“Sarovar.org is India's first portal to host projects under Free/Open source licenses. It is located in Trivandrum, India and hosted at Asianet data center. Sarovar.org is customised, installed and maintained by Linuxense as part of their community services and sponsored by River Valley Technologies.
Sarovar is hosted on a Compaq box running Debian woody and GForge.
Please read the site documentation http://doc.sarovar.org for effective use of Sarovar.org. Contact raj at linuxense dot com if you have further questions or comments”
Sarovar.org
I always had a sneaky suspicion that there were a lot of really smart guys in Trivandrum, my home town. This more or less confirms it.
I have joined and have plans of putting my nucleus plugins over there. I have started out on a couple of new projects which hopefully will have a larger user base.
Open Source is a natural fit for India. Behind inherently less materialistic than the West and with a long scholarly tradition of distributing knowledge behind us, I am quite sure that Indians will make their mark in OSS.
India really is shining ;-)
“Welcome to the homepage of the Indian Linux Project. The goal of this project is to create a Linux distribution that supports Indian Languages at all levels. This Indianisation project will strive to bring the benefits of Information Technology down to the Indian masses. We want to make technology accessible to the majority of India that does not speak English.
The task of localization has several pieces that need domain expertise. Some examples are I/O modules, development of fonts, kernel enablement, word translation etc. The project is looking for experts and volunteers to champion the cause of Indian language computing. You may volunteer and participate here.
The Indian Linux project is open source and completely free. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License.Here are the complete licensing terms and conditions.”
The IndLinux Project
See if you can help them out in any way you can.
It is something that has been in the back of my mind right from my college days, yes even before I started working :-)
Once you take out work from your life, you have an endless supply of time in your hands and life suddenly seems teeming with possibilities. The promise of doing something new every single day is tantalising, dont you think ?
Ofcourse, boredom is a highly possible outcome. The trick is to keep yourself occupied, this time around doing something you enjoy rather than something you get paid for.
Social service will be the first thing I take up. To be able to make a difference, however small, in someone's life is the intended redemption of a human life. This will most likely involve teaching. I used to teach a good number of my classmates and have been given fairly good reviews of my teaching capabilities. So teaching is definetely on the cards.
Sreekanth and I must have talked endless hours about how with a little effort you can change a lot of things you despise around you. Hopefully, at some point in our lives, we will be able to do something about this rather than keep talking.
Other stuff that I will be doing include,
Travel. First the whole of India and a few choice destinations around the world. Travel is ofcourse expensive and would most likely to remain an unfullfilled dream in the back of my mind ( It must be getting crowded in there :) ).
Learning a musical instrument is something that I have always wanted do.
It is a sad fact but I really do like sitting in front of a computer for endless hours, browsing, reading and occassionally writing. I am perhaps too addicted to the internet to let go completely. I mean where else can someone like me get to be a
fashion designer ;-) At some point in the future, I would like to close down all my “for profit ventures” and create something which is informative and usefull.
The word “Family” is ofcourse an unknown variable in this equation. Being a bachelor is investing in time. Getting married is investing in love. Hopefully, I can get a fair dose of both :-)
More than anything else, I would like to slow down my life. I am tired, very much so, of the constant hurry burry of the daily life. Images of a slow calm life, somewhere along the banks of the backwaters of alleppey is a recurring image in my dreams. Someday, I want to open my eyes and find it to be true.
“To demonstrate, Humes brings up a video presentation in which a disheveled and highly animated professor, Walter Lewin, is demonstrating how an EKG test works. First of all, he's a great speaker. He does demonstrations. We never had that. Our class was all tedious derivations. Every day he impressed the heck out of me. He relates it all to things you know. Look at these kids laughing. They give him a standing ovation at the end of each lecture! We never had a moment of levity in our class.
Humes was so stoked by the physics class that he also reviewed the OpenCourseWare version of calculus and has since moved on to linear algebra. Now he prepares for exams at Murray State by practicing with OpenCourseWare quizzes covering the same material. ”I do fine and feel great, and then when I take my test the problems are easier,“ he says. ”There's a lot of satisfaction that comes from being able to understand the MIT classes.“
”Check this out,“ he says, clicking to an early lecture in linear algebra. Soon he is transfixed by the famous mathematician Gilbert Strang. He finally turns to me, displaying the most amazing grin - that of someone who's just discovered the joys of learning.
It's a Nobel Prize-worthy grin.
”
Read more.
Next to
Gutenburg and
Bibliomania,
OCW is where I spend most of my online time when I get bored with aimless surfing.
Hey, I would have thought hits from india would be up there among the top three. Looks like not many of our universities are wired and not many of lecturers know. Next time you come across an engineering student / lecturer, ask him/her whether he knows about
OCW.
I am holidaying in Trivandrum and in whatever little spare time I got, I managed to open my
own online store :-)
Let me know what you think of it.
Yesterday morning had a nice surprise in store for me.
There was a knock on the door at around 10:30 AM and when I open it, suprise suprise .. who do I find but our own
vignesh :-). We had a great time catching up on stuff and discussing what has changed and what has not :-) I can see good days ahead !
Thought for the day :
People may doubt what you say,
But they will always believe what you do.
PS : Recovering from a fever. Hence the lull on this site.
Since the current design of tamizhan.com revolves around a photograph of arjuna's penance from Mamallapuram, I thought I would share some information I collected on it during the process.
from the
indiamart pages,
Name.
The proper name of the site is “Mamallapuram”, after Mamalla, an honorific of the Pallava king, Narasimha Varman I (630-668), who created the earliest of its monuments. But it is popularly called “Mahabalipuram”, or “The city of Bali”, whom Lord Vishnu chastised for his pride and of whom there is a relief in one of the excavated temples here.
About Mahabalipuram
The history of Mahabalipuram dates back to two thousand years, it contains nearly forty monuments of different types including an “open air bas relief” which is the largest in the world, for centuries it has been a centre of pilgrimage, it figures in the early annals of the British search for the picturesque in India in the 18th century, today it attracts shoals of foreigners in search of relaxation and sea bathing, and most strange of all, it has an atomic power plant for neighbour. A small library has been written on it.
Over its history and that of its monuments a number of scholarly controversies rage. Mahabalipuram was already a centre of pilgrimage when, in the 7th century Mamalla made it a seaport and began to make temples fashioned of rock. It was through Mahabalipuram that many Indian colonists, who included sages and artists, migrated to Southeast Asia. Sri Lanka's national chronicle, the “Mahavamsa” testifies to this fact.
from the
TTDC site,
This skilfully carved rock is the largest bas - relief sculpture in the world. It gets its name from the figure of an ascetic who is believed to be Arjuna, the hero of Mahabharata, doing penance to obtain a boon from Lord Siva. However, there are others who think that the figure is actually Bhagiratha who entreated Siva to let the river Ganges flow over the earth.
Among the other carvings on the rock are animals and heavenly beings witnessing the descent of the Ganges from the Himalayas and some episodes from the Panchatantra tales.
from the
roamin-aboout site,
One of the most spectacular carvings is the “Descent of the Ganges”also known as 'Arjuna's Penance'. The carving tells the story of pious Arjuna who persuades Shiva to use his hair to break the fall of the River Ganga. The large cleft between the boulders is the where the Ganges descends.
Around him is a crowd of animals, gods, and ascetics watching the saving of the world as the river descends.
from the
jetairtours site,
TOURIST SPOTS IN AND AROUND MAMALLAPURAM :
Caves : There are nine rock-cut temples. The Mahishasuramardhini cave, depicting the goddess fighting a demon on one side and Lord Vishnu's cosmic sleep on the other, is a particularly remarkable one.
Krishna Mandapam : A bas relief, notable for its realistic representation. The panel relates to one of the stories of Lord Krishna.
Arjuna's Penance : This is the world's largest bas relief measuring 27m X 9m. This huge whale-backed rock contains figures of gods, demigods, men, beasts, birds and almost all of the entire creation. And, this is easily the pride of Mamallapuram.
The Five Rathas : There are the five monolithic temples, each created in a different style. They are also known as the Pancha Pandava Rathas - and four out of the five rathas are supposed to have been carved out of a single rock.
The Shore Temple : This is one of the oldest temples. Unique about this temple is the fact that it houses shrines for both Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu. This belongs to the early 8th century AD and it is a classic example of the first phase of structural temples constructed in pure Dravidian style.
The Government College of Architecture and Sculpture: Here training is imparted in the various branches of temple art and architecture, according to Silpa Sastra.
Crocodile Bank : Is situated about 14 kms. away from Mamallapuram. Over 5000 crocodiles representing 6 different species are maintained here. There are also numerous other types of rare reptiles.
Covelong : The remains of the fort have now been converted into a luxury beach resort which offers facilities for windsurfing and swimming, an ancient Catholic Church, a mosque and the ruins of the fort make interesting viewing from this 5 Star hotel.
Tirukalukundram : This tourist spot has a small Shiva temple situated on the top of the Vedagiri
hill which is 160m high. Just before noon everyday, two White kites stop at the temple and are fed by the temple priests. Legend has it that these two birds are actually saints who daily make a stop to rest at the temple on their flight between Varanasi and Rameswaram.
There is also a larger Shiva Temple in the town below. At the South-East end of the town is a spacious tank whose waters are said to have curative powers. Once every 12 years, a conch is discovered in this tank and thousands of devotees flock to bathe in the tank at this auspicious time. A collection of the conches is displayed in the larger Shiva Temple.
Muttukkadu : This is an ideal picnic spot. T.T.D.C, runs a Boat House, where facilities for boating and wind surfing are available.
Sounds like a good place to visit ?