Posts Tagged: aj

Barcamp Bangalore 4 – Day 1

On July 28, 2007 by Anant With 3 Comments - Blogging, Desicritics, Internet, Yours Truly

I attended my first BarCamp today held in Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.
It was scheduled to start at 9 AM but I overslept and reached there only by 10. But as IST (Indian Stretchable time) goes, I wasn’t late and the registrations and the introduction session was still going on. So I did not miss much :D

I wanted to be a part mainly of the Bloggers collective and the Photo(graphers) Collective, hoping to learn, mostly in the latter and more to give a talk in the former. The bloggers collective started of fairly decently but was delayed as people trickled in fairly slowly and almost everyone had a problem getting the WiFi to work on their laptops.

But once that was done, the first talk on Podcasting took place. I was not interested much in that so I went around helping people configure their laptops to connect to the WLan.

The next talk by Kishore Krishna (aka Kpowerinfinity) was on Widgets but due to some conflicts, it was delayed. So my talk on Blogging Platforms and setting up your own blog was advanced and his postponed to after mine.

My talk started on a fairly positive note with lot of discussion and interaction but once I got on to the setting up a self hosted blog using wordpress, people lost track. The topic got far too technical for most of them so I decided to stop and instead move that to a demo after the talk for those who were interested by making it more basic and easy to follow(the demo did not happen eventually)

After my talk, I moved out from the bloggers collective to check out the other collective. I entered the Internet collective where a talk on MS Silverlight was just about to start. Not much interest there so I moved on to the Startups collective. That was in the fag end with the speak just starting to take questions so I left there too and went back to the bloggers collective. Kishore’s talk was just about over when I reached there and soon we all went for lunch.

Immediately after lunch, the bloggers collective seemed to have disappeared with only a few visible from the earlier 40-50. So I held a discussion on micro-blogging (Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku) with a few of the interested attendees. After that, I discussed the various blogging platforms and what would be a good choice for a non-techie beginner blogger and set up an Livejournal account for her.

That was the end of all blogging topics as the photography collective was having it’s first (and only meet for the day) where a lot of discussion went on and Amoghavarsha and Jace and few others. Learnt lots of basic tips and got a lot of information.

There was a band jam happening later in the evening but having tired myself out earlier, I decided to skip that. Day two of the un-conference is tomorrow. Watch for a report about it tomorrow.

Oh and I got a chance to meet Aaman and Deepti Lamba, the chief editors of Desicritics. That was really great. We discussed the upcoming changes to DC, the current happenings and how it is really growing as a community. That was really great.

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Barcamp Bangalore 4 – Live Blogging

On July 28, 2007 by Anant With 1 Comments - Blogging, Yours Truly

Blogging live from Barcamp in the bloggers. I gave a talk on Blogging platforms which I’m not sure how successful it was because I think I went fairly technical while the crowd was mainly non-tech.

The next talk is by Kpowerinfinity on widgets (technorati, flickr, desktop widgets etc)

I’ll be flitting around to various talks to blog about other talks.

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Bangalore Bloggers Meet

On July 22, 2007 by Anant With 20 Comments - Blogging

The Bangalore Bloggers Meet happened. And it ROCKED. More than 40 bloggers from Bangalore, Mumbai and two from Germany (who are in Bangalore) as well as a couple of non-bloggers (journalists, short-film makers) gathered in Brew HaHa and had a blast.

For the first half an hour or so, everyone introduced themselves. And the sheer variety was impressive in itself. Once the intros were done, we ordered coffees from a good selection of delicious menu and got on with discussions on various topics.

The first point on the agenda was to decide the agenda for the Barcamp later this month. A lot of topics for discussion were decided upon during which your’s truly volunteered to give a talk on various blog platforms, and how to start up on blogging.

Then someone (with deep apologies because I forget the name RK) gave a talk on micro-financing blogging(something which was not of my interest) while demoed Pownce to a few people. Then people discussed starting a campaign for social awareness. Lastly, just before we broke up, I floated an idea to start a site for Bangalore Bloggers where bloggers from Bangalore would contribute articles, as well as aggregated contents from all contributors would be available for reading (a la livejournal friends page)

The meeting went about an hour or so more than scheduled but I am sure no one was complaining. After the break up, some of us went down to purple haze for beer where Sanjukta ended up getting high and Snigdha wanting to dance but for the lack of a dance floor :D

Oh and it was Sridhar’s birthday so he got “pseudo” birthday bumps ;)

Pics from the meet:

DSC02307 DSC02311 DSC02310 DSC02308 DSC02311

More pics from the meet at Blogaloreans

Others bloggers who covered the meet”

Prashanth, Neha, Adheeth, Jerry, Kpowerinfinity (Sorry I don’t remember your name :( ), Sridhar, Bikram

Edit: Updated Adheeth’s name

Edit: Corrected RK’s talk topic and update with his name. My apologies RK

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Acknowledgement or a confession

On July 11, 2007 by Anant With 0 Comments - Life, Randomness, Thoughts, Work, Yours Truly

Since i was about 2 months old, I’ve had a condition which made the involuntary nervous control of my neck muscles weak. Due to this, I do not have complete control over my neck and unconsciously “shake” it from one side to the other.

Unfortunately since its not under my control, I never realize when I’m shaking my head. Most people understandably find it weird or funny, but surprisingly to me some people think I’m mocking them during a conversation (as I shockingly found out recently) which of course is not my intention.

And it’s not like I’ve not tried getting it treated. My parents and I have consulted more than 50 docs over the years without success. I have tried allopathy, homeopathy, ayurveda, physiotherapy, yoga, concentration exercises etc. And yes, (very unlike me) even meditation. But as obvious, to no avail :(

While most people ignore it, many tend to make fun by giving me names, mimicking it or joking about it behind my back. As a kid, I’d get upset (quite a bit) with anyone who made fun. But as I’ve grown up, I’ve started to ignore it all, even suppressing a very strong feeling to confront a colleague who was making fun. Ultimately decided that someone like that is not worth me getting upset (and it being a weekend also helped :) )

why am I writing all this? And out of the blue? I don’t know. But I just felt like “venting” when a guy who goes by the same bus as me mimicked me.

Maybe it is this that has made me the social inept and introvert that I am. It’s not that I am short of self-confidence (or according to mom, I’m over confident) but I’ve somehow held back on interacting with people, very importantly, acquaintances (people I know but who I don’t consider friends)

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Bungee Jumpin

On June 26, 2007 by Anant With 7 Comments - Friends, Life, Yours Truly

Alrighty.. So I bungee jumped yesterday. But more from the start. We left around 12 and it took us about an hour to find the place. The crowd was fairly thin considering it being the last day and a Sunday. The ticket purchase required us to undergo a medical test – BP check and weight. All that took us about an hour and a half. Then came the long wait for our turn to jump.

Eventually it turned out we would wait for about 7.5, yes seven and a half hours.

DSC01937 Waiting for lunch

But it was not all waste. We had lunch and then waiting for some more time went for a long ride, which considering the improving weather was fabulous. Near the Yellahanka airbase Vikram’s bike ran out of fuel. So we stopped there and to our pleasure discovered a small pond. That and the setting sun made for a great combo. Took lots of pics there.

Dive Chandrahasa about to dive in to the lake.. Taking his acting career too seriously ;)

Contemplations One of the best pics of the day..

By then we hoped that our turn would have come but nope, we still had to wait for a lot more time.By now we were beginning to lose patience but since we had paid, we could not do anything. Finally at about 8:30 our turn came and we strapped on for the jump. After that it was just thrill as we waited for our turns.
When my chance finally came, i rode up the platform relatively calmly. But once on top, i felt the fear, thrill and rush of jumping the first time.

DSC01988 The crane from which we jumped..

Encouraged by the instructor, i took a deep breath and stepped off. I wanted to jump head first but the platform was swaying too much for me to jump (ah well next time ;) )

Anyway, once i stepped off, the ground rushing up towards me gave me the kick of my life.
It WAS one of the best experiences of my life.

To those in our group who did not jump, I’m sorry for you. You missed an experience to remember.
Now i wanna jump from higher up :D

More pics on my Zooomr Album
Sorry but the videos are too large to upload.

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What a rush…

On June 24, 2007 by Anant With 0 Comments - Friends, Yours Truly

Jumped off a platform about 120 feet high with nothing but an elastic rope tied to my ankles. Yeah, I “bungee jumped” today. And it was one hell of an experience. I’m still feeling the rush of the jump. Went with Chandrahasa, Kiran, Madhavi, Madhu, Mythreyi, Swetha, Satish and Vikram.

Everyone MUST do this once. It is an experience to remember :)

More details, pics and videos tomorrow. It’s late :(

Edit: Just noticed the current title of my blog and it takes on an entirely new meaning ;)

Edit 2: Corrected Mythreyi’s spelling :)

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