Today S1S2 CSE batch jointly had planned to have a Christmas and Eid celebration at 12.45PM. We have invited all our teachers and other staffs from the CSE department. Due to the function by MATRICS, we are advised to stop our function by 1PM. Being our first function and due to the lack of time, we couldn’t work it out better as we thought. Head of CSE Department Anil sir introduced all the teachers to us. Later we presented Anzab sir, who took Basic Electrical for us with a momentum as he was leaving the college.

The function of MATRICS(MES Association for Technical Research In Computer Science), the association of CSE department in MES started by about 2PM. There were speeches by Principal, Vice Principal, Head of the department and the former Head of the department. The first ever magazine by MATRICS, “THE TECHNIK” was also inaugurated. There was a flash presentation about the contents of the magazine too.

In the last, we had an interactive session on one of my favorite topic “Free Software” with the technical team from focuz Infotech, Kochi led by Hiran Venugopal. It was really informative and helped to clear few of my doubts.

Today, the written exams for first series came to an end. Among the 8 subjects, Maths II and Physics were a bit tough for me. Now only Engineering graphics is left and heard that it will be conducted after the Christmas holidays. Everyone is saying that its better to have series exams everyday so that there won’t be any homeworks…!

First Series test for S1S2 students at MES CE started today. Series exams have great role in deciding the internal marks. Out of 50 marks in internal, 20 is calculated through two series exams. Internals is a major factor for getting pass mark in all the semesters. There are two exams with 2 hours and 50 marks each everyday, for 4 days. Today, It was Maths I and Maths II. Maths I was easier as all the questions were done in the class itself. But, for Maths IInd, only one among the questions were done in the class and the exam was tough for me. The condition is the same with almost all students.

After one week of strike, college reopened today. There was high police protection in front of the college gate in the morning, but by evening there were only a few. I found that a discussion is going about the strike in the Orkut community of MES College of Engineering. It is quite useful to get the present situation of college.

Also, today we heard from the teachers that the first Series exams for S1S2 are scheduled for 7/12/2007, Friday. Its too near and if we had heard it before the strike, we could have prepared much better for it. If its so, we couldn’t conduct the Free Software workshop on the date proposed by Mahesh. So, there are chances for post ponding it to January 2008.

Today, there was a discussion about the topics for the Free Software workshop in the #mes-fsf IRC channel at freenode.net. Shyam, Priyan, Shehin, Vibin Das, Sachin and Krishnaraj were present there. We decided to conduct the workshop on 11th December, Tuesday and planned for a meeting on 3rd December, Monday to have a final discussion about the topics. Currently, there are 13 members to present the topics and about 10 topics, out of which most are related to electronics side. Anyway, with the workshop, we hope we will have a voice to ask for a GNU lab at MES.