Blog :: 'PariveshaNa'

Another Moth, originally uploaded by hpnadig.

Another one of lepidoptera :)

Lepidoptera, originally uploaded by hpnadig.

This little friend used to come down to sit on the walls facing the street light for couple of months right after we were done with the construction of our house. The house was on the outskirts of city (but no longer considered outskirts now).

I always had this feeling that each day it was a new look-alike insect, and not the one that came earlier. Although it looked uncanny it was the same insect each day, that could also have been true.

Again, taken with a point and shoot, Pentax Optio. I wish I had a DSLR then.
[From the Archives]

Life, worth the struggle, originally uploaded by hpnadig.

This was a shot taken at Savandurga, a fort on the outskirts of our city, Bangalore.

Taken with a point and shoot. Wish I had a DSLR then. :)

Can anyone help me recognize the leaves as to which plant this is? and how does it manage to survive on the rock?

[From the Archives]

Back in 2004, we used to have discussions on how to improve Indian language projects on Wikipedia and related projects. It was then that the discussions had also channeled towards a probable Indian Chapter that could provide support and backing for the local community and the local projects. At that time, there were just a few chapters worldwide.

We have since then had attempts almost every year to form an Indian Chapter. Most of us involved in each of these attempts were volunteers active in the Wikimedia community. I had coordinated most of the efforts except for the last one. Sadly though, we never had the resources or the backing needed to kick-start the formal process. So, the idea of an Indian Chapter never got realised. It was quite an ordeal to even arrange a meet-up back then.

Some of the earlier attempts failed either due to lack of consensus among the volunteers participating on varying issues or due to the natural processes of attenuation in the crowd that was interested. While the excitement was very much palpaple and the interest genuine among the people involved, we were unable to give the idea the time
and commitment it needed primarily because we lacked the critical mass.

Fortunately, things have changed for the better. Things changed drastically last year when Sunil from Center for Internet and Society brought several Wikimedians under one roof. Thanks to the invaluable efforts from Achala Prabhala in getting a few committed and responsible volunteers together back again to boot start the process during that time, we now are much closer in realising the Chapter idea than we were ever before. The team that had come together for this purpose has spent plenty of time towards this in the last one year.

Some sparrows caught on lens on the way to Chitradurga the day before:

"As easier as it gets, as simple as it can be" - this is the present Debian at its testing version. I was fortunate enough to get a copy of the debian mirror from Ravi, a hacker and GNU/Linux enthusiast who is also part of the Sampada team.

Now updating the mirror is easy.

I'm no big fan of Ubuntu unlike many of my friends, but Ubuntu has its place too in my office depending on the necessity. But where does Debian figure in picture of distributions? I can't just put it in few words, really. For one, it always presents me this simple face that you could tweak with - much like you shape your own piece of art over clay mould. The other, you have this "real" development aura surrounding it that makes you feel that without Debian you wouldn't be able to do much!

Struggling for words still on why Debian is so different, I feel using it would explain much of what it feels like. Is it the stability? Is it the convenience of not bothering about drastic changes of where stuff went with the new releases - I wouldn't know. But Debian is just too good.