Last three days witnessed great rain here in Kerala. Its due to the low pressure formed in the Bey of Bengal and is said to last for a few more days. The rain was comparatively less today. In the three days, roads were flooded and many damages were caused, mainly in the agricultural sector. As usual as in rainy days, the electricity played hide and seek with the rain. Any way, the rain might reduce the scarcity of drinking water during the summer.

There was a meeting during noon in our college to discuss about the future activities of GNU Lab at MES CE. It could be considered as the first official one. Raju sir, Raghesh sir and a few students including Shyam and Mahesh were present. The participation in the meeting was less as the study leave for university exams for second and third years starts today.

The current active topics were discussed and Raju sir suggested to go through the previous years Google Summer of Code topics to get more for the GNU Lab. Other suggestion were to have the college labs open 24 hours and to provide the root password for students, so that they could do much more. Raju sir himself supported us by quoting IIT’s and NIT as examples and said that the authorities here are not much encouraging and the college could develop in these aspects only with their help. He also suggested few ideas to overcome such situations. I am a bit disappointed too, that the conclusion of the meeting was to give first years works like to introduce or work with a particular software or topic. I think there might be talented ones who could do much beyond that and the selection criteria should not be based on year or semester wise.

Today, was the day of the yearly celebration in the Vishnu and Shiva temple near my house. The celebration is commonly called as “Edayur Pooram”. The temple is said to exist even before 10000 years.

Its not a very big celebration, compared to those held at other temples. Many art forms like “Theyyam”, “Thara”, “Poothan”, “Panchavadhyam”, etc were present and its the only occassion where I could see such. Fireworks were also present during night.

Today, I went to the college just to attend the meeting of GNU lab. Mails were sent to the groups inviting all to participate. At first, the time was fixed as 10AM, but later shifted to 3PM. I was eager to see all who are there in the GNU Lab at the initial stage, but disappointed on seeing only Mahesh and Fahad there. We three went to the shore of Nila to discuss about the activities. Thus, we had our first meeting of GNU Lab in the shore of Nila, sitting in the sand. There wasn’t much to discuss and we just made a rough idea of what has to be done. Priority was given to the GNU Lab Website and a college based Debian distro, which includes all that a college student need and surely Compiz and good themes to amaze all. We also decided to conduct a meeting every 2 weeks, even though we doubt about the participation. The meeting lasted for only an hour and we all returned home.

Today was the closing of college for Christmas holidays. There were rumors that classes will be let off at noon, but classes continued up to 3.30PM. The last two periods were spend by singing songs and by anthaksharis, with the permission from the teachers. It was really fun and can be called as “College Days”.

The MES-FSF group had a meeting today at 1PM to discuss about the activities and topics for exhibition. As usual, there were small clashes with ideas. It was almost fixed to conduct the exhibition on 11th January 2008 and we all have to submit the report for it during our next meeting on 31st this month. A few new students from S4 EC too joined us and now we are a good team of about 20 members. I also heard a good news that discussions are going on to setup a Debian repository in MES.

I also bought the GPRS recharge card today as my mother gave me the permission [but not the money 🙁 ]. Now waiting for it to be active.