I was not much interested in participating in Google Summer of Code this year due to the high work and study load in the first year of my B-Tech(Every one says that first year is a crucial year). As my friends inspired me, I at last decided to check out the topics. I was concentrating more on topics related to Malayalam, as it will be easy to get included as chances for SMC to be there in the selected organisations is high(SMC was the only organisation selected from India last year). But, when I read the rules and regulations, I found that only those who are of 18 years old on or before 14th April 2008 are allowed to participate. I am still 17 and will be 18 only during last of May. So, at last it was confirmed that I am not participating in GSoC this year.

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.

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, 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.

The chats in IRC is now becoming a part of my daily routine. Today it was mainly about organizing a program at MES college of engineering to make the public and students aware about free softwares and its ipmortance and significance. Sub topics included booting problem with IT@School GNU/Linux in some mother boards, configuring GPRS internet in Debian and all. The chat log follows.