Debugging Kernel OOPs attended by most of the students while Btrfs session was attended more working professionals. In OOPs session I showed how typical OOPs looks like and what information to look. Then I talked about symbol table and how it is generated. I had two character driver which generates OOPs when read is done on that attached character device. We looked at the OOPs messages to see the stack trace and used “objdump” to look at the”.ko” file. Then at the end we looked at the “.c” file to indentify the root cause.
In the Btrfs session I talked about the filesystem and volume manager. What is missing in the existing file-systems in Linux. Then we discussed Rodeh’sresearch on Btrees and how Btrfs leveraged them. We then discussed Btrfs design and its data structures in short. I then showed Btrfs Demo, which I was not able to finish because of time constaints. In between the session lots of interesting questions were asked by the participants. I hope I was able to answer them.

Group shot in FUDCon Pune 2011

On the second day we had few group photos and then the FUDPub. We had lot of fun there. Events like this are always great place meet old friends, colleagues and make new friends. Most of the FUDCon organizing team-members are ex-colleagues of Red Hat. They did a great job of organizing the event. Everyone went an extra mile to make this event successful. I have learned few things, shared some knowledge and met the fellow Fedora community members. What else I can ask for. Kudos to FUDCon organizing team members and all volunteer from COEP.

As Jared rightly said in one of its talk that “talks doesn’t cook rice”, I am currently discussing some project idea on Btrfs with college students. If all goes well we should be to fix few bugs on Btrfs or add a new feature.

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US(Santa Ana) Trip – Sep. – Oct’11

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Neependra

I had visited US for a month in Sep-Oct.’ 11.  This was my first US visit.I went via Dubai and and landed at Los Angles Airport on 24rd Sept’11. Santa Ana is about 45 Mins drive from LA.

As soon I reached to hotel I decided to get some grocerry as I my room has the attached kitchen. I went to nearby Target(Shop like Big Bazar) and somehow forgot that I am not in India and bought lots of things, which I realized after doing the billing. At that time I didn’t have any cab no. So, I had to walk with all the things I bought.  Just after going back I cooked lunch for me and just crashed.

Next day, as It was Sunday so I decided to go Discovey Science Museum. It has some nice science experiments, moving Dino-sour  A space lab which was closed.  It is good for the kids.
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Next Saturday on 1st Oct’11 went to the Disney land which is very near to Santa Ana. Its place to dreams. I saw all the cartoons chacractors to whom I am watching since long time. I tooks some rides watched few 3D shows like Star Wars. It was the evening parade which I enjoyed the most where all the cartoon char-actors come on the street and peform. The Music, people makes the atmospher perfect. It seems the world is perfect. I would have enjoyed more if had  some company.Other than this I enjoyed the Its a small world ride where you the glimse of all the culture of differernt countries of the world.

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Next Satrurday on 8th I was planning to go LA to see the Hollywood and Universal Studio but Remington, my co-worker at STEC told me that there is Formula Drift happening near by and asked me if I wanted to join.I thought about it and decided to go to Formula Drift as may be next time when I go there, it would not be scheduled during my stay but places at LA will stay at same place.. :) . It was one of the Unique experience I had . There were cars from different companies for display, kiosks from major vendors, fancy bikes. etc. The drifting was there real fun. The sound, the smoke, the race. IMG_3832.JPG

I also came to know that one of cousin stays very near by whom I did not meet till now. So I went to visit him next day.

By this time I had some friendship with few Indians working in our US office. One of them was Rangasai. We used to same chat during or post Lunch. Next Friday on 14th Oct I went Yard House with him and had some great time. Then we went to his place.This weekend I had to work so did not get enough time go out of city. Though on Sunday I went out for a movie with Remington and then we joined some of his friends in thier house. There we played some game with ball and glasses, in which some glasses are kept in front of each player and other player has to throw the balls into them. Player, who puts the balls on each glasses of opposite side wins the game. Glasses are filled with beer and as soon as the ball lands up in glass the player has to drink all the beer of that glass. Initially I lost but later I picked up the game and won.

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Last week was full work and I didn’t get chance to out even a single day. But on Friday, 21st Oct Rangasai and I had great fun. We listen to Gazals, went for a drive and discussed many interesting things.I also told him about Akshabharati and he even donated some amount. Next day I catched the flight and came back to India on 23rd Oct.

Overall I had some great time in US. Learn few things, shared some knowledge, met very senior people.

During my stay I missed India, my home very much.

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Yahoo…The Charisma of Shammi Kapoor

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Neependra

On 24th August on Pune Mirror I saw that there is show on Shammi Kapoor at Yashwantrao Chavan Auditorium from Niche Entertainment and without taking a moment I  discussed it with my wife and immediately we both decided that we should not miss this.  Its was a weekday but as it was at 9:30 PM, so we were able to make it. The show started at 10 PM.
Ticket (Yahoo…The Charisma of Shammi Kapoor)

Our Anchor, Amit Vashist impersonated Shammi Kapoor and shared the details of his life. He has seen many failures before getting a success. His first 18 films did not do well and he even decided to leave the film career after “Tumsa Nahin Dekha”, if it doesn’t do well. He did put every thing on that film. With that film he crossed the barrier and joined the league with Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand. He became the youth icon of India. After that he gave hits one after another. His stardom got another boost with his first color file Junglee in 1961. His last film as leading actor was Andaz in 1971. He was married twice, first with Geeta Bali and then with Neila Devi.

In one of his interview he mentioned that one should utilize all  his resources to get success. 96% of your success comes from the hard work and only 4% comes from your luck.
Yahoo…The Charisma of Shammi Kapoor1
He was a net savvy person. He made his own website “http://junglee.org.in/” for the Kapoor family.
Though I did not watch much of his movies but I thoroughly enjoyed  most of his songs. All the songs in the show were live performed by different singers and artists. Everyone tried to wear the similar outfits which were worn in original songs. Lots of my favorite songs were performed.
Yahoo…The Charisma of Shammi Kapoor2 I enjoyed every moment there. The show went till 00:30 and everyone seems to be looking for more. It was nicely directed by Milind Oak. I really liked Savani Ravindra performance. She sang, danced very nicely. Archive of the show is available at:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS1tk3_v-jU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrmh9Z3NXSg
After watching the show I did more googling on Shammi Kapoor and became his fan. He crossed many obstacles to get see the success. We can learn lot from him. Though we know that he’ll not be back but still I sent a request to his twitter account to follow him….

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Some Good Time with Friends..

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Neependra

I met Abhishek(Verma) after 5 years though we keep in touch via phone. We were not able to make to each other’s marriage. We were very close in our college days. We did lots of interesting together like a quiz show b/w differentschools which was aired (21 episodes) in local cable channel, Pre MBA test forour own batch-mates… :) . We go to college on same bike. After college he joined a company in Calcutta and I came down to Pune in 2004.
AbhishekAndShranjikaThe other Abhishek (Shrivastava), who is in Pune from 5-6 years. We meet atleast once in every six months. This is because we stay in different parts ofthe city. He is also with us in the same branch in same college. As I was a dayscholar, I used to go to his room for study and we do lots other things there other than study. Later his parents joined him and I had to look for other room for my studies.. :) .
AbhishekShikka  One thing that surprises everyone in our friend circle that he did a love marriage. He is happily married to Shikha and lives in Kharadi, Pune. He also did not meet to other Abhishek for some time.
Abhishek(Verma) came to Mumbai for some official and extended his stay to visitus in Pune.
We planned a trip to Mahabaleshwar on 23rd July’11. Earlier I was planning to go on my bike but later but we did a cab for all of us as we’ll have more time to spend together. Abhishek (Shrivastava) and Shikha started from Kharadi at6:30 AM and after joining Abhishek and Shranjika they came to my house around 8 AM. After having breakfast we started at around 9 AM. Our first stop was at Panchgani’s table top. We spent some quality there. Fog was playing hide and seek with us, which was making the every moment heavenly. We walked, chat and clicked pics. I had a horse ride as well. Then we had the some snacks and started for Mahabaleshwar.
KanikaAndMe
It was already 2PM when we reached to Mahabaleshwar. Rain was everywhere,because of which it was very difficult to get the view of different points. As Abhishek(Verma) has to stay there on that day, we decided to check the availability at MIDC. We did’t get the accommodation there but we had the lunch there. Its food is much better than any other near by restaurants.  Then we checked-in near by hotel. We can not visit all the spots as their view is notpossible because of the rain. So, we decided to go old Mahabaleshwar to visit the Temple. Because of our B+ attitude we thought to visit few nearby pointsbut no luck.. :( .  We then returned to main city and visited the market and did some window shopping. After dropping Abhishek we started back to Pune and reached back at 10 PM.
Next day on 24th we had dinner at Abhishek’s (Shrivastava) home but we did notget enough time to spent together as other Abhishek and came late and he has toleave for Mumbai to catch his flight.
FriendsForever
When I came to back it felt like we spent very short time together. It took us sometime to unwind ourselves in last two days. It may be because we all met face to face after such long time; we are now married and have someone to whom we need to give more love, attention; we all have different sets of problems to solve. In college days we had all the time; did not have official commitment though we thought we had.. :) ; and had the common problem to solve, semester exam. I wish wehad more time to spend together……

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ABCL Inauguration Event

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Neependra

As planned we have formally inaugurated ABCL on 3rd July. I was not sure whether I’ll be able to make join this or not as I had to travel to and fro to my native because of something urgent. I reached back Pune on 3rd morning at 2 AM. Not only I joined , I got the opportunity to be an anchor… :)

Over the last week volunteers of AB took part in different activities to make this happen. Anand and Rajendra took part in setting up the Library Management Software, KOHA. Few took part in stamping, collecting books from different doners. I took part in old books donation drive and stamping.

We have received around 600+ books from the the donation drive. Employee from Synygy donated around 350 books. Rest of the books were donated by individuals. Apart from this we had around 800 of Akshar Bharati library which we setup in different AB libraries.  So, its a good number to start with.
Chief Guest Inaugurating the library.JPG

Our chief guest Mr Satish Gupta arrived at 11 AM and we started the event around 11: 30 AM. He appreciated the overall idea behind ABCL and showed lot of interest.
Event Participants.JPG He inaugurated the library and the computer Lab. I briefed about the idea behind setting up the computer lab. Then Satish ji, Anurag ji and Vijay ji shared their views about ABCL.

Just after that we had formal membership signup for all the participants. Then we had vote of thanks and everyone had some snacks.

More pics are available here.

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Akshar Bharati Community Library

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Neependra
Akshar Bharati is really encouraging the habit of reading in children between age group 5-15 years from underprivileged and remote areas. Can the similar be done for the poor students who stay near to our office/society etc? Also can we have a library for us or our children?

 

Akshar Bharati Community Library is one such initiative by which we can address above.This library will be open to all and will have books for each age groups. It will be free for people who can not afford but will have some minimal charges for others. By this it can become a self sustainable model.

Apart from this it’ll have a computer lab which will be available to all the members. It’ll also have a data server which will have:-
a. ISOs of different Linux distribution.
b. Video lectures from different universities
c. Any Creative Common Licence content.

 

Currently we procuring new books and collecting old books. If anyone wants to see any specific book in the library’s book-self or want donate old books then then I can be contacted. The person who donates books will get free subscription for few months.

 

The library will be inaugurated on 3rd July’11.

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