Its a long time I have written something here. Everytime I think of it, I will get involved in something else and forget about it. This time, I can’t resist it.

Our friend, Shyam Karanattu passed away two days before. The saddest part is that it was a suicide. All people who know him are shocked to hear the news and has not yet recovered from it. Shyam was an active free software advocate and activist. Here is what Anivar has to tell about him.

For me, he was more than a friend. He was my senior at THSS Vattamkulam and also at MESCE, though he was in EC branch. He was one of the persons who has influenced me much. Even though I am attracted to FOSS a long time before, it was he who introduced me(and many others) to the FOSS Community and Swathantra Malayalam Computing group. Later, we became colleagues, organized many events at MESCE and participated in many events together. He was the major driving force for the formation of MES-FSUG group and GNULabs at MESCE.

He was so attracted to FOSS and whenever we talked, we end up with something related to it. After his B-Tech also, we kept in touch and the last time I contacted him was during the time of SMC Localization Camp at MESCE. He said he had some family functions and couldn’t attend and will try to be there for the next event. Now he left us without waiting for thee next event.

Here are few snaps of him from my collection.

He has also interviewed RMS during the FSFS.in conference.

Shyam Karanattu Interviewing Richard Stallman for Amrita TV

There are much more to say about him, but….
We all love you Shyam. You shouldn’t have done that, whatever the reason was.

This year FOSSMeet at NIT Calicut is scheduled on 5-7 February. For more details on the events, registration and schedules, check the website http://fossmeet.in/

FOSS Hut registrations has already started. Check it here.

Promote it as I did in my site. Promotion banners are available here. Spread it to your friends, colleagues and also through your blog and micro blogs.

Just found out the time line for the next Long Term Support(LTS) version of Ubuntu. Thought it will be worth sharing.

I wasn’t blogging for a long time as I was busy with few works and MESTECH, the annual technical fest at MESCE. Due to the recent situations at college, the event was postponed indefinitely. Let those happenings be another post 🙂

Ubuntu 10.04 Timeline

As a part of the annual technical fest of NIT Calicut – Tathva, FSUG Calicut and Geohackers are arranging an open mapping party to map the whole campus of NITC and to be made available in openstreetmap.org.

Check the wiki for more details and try to be there for the party.

We were in search for GPS enabled devices and it helped me to familairize openmoko, the mobile phone with an open source software stack. Thanks to Sreeraj and the Kriyate team for allowing me to hack it. Though the device was an older model(Neo1973), it is really interesting to hack. I’ll be blogging about the hacks I did in the moko soon.

Mozilla Firefox and its clones were my favourite browser for a long time since its first release and I have been a member of spreadfirfox too from its beginning. Few months before, I joined mozilla campusrep program just because of fascination. I registered for the swag pack thinking of using it for the MESTECH, but was not sure whether I’ll be selected.

2 days ago, I received my swag pack, including a T-shirt(my size is small, but received a large), stickers, tattoos, badges, tags and armbands. Here are few snaps…

MESTECH, the annual technical fest of MESCE is currently scheduled on 18th and 19th of November. Hoping arrange a stall for FOSS and firefox.