We went for the movie, Inception. Its the first time I am going for a Hollywood Movie in a Public Theatre. Given the fact that, I only watch hollywood and I have seen over 400 movies (I can prove that, I have a list), its pretty odd. Anyway, this is the first. Inception rocks, gotta see it again. If you think you got the whole movie, watch out for this forum.

We were driving along the Marine Drive late into the night after the movie and police stopped us and started asking all sorts of questions. I was laughing inside the car all the time, they even asked Kenney if he was drunk and made him blow. he he.

We slept in a car. Its the first time I do it. Then I drove Kenney’s Lancer. Its the first time I got to drive someone else’s car (I didn’t tell Kenney that anyway) and its the first time I am driving a Lancer.

The we ate many stuffs, I don’t know the names of half of them. So let me just say, its the first time I eat them.

Am back home and guess what was waiting for me? I had ordered a UV Filter for my Canon 550D. Its a very cheap one, just 3.5$, I would be using it just as a safety thing for the lens. Like, when I have to shoot in a running bus and its raining, I guess its better to have a filter. I am sure the one I bought would degrade my image quality, though I wont be able to recognize it. lol

Lots of First Times In a Couple of Days is a post from: The Kuttappi

The hostel didn’t have the usual serenity or the lets-have-a-drink-and-watch-a-movie-and-sleep mood. Everyone was running around digging up rotten records that dates back to 2006, our first year and packing bags. Everyone had to vacate the college hostel by 1o am today.

So we started helping some of our friends find their stuff. By 11 we were all soaking wet and smelled like shit. That’s where the AXE Effect comes to play. Ssshh.. Ssshh.. That’s all it takes to get back into the game.

(I wish I could post some real photos here, in fact we have snapped a lot of pics, but since my camera is broken, I dont have any of them with me. 16 more days to go before I get a new one. That’s another story)

Once everything was stuffed into the bags, me and @Harikris19 went to meet a guy who is known as Varghese Sir. He is the local guardian of Hari and apparently, Hari haven’t seen him for over 2 years. Hari took us so as to dilute the dosage of what he was supposed to get.

Well, this guy is a man in his 70’s or 80’s and he confessed that he never got an audience to talk to in a long time. He hadn’t got any since 1992, that’s what he said. Since we were not in a position to negotiate, we had to listen to 4 of his stories-of-bravery. That’s how old people work.

Somehow we managed to get past him. We then went to our college to take a photo with our Project Guide. Our lady team mate, Sonia Sunny was waiting there for us. She had been waiting for like 45 minutes, so we were expecting to see faces and we got just that. We met a couple of our teachers, took the photo with her and off we went to the Farewell Party at Maria International, Kothamangalam.

Other than the usual experience sharing and autograph sign-ings, three major things happened at the Farewell.

1. Release of our Class Yearbook “I will Always Remember” – An awesome work of Photoshop by a talented designer named Arun Areekat with profiles of all 66 of our class.

(The name was suggested my me, inspired from a field they use in their college yearbook in the movie Girl Next Door)

2. Release of our Class Video – A 45 min video of various scenes from our life at MACE. Videography and Editing by Jith N. Shashi.

3. Launch of EB Times – The social networking portal I made for our class.

Everything went according to plan, oops, lets put it this way, there was no plan. So everything just worked fine. Our Group Tutor was there for a short time for all the 3 events.

Afterwards we had lunch and we all sat down to see the Class Video and then I gave a demo of EB Times.

Other than the usual farewell-party-usuals something worth mentioning was a conversation that I had with a friend of mine, Nandini. I discovered her very late towards the end of the final year and found her personality worth exploring. (Now is when you have to act like and adult and read only what is written here and stop reading between the lines). I got a sneak-peak into that today and loved it. I feel like I missed a lot.

We took at least 1500 snaps in total today. By about 6 in the evening we all said the real Good Byes.

I went back to the boys hostel with some others to pick up a board that we had used for our project. Loaded the car with the board and dropped my friend Vineeth at a private hostel where he is staying for the night. (Did some minor drift work with the car at the hostel).

So that left me and Jibu and @Jithoot and @Harikris19. The usual chit-chat, dropped Jibu at Kothamangalam Bus Stand, dropped Sree at his home. By the time I reached Perumbavoor to drop off Hari, it started raining. Loaded his stuffs to an auto-rikshaw and got all wet. And came home safely.

That was one heck of a day. I will always remember…

That was One Heck of a Farewell Party is a post from: The Kuttappi

Saturday was a totally busy day, working on College Project Report and other stuffs. I have never been to Thiruvalla before and the only time I have been to Kottayam was for BarCamp Kerala 7.

Usually, I got with @Eldhose for such camps, but this time he was unavailable. So after some calls and tweets, I decided to go via a Trivandrum Bus from Kothamangalam, with my friend Vineeth Wilson.

I set out at 5.30 in the morning hoping to catch a Transport bus to Kothamangalam; I got none. Long story short. at 7.30 am I was standing in the Kothamangalam bus stand and looking for a bus. I would have reached the college in that time if I had chosen to drive.

Boarded a Trivandrum bus from Muvattupuzha and on the way I did some last minute prep for my demo.

Thankfully, the event hadn’t started when we reached there at about 10.15 am. @KenneyJacob greeted us and I got into the dark seminar hall of MACFAST. I met the usual gang of early birdies, @Praseed3point14, @BinnyVA and the rest. It was good to see @AravindJose once again, he wasn’t at any of the recent BarCamps or other ones.

I found a seat on the side row near @BinnyVA. It was fun to have some off topic chats; I have always enjoyed Binny’s company.

I was soon given the duty of handling @BarCampKerala; @AravindJose who used to handle this, took up the duty as a photographer. @AravindJose and @Zeqox were the photographers for the event.

The sessions started, I barely listened to anything this time. I was more into Tweeting and uploading pics. Also had fun taking some shots with Aravinds camera, I am not used to the view-finder, I should get used to it soon.

However, I managed to win a tee shirt from @Shwetank, the Opera guy. It was thrilling until I got home and actually got to wear it. The tee looks like a camisole on me #Fail (These are sometimes when you can say, what you win is not important.)

First Session was by @deepakp7 about Statistical Machine Translation. My involvement in the session was limited to distributing a handout he had brought.

Folks from Artin Dynamics demonstrated their product Spara, which I understand is a energy conservation product that studies power usage of a system, analyses it and shuts down power whenever necessary, there by saving power.

The presenter Deepa Eshwar was good looking and enthusiastic, but the presentation as such was incomplete. They didn’t even have a single photo of the product. They could have included some shots or even could have shown us a demo.

Ranjith Avarachan took a session about how social media enthusiasts are using social media to do community help and charity. I was busy learning Aravind’s camera so I missed most of it.

Fahad Mether talked about an interesting initiative of his – No Negative Day. The 24th of every month is chosen as the No Negative day and on this day you knowingly do some positive things like you could stop smoking that day, call your loved ones and so on. Someone asked why he chose 24th, for which he said, 24th is his birthday

Alan Haggai talked about Pearl and why he thinks its awesome. He moves his body so fast, I was following him around with Aravind’s camera trying to take one good shot of him. Most of the pics I took of him are blurred.

@AravindJose came up with his session: Web Penetration in Kerala – Status Report & Forecast. He showed it using a video. It was pure AWESOMATIC. I would rate it as the best part of #bck8. A blog he started about Kottayam City: Kottayam Pattanam – Celebrating Kottayam, is running well now. His video was very insprational, you can see it here.

Another session I enjoyed was by @ivan457 about Entrepreneurship – How to start-up in Kerala.  I used to talk with him on twitter mostly about Paypal, but I never realized he was an advocate until he told so in stage. His presentation was very insightful, and he knows the legal side very well (he should, he is an advocate ) ; He would make a good contact in future

For the first time at a BarCamp, Lunch was FREE. The impact of lunch being arranged at the session is big it seems. Kenney (later) observed that people would stay back for the noon sessions since food was available there. Other wise many would go out to have food and leave that way.

The most interactive session after lunch was Kenney’s session on Marriages. He discussed various marriage customs and traditions existing in kerala. His session ended with a slide that read “Live in relationships”, which is more likely to be the scenario soon.

I was kinda feeling sleepy, then I went out with Ivan, Ranjith, Aravind and some other guys for some chit chat. In the mean while, @NijuMohan’s session on the recent Tata Jagriti Yatra he went on, Reni Yohanan’s session on Network Securtiy and @AjithSamJohn’s session on Social Media Recruitment passed by.

Outside the hall, we talked about Paypal and how optimising for local search could bring us decent traffic. Njiu joined us after his session.

Now it was my turn. Sky was getting dark, and it was about time to rain, so many left the hall. when I came up there, there were only about 20 listeners.

I started with a bummer. I was showing how to change the default username admin. The idea was to create a new user, and delete the old user and move all the posts to the new user. After creating a new administrator, I forgot to sign out and sign-in from the new user, so I couldn’t delete the admin user. That was embarrassing. But the crowd was supportive. (Here is it if you need details: 3 ways to change default admin username)

Then I showed how to install themes and plugins. I also showed how to edit the theme, just the basics. If you like to dig deeper, here is something: Make Yourself a Unique WordPress Theme in 5 Easy Steps. I hope someone got something from my session.

Arun Raj was ready with his session on Drupal to fight with WordPress, but he decided to save it for the next time since the audience head count was poor.

We had tea and snacks, thanks again to the Principal Father Abraham Mulamootil. While having tea he asked me if he could learn how to edit his blog, I assured him its easy and anyone can master it if he puts in some effort. He is an enthusiastic guy with a modern outlook. VERY unlike other people of his age who thinks if a person goes online often, he is probably spoilt.

Then Binny came on stage with some humour and talked about eNGO. Its basically an ad network for the non-profit organisations. All those who have adspace on personal blogs that they do not wish to monetize can join in. It will be live soon.

Finally we thanked the college and the principal, said good byes, took photos and came back home. Thanks to the lift till Thirivalla Transport Bus Stand from @VipinOnline. We got a bus till kottayam easily, but coming home from there was quite hard. I reached home at 11 pm.

Overall, it was an eventful day. I have attended even better BarCamps, the AWESOME-ness element was missing. Looking forward to next one.

BCK8 in 3 Minutes – A Round-Up Video by @AravindJose

P.S I missed @TheAnand who was baby sitting @jlusujith who was down with fever (ahem ). Photos of #bck8 are here, thanks to @AravindJose.

Memoirs of BarCamp Kerala 8 at MACFAST is a post from: The Kuttappi

Adsense Baby!

First, it was the month which I got my first Adsense Check. I enrolled with Adsense in the October of 2006, so it was really exciting to get hold of the check. Wonder how many people have helped me earn it, the people I have never met.

As always the first check is the sweetest and the hardest. I got some more checks later that year, but none of them was as special as that.

Presentation at Amrita Fooster

This was my first presentation on any camp.

A friend of mine, @anichandru invited me and @TheAnand to the grant event. We did a combined presentation on Blogging (me) and Making Money Blogging (Anand).

Anish Chandran, Juwal Bose, Me and Anand at Amrita Fooster 2009

Anish and @JuwalBose did a Presentation on Blender too. It was one fine day. You can see my slides and notes here.

Money March

It didn’t stop with the Adsense check, so I named the month as Money-March. For the first time I made money from affiliates, most of them coming from the Free StudioPress Themes Page.

Add on to that, I got to work on a website for a guy, and that would be my first client. (shh, I did better not say more about it).

One year later, things are going strong, a lot happened in between, I mean a LOT. Wish I had started Kuttappi last year. Anyways, sooner is better

Remembering Last March is a post from: The Kuttappi

6 more days and my college life is done with.

It feels pretty weird, I have never written about my college here where I am supposed to be personal. Sometimes I think I got nothing from college, but sooner I would realize everything changed when I was in college. Everything.

I am a final year B-Tech Student at Mar Athanasius College of Engineering, Kothamangalam. The ‘am’ will change into ‘was’ in about a week. Of course the 2 month long exams remain, but I won’t get to meet my friends once classes are over.

Its farewell time now, Had a Farewell party at Group Tutor’s Home last Wednesday, except @HariKris19, my bff, who went to attend his cousin’s marriage, everyone was there. Had fun, you know how these farewell parties are.

Later last week, on Thursday, there was a grant sent off from IEEE Student Branch. It was me, @AswinSagar and @ShyamCN who worked in re-innovating IEEE Student Branch in my college, which was dormant for a long time. Those were good days, I will always remember…

More parties and more tears to come…

I have gone through this before when I school life ended, so I know this feeling will pass. Still right now, it feels heavy.

The Final Countdown is a post from: The Kuttappi

Usually Exams are dull for me, but yesterday (25th Feb) I wrote a really good exam. The paper was Swithgear and Protection. I hadn’t prepared really well, but I read the stuffs really well after reaching college (during the lunch break) and lo! The exam went well.

Its been a long time now that I have felt this satisfaction. The last time I think was in S5 (after a Computer Organisation and Applications test, I do well with computers usually). Feels so good to be satisfied in a long time.

Feeling Satisfied in a Long Time is a post from: The Kuttappi

I was there to take a session on ‘How to easily build Websites using WordPress’.

So I boarded the Cannanore Express at Aluva Railway Station, last Friday evening. @TheAnand was supposed to be with me, unfortunately he had to skip the trip since he was busy with the works of new office of @Ayruz.

Luckily I found some of my friends from college at the station. It was my first trip to Kannur, the train was crowded. I got a seat after a couple of stations, the trip was tiring, except for the company with friends.

In the train, I met and old lady in her 60’s (I assume). She looked neat and she was having fun with some kids sitting nearby. She made me feel what a privilege it is to grow old with someone. We got acquainted before I got off at Kannur station at around 11 p.m. where @NijuMohan was waiting with his brother in his new car for me.

I had dinner at Niju’s home, and the plan was to stay there over night. I got introduced to his Dad and Mom, and two of his brothers. We both hadn’t completed our slides. So we sat all night doing it, chit chatting, browsing and sharing stuffs. Thanks to the unlimited internet at his nest. We slept for 90 minutes that night.

After a quick break fast, with Niju and Hari, a friend of Niju and the in-charge of the event, we set out for the day. On the way, I met Praveesh, a Photshop enthusiast and a third year student at CET.

We picked up, @shalvinpd on the way, little did I know that I was going to get my basic .Net lessons from him later in the day.

We reached CET by around 9 a.m. We went to a guest room which was the only room with wifi in the college, where we got refreshed, I did some tweeting. The sessions started by 9.45 a.m.

The first session by Niju, who is an alumni of the college himself, about Web Trends gave an intro to the audience about existing web technologies, concepts of web 1.0 and web 2.0; a general introduction to the web.

He also showed this viral video: Web 2.0  – The Machine is Us/ing Us.

Then Shalvin sir did his magic with the basics of Microsoft .net. He came with some DVD’s to give-away, which was taken well by the crowd. (I got a copy on the way back home).

I followed Shalvin with my session. It was the first time that I had practised before a presentation. So it went really smooth. I did a demo of WordPress on local host.

I made a cool looking website in 10 minutes and I believe the crowd liked the speed with which websites could be made. The demo was followed by a segment on How to make money online, which, obviously, got great attention.

[Bad: no one had a camera (even in the digital age). So no photo memoires]

While lunch was getting ready, Niju and Me talked to the audience and inspired them to try blogging. Niju also talked about their campus blog, CeTly Live, which is not officially launched yet, so many didn’t know about it.

It was lunch time, I met up with some guys from the college, then had lunch with Niju, Shalvin in ‘the wifi room’. Fried Rice was good

Me and Shalvin left after the lunch, to catch the Ernakulam Express. Praveesh and Varun dropped us off at the station. At the station, me and Shalvin sir exchanged thoughts. I demonstrated WordPress and its working and he gave me an intro of .Net. The train came at 2.45 p.m.

We managed to find a seat after a couple of stations and started working on .Net on Shalvin’s Praseed Sir’s laptop (Shalvin was using his laptop).

Later when the battery died out, I installed .Net on mine and did some coding on the way. We turned to bits and pieces of paper that we could get hold of, when my battery died.

Shalvin sir was a great company during the trip. He showed me two of his favourite tracks on his mobile. He is a hard-core music enthusiast himself.

Finally I got off at Ankamally Station, said ta-ta to Shalvin. The last bus to Perumbavoor was gone by the time I got a Lime juice. So I walked asked for a lift to a random stranger and hooped on his bike to the Ankamally transport bus stand.

To my surprise, I met @jerilk, my neighbour and friend from school.

A new edition Volvo Bus of KSRTC pulled up right in front of us. We went inside just out of curiosity. It is air-conditioned and the seats are amazing. Took some pictures (later) inside the bus and talked to the driver. He said the bus gets a mileage of 2.5 km per litre.

Later, we came home in another bus, me had dosha and Jeril had omelet at a local Thattu kada. Walked home from town and talked for a long while.

It was one hell of a memorable day. Loved it

Related: Slides and Notes are posted on Million Clues.

First BarCamp Kerala Lite on Web Technologies is a post from: The Kuttappi

Sunday

Attended Church on Sunday. I rarely do that these days, but I love going to the church. Being in the church is a time to think of me and find my bits and pieces.

Monday

Sleepless night. I was preparing the presentation for the Campus Blogging Meet. I love staying up all night and its been about 2 months since I did it last. Felt so good.

Tuesday

Campus Blogging Meet at Kathrikadavu. I took a session on ‘How to write awesome articles‘. Reconnected and had fun with a lot of friends.

Wednesday

The presentation is featured on Slideshare both on homepage and the ‘Hot on Twitter’ section.

Frinday (today)

Snippets of My Team Mates for the project @harikris19, Sonia Sunny, and @jithoot in the pic. Another mate, Vineeth Wilson is on my right (a piece of his shirt can be seen on far left on the pic)

Final year Project Presentation. The presentation went really well. For the first time in my life, a teacher appreciated something I did and said to the whole class in this scale, ‘This is the way to do it’. Felt like heaven

Campus Blogging Presentation is still on the homepage, its featured in ‘Hot on Twitter’ section twice and ‘Hot on Facebook’ section too.

Two Presentations and lots of Fun. Time to Treat myself and take real rest

P.S: The week is not over yet, but couldn’t wait till tomorrow evening to write all this

A Week To Remember is a post from: The Kuttappi

Organised by @KenneyJacob and @KevinBabu, I was there to meet up with my friends and to take a session on ‘How to write good blog posts’.

I was second after Kenney’s talk; I was really hoping for a after-noon slot. The presentation went fine, pretty basic stuff. I found it difficult to get to the very basic level for the newbies and the pro’s sitting on the back row were getting uneasy, bored and hungry

The newbies should have found it useful I hope.

I was followed by @binnyva with his presentation on WordPress back-end and customization. I got the honours of introducing Binny to the crowd which was easy since I have been closely following this guy around for a while

The only under-15 at the camp, Ajith Jose then came up with a robot that he built and programmed.

After a  not-so-bad lunch, sponsored by Kenney, and a bottle of Pepsi, sponsored by @zeqox, and a lot of random chit-chat after noon sessions kicked off with some college-made videos by Jibin and his friends. Jibin also shared his experience with their campus blog: Cealive.

Just to keep my head steady (I hadn’t slept the previous night), I switched to incongnito mode and started chatting with friends over IM and Twitter, my both ears were alert though, always looking for the opportune moment to strike the ‘goal‘

@crazyJibin talked on Blogging in different sectors and then came @theAnand’s 2 minutes maggie-speech on SEO.

The real surprise came after the camp. I had uploaded the slides on Slideshare, a popular presentation sharing site.

Luckily, many folks liked the slides, and favourite’d it. As I write this, the presentation is featured on the homepage of Slideshare both in the featured section and the Hot on Twitter Section. gosh, that’s too much for me!

Here are the slides for your viewing pleasure

Update: I am told that its not the first, but the second Campus Blogging Meet. I didn’t know about the first one, ah. So better read the title as ‘My First Campus Blogging Meet’

Update 2 (on 29th Jan): The slides are still on the homepage of Slideshare. It was featured in the ‘Hot on Facebook‘ section today and in the ‘Hot on Twitter’ section for the second time.

First Campus Blogging Meet at Innovation Lab is a post from: The Kuttappi

Today there was an Annular Solar Eclipse and I got lucky to see it. It’s the first time I am seeing one. FYI, an annular solar eclipse is:

A special case of solar eclipse is called annular eclipse. It occurs when the moon is farther from the earth than normal distance, hence, its apparent size is not sufficient to cover the sun completely.

Therefore, even though the sun-moon alignment is perfect, the moon appears slightly smaller in diameter than the sun and a thin ring of sunlight is visible around the dark silhouette of the moon,” explained Anil Yadav, incharge, Indira Gandhi Planetarium

Source

Teachers were also equally excited to see the event, it was real fun to witness something like this with teachers and friends. Today is a memorable day

See Some Images of Annular Solar Eclipse on Google, I don’t know how one can shoot a solar eclipse, maybe using a filter on the camera.

Eclipse of a Lifetime is a post from: The Kuttappi