when will you grow up, people?

Yesterday I was on the way to Baneshwor for a little party by my friends, going to US for their study. Don't ask how many of my classmates are here in Nepal. And I wasn't saying grow up to my friends.

On the half way to the Baneshwor, it was total jam. Vehicles going up totally occupied the entire road. I was thinking what caused that - some rally, demostrations.... I was on bike. The beauty is you can tweak around to leave the jam behind. I followed other bikers, driving in the footpath. On the other side of the jam, the vehicles coming down occupied the entire street. It was disturbing to see that. Nothing was happening at all. Just hurrying people trying to get first and everyone got stuck. The major culprits are the microbus, tempo and minibus drivers, who are always in a hurry, turning, moving, crossing others way without any signal. When will these people grow up. Recently I posted a powerpoint presentation on why developing are always left behind. This attitude of people won't let the country move forward. Not just government, we are equally responsible for the present condition of our country.

my opinion: Writing is not difficult when you are yourself.

Few days back I posed a question "Is writing difficult?". I have been writing 2/3 blogs per day and realized that "no. writing is not difficult when you just let yourself flow". One thing is if you keep on writing, the ideas just flow. But if you stop it, the same happens with your free-flowing ideas. When I used to be regular for 3 months 3 months back, I still remember how enthusiast I had become about writing. And everywhere I go, everything i do, i would think "well i can blog this." I was so conscious about my whereabouts, my whatdoings? But i still haven't developed a habit of jotting down notes as soon as it comes to my mind, which experts would consider the must-have, must-develop habit of wanna-be-writers and ofcourse all sort of writers. I was thinking about blogging on "writing is not difficult" blog in the morning. I am not trying to boast about my memory but i am trying to say that I am not a writer yet. I need to develop jotting-ideas habit.

So I will keep blogging everything that comes to my mind. Don't care about my target audiences. Infact I haven't thought about them yet, though blogging experts would say to must set target audiences to start blogging to give you a purpose of blogging. As I have said before "my purpose for now is to develop a habit of smooth writing." and forget about others. I am sorry to you (reader) but I am really bad at writing so blogging is just a medium to me.

At informal WDR2007 presentation

I just happened to be in an informal presentation on World Development Report (wdr) 2007 by Deepti Kharurel of AYON (Association of Youth Organization Network) at Sap-Nepal. Though I haven't read the entire book, I had downloaded it to my computer and skimmed through the chapters and still remember that there are 1.3 billion youths aged 12-24 in the world.



I enjoyed my time there at the presentation. It was sort of raising awareness among youths, involved in youth organizations, since WDR07 primarily focused on youths. I liked the documentary, I didn't know that wdr is also accompanied by documentary when I downloaded it. I had skimmed though the book then and liked the concept of giving second chances to the youth. There were three main concepts regarding youths: opportunity to the youths, increasing capability among the youths and providing them second chance. I also had the pleasure to see the hard-copy of the WDR, colorful, smooth pages, extravagant looking. I wonder how much a piece of book would cost. That would have been enough for a month food for a family in Africa (just my guess!). Someone raised a pretty rational query "Ok now we know some facts about world, poverty, youths. Now what are we going to do? And can we [the youths] do?".



During the tea break, I was listening to some youths talking on politics, why many youths are falling into the trap of politics. Some of them were suggesting the fact that it was because of insecurity. Many still believe that if you follow somw party leader, you will have a secure future. In fact there are many cases to support this fact. One was also giving an example of a competitive, qualified friend applying for some decent post, then another person, affiliated to some party, also applied to the same post. The result is affiliation proved beneficial. The one, who cited this example, later mocked his friend saying, "you were busy preparing yourself for the interview, your competitor must be busy calling everyone he knows". This is very fatal to everyone of us. Maybe also one of the reasons why people call politics a dirty game. I was illuminated with several interesting ideas from the youths.



PS: I am writing this at 4:30PM in "Performancing Editor". I will post it at night after my night-surfable internet resumes. Well just trying to show my gratitude to the "Performancing Team".

me: controlled by the environment?

Do you ever feel sagged, drooped when someone told you about interesting things happened to them? Most of the time, I feel that how come I did not do that when people starts to say about their interesting trips and so. I just got a message from a friend that they went for bungy jump yesterday. I am feeling really bad that I have not been to that thrilling jump. I know there's no need to feel bad or sagged. But still we are very prone to being control by the external environment than by our own judgement. I will not let that happen to me. This is the time when people like Brian Tracy, Steve Pavlina come to aid. You listen/read their energetic audios, articles and you will feel revived.

Why difficult to discipline oneself?

Disciplining oneself is certainly the hardest thing to do. We are always doing things that we are not supposed to do or should not do. And we don't feel like doing things that ought to be done. I like the Steven Covey's concept of categorizing our tasks into urgent or/and important and work accordingly. I was discussing the same thing with my friend and he mocked 'with the time in categorizing your tasks, you would be able to complete all your tasks.' That was funny.



The point is I have been really lazy. With my lots of tasks piling up, I am confused with what about of time to give to those and end up with doing other things besides the thing I should be doing.

A funny joke to put smile in your face

ONE NIGHT 4 MBA STUDENTS WERE PLAYING TILL LATE NIGHT AND DIDN'T STUDY FOR THE TEST WHICH WAS SCHEDULED FOR THE NEXT DAY.IN THE MORNING THEY THOUGHT OF A PLAN. THEY MADE THEMSELVES LOOK AS DIRTY AND WEIRD AS THEY COULD WITH GREASE AND DIRT. THEY THEN WENT UP TO THE DEAN AND SAID THAT THEY HAD GONE OUT TO A WEDDING LAST NIGHT AND ON THEIR RETURN THE TYRE OF THEIR CAR BURST AND THEY HAD TO PUSH THE CAR ALL THE WAY BACK AND THAT THEY WERE IN NO CONDITION TO APPEAR FOR THE TEST.



SO THE DEAN SAID THEY CAN HAVE THE RETEST AFTER 3 DAYS.THEY SAID THEY WILL BE READY BY THAT TIME. ON THE THIRD DAY THEY APPEARED BEFORE THE DEAN.THE DEAN SAID THAT THIS WAS A SPECIAL CONDITION TEST. ALL FOUR WERE REQUIRED TO SIT IN SEPARATE CLASSROOMS FOR THE TEST. THEY ALL AGREED AS THEY HAD PREPARED WELL IN THE LAST THREE DAYS. />

THE TEST CONSISTED OF 2 QUESTIONS WITH TOTAL OF 100 MARKS.



Q.1. YOUR NAME ............ ......... ............... .......( 2 MARKS )

Q.2. WHICH TYRE GOT BURST ? ............ ....( 98 MARKS )



THE ANSWERS OF THE 4 STUDENTS FOR QUESTION # 2 WERE:



Student 1) Front Left

Student 2) Front Right

Student 3) Back Left

Student 4) Back Right



SO BEWARE! THERE'S ALWAYS A PERSON WHO IS SMARTER THAN YOU AROUND.....!

Again "performancing" at a glance...

Well I installed "Performancing" add-on to my firefox and posted a test post yesterday. You may have noticed "powered by performancing firefox" at the bottom of the post. I thought now I have edit it online to remove that powered tag. I wouldn't want to have it in all of my posts. Fortunately there's an option in settings from where you can choose not to insert it. I hope this time, that "powered by" tag won't appear (i have disabled it).



Someother things that I liked about "Performancing"

You are writing some content and you are maintaining multiple blogs. If you are using browser for blogging, you have to go to the dashboard and choose "create post" for the right blog. People in developing countries would understand how difficult and tardy life is in the internet world. I am delighted to say that "Performancing" definitely makes our life easy to certain extent. You write a post and choose the blog from the sidebar where you would want to have your blog posted. Just a click and everything happens in the background.



Other thing I liked is "History" feature. Choose a blog from the list and click history, 10 latest posts are retrieved from online to your desktop. Choose the one you want to edit and click "Publish as Edit" to edit that post. Life is certainly getting easy. Sometimes I would write online and wouldn't feel like writing after sometime, then I would save it as a draft, so that I would return in future to complete that post. The result is I would totally forget about it and it would remain as draft for ever. "Performancing" wouldn't let that continue in future, now I have that draft in my desktop and complete in my leisure time. Thanks Performancing.



I would love to see more HTML tag options in editor toolbar. Since "performancing" is a sort of desktop utility, it wouldn't be difficult to add more features in the toolbar. By the way, there are even add-ons to the "performancing" add-on. It's funny though that there are add-ons to the add-on. Add-ons/plugins/extensions are the must-think-and-have feature in any application, be it web or desktop. That will really aid the application to extend on and on, re-usability also increases.



I thought inserting image would also be comfortable. "Error: Error contacting server..." welcomes me. I tried with the browser, the image gets uploaded without a question. Well there was a "I agree" checkbox, maybe because beta tag was removed from blogger.com. But still insert image from performancing would not work. I used the url of uploaded image from browser. It worked (see my pic?) . Why uploading from performancing editor not working? A bug?





I think I just found another flaw. As I was typing this post, I have to use "Save as Note" and everytime it asks "Overwrite the note?". That was quite disturbing. I would love to have the option to turn that off. And I almost lost 2 paragraphs. I was writing this post and just happened to browse the posts in the history list. When I came back to the Notes, there was not 2 paragraphs. I got mad. I forget to click "save as note". How insensible is this system to ignore changes when I move to other sections. It should remind me to save the content when I moved around other options. Fortunately undo/redo (Ctrl-Z/Ctrl-Y) worked and I got my content back. That was really scary. This issue should be addressed asap. People will get mad if the content gets lost. Auto-save feature would be really appreciated.

Testing from "Performancing" add-on for firefox

I just installed Performancing Add-on for firefox. According to the site,

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and lets you post to your blog easily. You can drag and drop formatted text from the page you happen to be browsing, and take notes as well as post to your blog.[...]

I was actually looking for similar kind of tool to ease in posting blogs. In this you can also create multiple blog accounts, and choose the one in which you want to post your blog. I have already created 3 accounts in Performance. I hope it will be easy to post regularly.



There's also "Save as note" button, that saves to your desktop. I guess it means I can write offline at any time I want and post it later. Otherwise I used to write in a notepad and save it in my desktop. That's cool. Well this still needs to be explored. By the way this is just a test for Performance add-on. I hope this will appear in my cupboard blog. Ok..publishing now....

powered by performancing firefox

men are happier than women...are they?

Well I love getting insightful forwards. This one is insightful because i get to know so many things that we, men, have advantage over women that we are taking as granted. Perhaps we should think about these things more and be happy :-) Well some points may not apply to all but still we will be happy.

Men Are Just Happier People!!
What do you expect from such simple creatures?

Your last name stays put.
The garage is all yours.
Wedding plans take care of themselves
Chocolate is just another snack.

You can be Prime Minister.
You can never be pregnant.
You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park.
You can wear NO shirt to a water park.
Car mechanics tell you the truth.

The world is your urinal. You never have to drive to another gas station restroom because this one is just too icky.
You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt.
Same work, more pay.

Wrinkles add character.
People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them.

The occasional well-rendered belch is practically expected.
New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet.
One mood all the time.

Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
You know stuff about tanks.

A five-day holiday requires only one suitcase.
You can open all your own jars.
You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
If someone forgets to invite you, he or she can still be your friend.

Your underwear is £5.00 for a three-pack.
Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.
You almost never have strap problems in public.
You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.
Everything on your face stays its original colour.

The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.
You only have to shave your face and neck.

You can play with toys all your life.
Your belly usually hides your big hips.

One wallet and one pair of shoes one colour for all seasons.
You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look.
You can "do" your nails with a pocket knife.
You have freedom of choice concerning growing a moustache.

You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes.

No wonder men are happier...!!

maybe...I haven't found one

I started this blog almost a year ago, with lots of ins and outs. Since Sep 2006, I finally decided to be a regular blogger and I did. But again the past trend continues, with lots of irregularities. I am reading a blog on "how to start a blog?". It days "post something right now" soon after registering for the free blog sites. Mine is pretty old and yet it's hard to convince myself saying "write it anything". This is just a junk.

I think I haven't found one. The same blog 'how to start a blog' says to find a perfect match.

[...]2. Pick a topic — you can change it when you know what you’re doing.
This is like dating. Pick something that seems good, and if it isn’t, try again. Don’t get hung up on topic. As in dating, you’ll know when you’ve found one that’s the right fit. There are some obvious things, like pick a topic you have a lot to say about, pick something that interests you, pick something that will help your career. This is great advice, but you already know that if you look for a perfect match you’ll never actually go on a date.[...]

I guess I am still trying to find a perfect date so that I can be regular and enthusiast about it and i will have a sense of purpose of maintaining blogs. If you scan through my blogs, you will see content on many diverse topics. Anyways I suppose "My Cupboard" can store anything. This is not a specific cupboard. It's my junkyard. I have also started some other specific topics blogs on Tech, ICTs and I am not actually feeling like posting there. The reason is I have to write a good planned content for such specific topics and I wandered around net easily. I am learning new things, techniques almost everyday. I recently found a beautiful php framework "Codeigniter". It's damn simple. Then I found another wonderful jquery, a javascript library, that makes javascript a toy. I myself have tweaked in lots of jquery plugins and codeigniter to suit my needs and there are so many things I could have contributed and yet....

People are reading my blogs...

When I first started to track my blog readers using sitemeter, I used to check that site every so hour. I was very happy when the number started to increase and reached 10/11 views per day. That was a great achievement for me. It's been 2 weeks that I am not writing and yet people are still coming to my blogs, and I feel bad that I just stopped blogging for no apparent reason than just procrastinating. I so much hate procrastination and yet I do.

I guess I will give at least half an hour for blogging. Many people would give different reasons for blogging - earning money, spreading your voice, easy to let others know about your existence. But I am writing just for the sake of writing and nothing at all. If people are interested, then I would be very happy. But again my purpose for now is just writing and break away what amateur writers often experience "the writer's block". At least I have a purpose, though for myself.

Is writing difficult?

Well it's been almost 2 weeks that I totally stopped blogging. Now even though I want to write, the words wouldn't flow as 2 weeks back. I listened to power writing series by Brian Tracy and he mentioned that if you want to be good at writing, then just write. Probably why I am writing right now. Just let the words flow and keep writing, there'll be plenty of time to review and any writing needs at least 5 edits. Wow... I have never done such ever in my life. I don't know how many of you like writing and yet find it difficulty in doing so? It's difficult if you think it's difficult. I have been reading and listening to lots of self-help stuffs and I really like the one called the power of mind. If you can envision yourself that you achieved something, it's really easy to fool our mind. I guess I will try to fool my mind saying that writing is damn easy and I am really good at it. Will update you.

Yeti Airlines to give Rs1 per ticket to an non-profit organization "Tewa"

Tewa, non-profit organization committed to philanthropy for equitable justice and peace, is going to get Rs1 per sold ticket from Yeti Airlines, effective from 1 Oct 2006. This also gives a boost to other non-profit organizations to get involved with other corporate organizations. This will definitely have a symbiosis process, in which non-profit organization will benefit if corporate makes high sales, similarly most people will prefer those corporates that are also involved with philanthropic works. All the best to both Yeti Airlines and Tewa for their prosperous future.

Inspirational "Team Nepal"

The story of a passionate team of Nepali footballers representing a youth club from the district of Birjung. This team is given a unique opportunity not often granted to the still-growing community of Nepali football enthusiasts to travel to Sonpur, Bihar in India, to play football in a tournament taking place there. Team Nepal is the documentation of their experiences in Bihar, traveling, meeting and mixing with other footballers, living in a foreign country, and playing the game they love.

This documentary was the last of November film festival, organized by South Asian Film club, which screened 9 documentaries. I missed others. Anyways next time.

After the show, the director of "Team Nepal", Girish Giri (left), was with us for the questions we might have after the show. Besides he shared a little story behind this great documentary, which also received 'Mention de Honor' at the Milan International Ficts Film Festival in Italy in 2005.

Giri also used to play for that club 4/5 generations back. Later when he found out that the things hasn't changed much since his time, he decided to shoot the event.He did editing on his own at his spare time and took around 2 months to complete, while the event duration was 6 days, covered in 32 min of documentary.

Like mentioned in first paragraph, "Team Nepal" consists of local youths from Birgung, who are passionate about football and looks forward to being on the national team. One team member in the documentary mentioned about his rejections from the national team selection, without being given any reasons. He was complaining that many people think Kathmandu is Nepal, and stressed that our vision should be broadened to see that Nepal is much more than Kathmandu. But though they are not in the National Team, people in India would welcome them as "Team Nepal" and they felt like they are actually playing for Nepal rather than for small youth club, which really helped boost their energy. The documentary was also funny at some places. Overall it was a good and inspiring "Team Nepal".

Imagine working 500 hrs to draw a picture in MSPaint

MSPaint is the children's toy. That's what many of us assume. But making such detailed image in MSPaint is beyond our imagination (exceptions though). What makes people do such things? Is that interest? (but I don't suppose another person will be using same or more amount of time to make such picture and using MSPaint). Is it just to get popularity?

If you see the stats,
Views
Total: 218,782
Today: 35,165

Full-views
Total: 771,014
Today: 0

Comments: 775

That's a pretty good number for a single post. Obviously this guy or better this post is getting popular. It's almost for sure that anybody will be thrilled to see such work using MSPaint. But does it really worth?
My first impression was "Is this guy crazy?" I am impressed with his creativity and art and patience. If you can get the same result using other advanced graphics tools and most importantly with less time, would you choose MSPaint? Just imagine working painstakingly in MSPaint on one image for at least 1 hour. 500 hours is beyond imagination.

Freaky Google Video Player

I normally don't download videos. Sometimes there are some interesting videos at google. Watching streaming videos block by block is not fun at all. The alternative is to download to desktop and you need google video player for that.

As far as I remember the last time I downloaded one video (around 2 weeks back or more) I was asked to download updated video player. Again today I was asked the same. Is google always updating its player? or just discouraging people from downloading videos. That won't be much of a concern in the west but it takes around 10-15 minutes to download the player here in Nepal and again then video would take a lot... sometimes even days ( I used internet at night only). I wonder if google would ever think of making downloads through download accelerators. Or maybe they are afraid that their servers wouldn't be able to handle the loads. Google? Overload? I must be joking.

Why does this happen to me? Now the player V1.0.3.3 starts to download the video, the same version that just asked me to download updated player. Freaky.

It's a hangout time

I was in New Road after quite a long time, I mean, with friends. We had street momo and street tea. They were quite good and number of people were also enjoying the same. By the way, I just gave the name street food. They are served in carts, it's actually a moving kitchen. One corner of New Road is quite busy with those food carts after 5 or 6 PM. They are not allowed before that. New Road is the most busiest part of the city all day long, especially in the evening.

The image shows people making momos, steaming and serving. It's quite a fast food.

A lecture at Social Science Baha

There was a lecture on "The Maoists and the Shamans: The tale of Bullets, Hail and Prejudices" by Anne de Sales at Social Science Baha at around 3:30PM. She showed the conflicts between maoists and the shamans in villages. Both trying to show their presence and power. It sounds more of a story. It would have been much interesting if some sort of presentation was used, instead of just reading from the laptop. At the end, Anne couldn't give first hand answers to several queries. Rather she gave her opinions like I would say yes, i would say no. She did not seem to be strong.

Irresponsible act in the should-be-responsible organization

How much do we respect other people's time? Not much. Probably one of the reasons for our present situation. We, in general, don't care about others time, space. That's why we have a habit of appearing at least an hour late than the actual time and mock ourselves saying "It's nepali time".

Today, I went to pay for the monthly phone bill at Nepal Telecom's Naxal Exchange. I reached there 10 minutes after the offical opening time. Only two people were behind the counter, despite the fact that there should be 5 working counters by 10. This definitely shows carefree attitude of Nepal Telecom (NTC), which has the responsibility of connecting Nepal. Are they to be trusted? Monopoly is the major factor for such scenario.

The two queues were pretty long. After staying in a queue for around 20 minutes, a peon came and summoned both the working persons. Upon interogating, they were being called by their boss for a meeting. Meeting at this rush hour? We were shocked. What kind of irresponsible boss is that in such a responsible state owned organization. We were just waiting for them. Some people even went to talk, but in vain. Some were even suggesting to break few glasses, throw away the TV. Fortunately nothing happened. Then we would be no different from them. Finally they appeared after 20 minutes.

Isn't this such an irresponsible act? Is that meeting at such a rush hour important than the convenience and time of customers? Is our time not valued at all? Many people have to take their time off from their office to pay bills, and just to get waited. If there are people who don't respect others time, then they should never be there. This is not just a problem at NTC but virtually in all the state-owned should-be-most-responsible organizations of Nepal.

I wonder when NTC would start online payment or through debit cards. It's very high time that everyones' time be respected.

How smart are you?

I wonder if "How smart are you?" tests really tests the smartness of people. But it's quite hard to answer all the questions correct, hard may not be the right word. How about time consuming? I would read a question, answer right away, check the answer, find my answer incorrect, smile and would ask myself, "Am I really dumb?" It's just a mind trick. We would just let our sub-conscious mind work on it; many of our answers would just come instantly like 2+2=4. Try it yourself.

Good 'ol days

Today i got to meet old frens from St. Xavier's Campus. It was such a sudden event. It was really good to see them, though few (just the five of us). Joking and laughing and mocking each other reminds us of our old days. But things have changed a lot. One thing I noticed among us is the care for our country Nepal. We are in some way worried about the current situation, even discussed on politics on few moments. It's not just us. Many youths are now aware of politics and its importance and its impact in their lives. I take that as a big revolution in our thoughts since recent April revolution. I used to share one common and popular quote on politics "Politics is a dirty game". But now I don't say that any more, instead argue with those orthodox thinkers.

I am very elated to find out about one of few among my blog readers. Thanks Ranjan.

Drupal Community in Nepal is speeding up

Drupal Community in Nepal got born on Software Freedom Day'06. As decided on that day, finally we organized a drupal writeshop on Sunday, 12th Nov. The main purpose of writeshop was not to provide technical solution or orientation of Drupal but to find the ways of making this community active in fulfilling its objectives and getting action plan to start in coming days.

The objectives of the Drupal Community in Nepal are:

• To foster collaboration amongst Drupal enthusiasts in Nepal
• To collectively explore the opportunities that Drupal can bring for advancement of Internet technologies in Nepalese context
• To create an active and vibrant Nepali Web Community
• To create awareness amongst people (students, working professionals) the use of Drupal as a Conent Management System.

Overall the programme was excellent. Participants were very happy with the programme. The google group is flooded with their thankful messages :-) So are we.

The entire proceedings of the writeshop is available for viewing. The success of this writeshop and the Drupal Community as a whole, depends upon how vibrant the community is in future.

Anyone interested to know or join Drupal Community in Nepal may do so by registering in drupalnepal google groups.

I have never seen people hurrying to give blood before

I was shocked to see zeal among ordinary people to donate blood at Blood Donation programme, organized by Leo club of Kantipur on last Saturday 11th Nov. This was the first time I was very involved in blood donation. I was busy entire day.

I was not sure about how and why people would come to donate blood at open blood donation programme. I saw many people, just passing by, came at our place for no apparent reason than giving their blood. There was even a couple who parked their bike, walked to us and donated blood. There were some young girls (somewhere around 20) . One young girl really panicked us, first she got dizzy while giving blood and all of sudden she puked during rest. There was another adult person, sitting quietly, suddenly fell off the chair. I am sure some people gave up the idea of blood donation after such scary moment.

The programme started at 9:30AM and continued till 2:30PM. Among collected 111 pins of blood, 24 were of female donors. Overall the programme was quite successful. The credit goes to all the selfless donors, who came out of blue to donate blood. I would like to thank each one of them from the very core of my heart.

If this is democracy, then we don't need it

Everyone talked about freedom, free speech, free press in democracy. After 19 days of April revolution, we saw a glimmer of hope and more than 6 months have passed, we are still hoping that it will be a little better in Nepal. Maoists are having a mass meeting on Friday 10 Nov. Many people from villages are forced to come to Kathmandu for the meeting, an unauthorized number of 1 million. This shows how insecure Maoists are. They are using excessive power to make this mass meeting successful. And maoists are going from house to house for food and shelter. Each house has to feed around 10 or more maoists cadres, depending upon the house. They are giving a list of people who will come to each house.

Some ICIMOD colleagues are already given the list of maoists to feed. I don't know how long is it going to take before they come to my house. During conflicts, I heard about poor villagers being forced to feed maoists. I thought it's so bad then. Now I realized that how frightened we will be when we'll have to feed and shelter maoists. Already the thought of their arrival gives me panic, some sort of uneasiness, feeling of insecurity. Yet I... we can't do anyhing.

Do we have any other choice than cope with them? I don't see any. Can we, the general citizens, go against weaponed maoists? We can't. Can we go to police, army for help? No use at all.

Nepalnews report: Maoists forcing valley locals to feed their cadres, provide shelter

My new blog: talkict

Well I continued my ict blog that I started in wordpress long back. I hope to give time and energy to talkict.

Has Microsoft altered it warning icon?

The file xyz has been scanned for viruses. Click here to download xyz.

Does that line inform you of any message(s) that may harm you. Well according to Microsoft it should, which would imply that "The file has been scanned for viruses. We don't know if it actually contains virus. Download and open at your own risk. You've been warned."

I don't know if they have realized or not, but they have placed a warning icon next to above information. Technically it is incorrect and misrepresented, unless MS has altered its meaning.

The best paper airplane in the world

Finally I managed to craft the best paper plane in the world. The fun part is I can change the direction of flaps and plane moves in different directions. Aero-dynamics sounds fun to me now. The steps 17 and 18 are quite confusing but there's an animated gif image to help you. It took me 10 looks to finally understand. The image, right, shows my plane, probably the 7th one. I have been trying to make a beautiful one. Each one, I built, flies pretty smoothly. Well the best plane has to!

Sharing your presentation online

Thanks to lifehacker.com for pointing out slideshare.net, I uploaded the one ppt file that I was trying to upload to some shared storage in my previous post. This turned out to be a great place to upload and share ppt files.

Well it looks like I can also embed ppt in my post. Check out.

Cool!!

Gmail is deleting recent spams automatically

I don't know how many of you are actually paying attention to your Spam List in gmail, though spams are not to given attention. I posted about gmail spams yesterday and doubted myself about the automatic deletion of spams. Now I have confirmed that spams are infact being erased without your consent and before getting 30 days old (as gmail claims). In the morning I noticed that there were 3 spams and now at 8:52PM, there are none except those of October. Is it that gmail mistook recent spams as 30 days old? Or gmail spam detection is getting so powerful that it can detect and delete even after getting to your spam list? But why only the recent ones? :-0

I have not deleted spams since Oct 26.

GMail spams surprised me

I was quite used to delete gmail spams every hour or so. Later I thought how come google didn't do anything to reduce the spams ( i was getting very few in hotmail 3/4 per day at max). I decided to gauge the gmail spams and not to delete any spams from Oct 26, 2006. I wonder if google knows about my plan but 5 days after I started, the spam decreased to 1 per day. I don't know whether I mis-seen, but I felt that I have seen 3 spams on Oct 31 but later there was only one. Well google wouldn't delete fresh spams automatically. Maybe my mistake.

Here's the 6 days result

Oct 26: 16
Oct 27: 13
Oct 28: 13
Oct 29: 9
Oct 30: 15
Oct 31: 1 (this one really surprised me)

I will continue for entire November month. That will be a better measure.

People who brightens others day

I have a colleague at ICIMOD. I call her di (di short for didi or elder sister). She is senior than me, 4/5 years older at max. I have never seen anyone like her, I mean in terms of attitude, except in books and dramas. I got the privilege to give her a lift in my bike today and she said bye, greeted walking ICIMOD staffs on the way. I am not talking about hot shots of ICIMOD but sweepers, clerks, drivers, gardeners. I finally asked her "You talk to all the staffs, don't you?". She said ,"Yes, but I don't talk much with the bosses; well everyone is after them. These are the people that water the plants, drive our buses, clean our rooms." So true. Nobody says anything to these people, everyone just takes their services for granted. Now I admire her even more.

She is a good gardener, waters plants everyday. If she doesn't water for even a day, she will feel guilty. She understands life.

The first time I was introduced to her (regarding work), I had little hard time catching up with her. She talks very fast, nonetheless nice. If you talk with her for the first time for a minute or two, you would forget that you just met her in the next 5 minutes. I would say that's her gift, not yours.

The difference between the poor and the rich countries

I got a forward on "The difference between the poor countries and the rich ones". It says that the difference is not due to natural resources, not due to age, not because of intellectual difference, not race or skin. But

The difference is due to the attitude of the people, framed along the years by the education & the culture.

This is a true fact. I personally have realized that such attitude is common among us. How many years is it going to take understand that "Destroying public property is our own loss", "We should not meddle with others business & life", "Competition is healthy and pulling legs is unhealthy"... there's really attitude problem with majority of people from self-chosen poor countries.

The forward also lists some basic principles followed by majority of rich/developed countries' people and minority of poor/undeveloped countries'.

1. Ethics, as a basic principle.
2. Integrity.
3. Responsibility.
4. Respect to the laws & rules.
5. Respect to the rights of other citizens.
6. Work loving.
7. Strive for saving & investment.
8. Will of super action.
9. Punctuality.

I can give examples of each of the points mentioned above on how we lack those. It's quite easy.

PS: I created an animated gif image of 17 slides of ppt that I received (for you guys to peek into) . Unfortunately when I uploaded in blogspot, it converted .gif to .png, hence losing animation feature. Is there any way to upload gif image intact or is this blogspot bug?

[ The slideshow can be viewed from
http://slideshare.net/anjesh/the-difference-between-the-poor-countries. {added on Nov 4}]

A look at the village: Close to capital, yet untouched

Today we went to Bungamati to observe the functioning Bungamati Tele-center. Newar based ancient village is just 10 KM from Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, and is one of the tourist attractions. The birth place of Rato Machindranath, Bungamati, shows that technology takes time to reach community, despite so close to the capital. The pitched, smooth road, spectacular views made our travel quite ease and didn't even give us a hint of village-like. Once inside Bungamati, the whole scenario changed - the houses, the people, the alleys, ducks running around, children, naïve environment.

Women, mostly aged, are the work force of the village, at least that's what I got from my first look. Even the tele-center operator is a woman, though a young one. I hardly saw young people. There's a UNESCO supported community learning center at Rato Machindranath Bahal. Another adjacent village, Khokana, is so close that I didn't know when I crossed it. There's a famous Karya Binayek, another popular picnic spot is also lovers point. We even felt that we reached there at wrong hour, it was 3. We didn't see anything nasty. I don't understand if these young boys and girls are modernized, but definitely not in right way.

The views from small hill, close to Karyabinayak, is also magnificent. I wonder how on earth didn't come here before. I am thinking of cycling there someday soon. Remember if you are in Kathmandu, this is definitely not-to-be-missed place.

Some photos around Bungamati through google.

Are you an Idiot?: Find yourself !

http://www.addictinggames.com/theidiottest.html is the place or game [whatever] to find your idiotic characteristics. Infact I would say it's a sort of memory game.. you have to remember instructions and of course discipline yourself to follow those instructions. I don't think "The Idiot Test" is an appropriate name for the game the creator gave. Play yourself and you will find why :-)

Tip: If the instruction says you not to press a button, don't do that but wait! U want to know why.. ok press it.

Find and feel good: Who else share your birthday?

I accidentally stumbled upon a wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_19 which lists people born on this day, died and also some important events occurred on that day. I suppose each day is as important as any other day. Feel good if any of you out there think that you are unlucky just because you born on the day you born. Many great people share the same day.

You can create the link yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/monthname_day. Or go to the end of the page (of link given above), you will see a calendar-like with links to all the days.

I don't know if I should be adding my name in that list or not. I am confused with what title to give myself - student, engineer, developer, ICT advocator.... I am going to wait till I reach decent position doing what I should be doing. If you are puzzled with 'what I should be doing' line, then read stevepavlina.com blog. And don't forget to skim through his archives. You will be enlightened.

Nepal: Expect the Unexpected

I was waiting for the office bus at 8AM. I noticed some crowd at the Narayangopal chowk, a 5 minutes walk from my home. Immediately smokes were coming out of burning tires. Almost 10/15 tires were burning. I asked few people, enjoying the scene there, for the cause. They had no answer. We, colleagues from ICIMOD, somehow managed to get Jamal but of no use. Roads were blocked at several junctions by Maoists. They were saying that blockages will get opened at 10 AM. We were happy that they kept their promise. Traffic was normal after 10.

We were seeking the reasons for what happened and approached several people. Some said that a drunk police cut the hand of maoist cadre, some explained that this was to pressurize the government to finalize the talk soon, some said that police misbehaved to the public, but it was obvious that there has to do something with the police. Even the story on eKantipur.com says that the police misbehaved. Whatever, this is definitely not going in the right direction and we are and will be the victims anyhow.


[Thanks to my Nokia 6600 mobile camera. It does come handy at times.]

Baburam Bhattarai beaten by Upendra Devkota

I understand the title is very misleading. But this is what media would have preferred, though I am not a media-person. I was thinking of putting the title as "Dr. Baburam Bhattarai beaten by Dr. Upendra Devkota". Fortunately they were not PhD then.

Interestingly I stumbled upon the wikipedia page on Baburam Bhattarai, prominent figure of CPN(Moaists), where it was mentioned that he was once beaten by neurosurgeon Dr. Upendra Devkota in school. The sentence is equally misleading, as this blog's title. Is it Bhattarai beaten only once in his life time or beaten only once by Devkota? :)

Excerpts from Wikipedia

He always came in first position in his classes throughout his primary and secondary education. Only once, however, during a midterm exam, he was beaten by his fellow classmate, Dr Upendra Devkota a neurosergeon in Nepal.

Glass pieces from forehead: How possible is that?

Normally I don't like to blog on news stuffs but I find this really intriguing and after hearing on this case from high ranking Dr. Upendra Devkota, I thought to write some about it.

The girl, Sarita Bista, 12, from far western Nepal is now in Kathmandu for further medical investigation on emitting glass pieces from her forehead. Dr. Upendra Devkota himself is looking after the case. There are some points that I would like to highlight from Dr. Devkota comments. He said that generating glass pieces from body is totally impossible. It seems so but I don't know how much he has looked into the case and Nepal Television News didn't give much info on that.

Later he commented that this may be the case of child abuse. The girl hasn't been admitted to school yet, letting her future in darkness. It is almost sure that family is spreading the news for financial gains. I find this little too hard to digest. The way he said, it is almost certain that this is child abuse case. It would have been better to hear these comments after he'd provided proofs of this mysterious happening.

Some people, if not, I wouldn't be writing here...

Among the ten old photos of some programmers and businessmen, i like the one from Microsoft. I mean I just like the photo. Isn't that Gates in square?

Tihar: Festival of Light

Tihar or the festival of light is the second biggest festival of Nepal (among Hindus) after dashain, which lasts for 5 days. Personally I find this festival more interesting and exciting. Walking around the city has another charm, people busy trying to decorate their houses, shops with garlands, lights, small kids firing crackers.

The illustrated image is of Diya (made of soil) and oil is used to burn the threads (we call it eta in Newari). Diya is traditional form of decorating houses however these days people use candles, colored bulbs, small animating lights. The motive is to decorate the house as much as possible to attract Laxmi, the goddess of Wealth. Is there such goddess? Well if there had been, Nepal wouldn't be among the least developed countries. The funny thing is our donors are Laxmi, why don't we pray to our donors and stick their photos in our houses instead of Laxmi. Anyways tradition is tradition. Shutup and see if Laxmi has come to your house. And keep the door open. Also keep your eyes and ears open to separate theives from Laxmi ;-)

Social Networking sites: Why they boom?

If you are little tech-suavy, you would not miss to know how popular social networking sites are these days. There's myspace.com, facebook.com, hi5.com and there are so many. I use hi5 user. I was just going through my friends list and realized that i haven't seen them for so long. So sent few messages to friends. Then I felt like going through the list of friends and many of them are still not in my list. I sent friends requests to almost 20. It's so easy to do social networking these days, there's a charm and ease with which we can contact our friends. If your friend is in other part of the world, there's no way that you will be able to get hold of him/her. Thanks to internet and social networking site, we are not missing much of our friends. As you start networking with your friends, such sites get lots of hits per day, lots means really lots. The more hits they get, the more their value is and their price grows. Can any of us imagine paying $580 millon for myspace.com, $1.56 billion for youtube.com, and facebook.com is under scrutiny of yahoo. How much does facebook cost? A billion? Will get to know in coming days.

The best part of such networking site is it's self-sustainability. Users are the backbones of such sites. Content are generated by users and as users increase more, more contents hence increasing the value. Everything is so virtual.

Strings Concert: Over before actually started

When Strings were performing their forth song, it rained so heavily that everything had to be stopped. So couldn't enjoy much. But I met so many old friends, it seemed like a get-together, which I enjoyed a lot.

The worst thing happened when somebody stole my helmet. It didn't occur to me that I should do the same. I was with a friend and had a good talk. Fortunately one bike shop was opened, bought a new helmet. Well it's a good looking, black one. Anyways I had a good time.

Strings Concert tomorrow

I will be going to Strings Concert tomorrow at IOE, Pulchowk Campus. I will go there after office, though the concert will start at 2:30PM, i heard that Strings performance will be in the evening. Hope so!

Ignorance is bliss: Who said that?

I had my mobile repaired today, which costed me 500 bucks. That's too much, considering the fact that the guy just formatted it. I don't know what and how it happened but my mobile Nokia 6600 just stopped working out-of-blue at Pokhara. The repair-man clearly said that he would take 500 if it works after resetting and if he had to re-install OS, then he would charge me Rs 800. I was assuming that everything might need to re-install. Why? Don't know. Actually I was little excited what's he going to do. And my ignorance costed me 500 bucks. Everything worked fine after that. That's not going to happen next, cause wikihow explanation does sound easy, as quoted below.

1. Turn your device off.
2. Remove SIM card and MMC card (actually, you do not need to remove these, but after format remember to format memory card and reboot phone).
3. Press (3 + * + CallButton) Together.
4. Turn your device on while you are pressing the three buttons.
5. You should now see "Formatting .." on the Screen! Leave the buttons now.

The above process does the deep reset, which means 'format and new install'. And the phone will be restored back to the way it was bought in. Wish I knew that before :-(

Pokhara : It's a must see city

I was in Pokhara from 13 to 16 Oct, 2006. The distance is roughly 200Km from Kathmandu and it took us around 6 hours to reach there. We stayed at Lake-side resort, Sahana Resort. You could see huge Phewa Lake from the room's veranda. It was a really spectacular and incomprehensible view, especially in the morning. We visited two villages, Dhikurpokhari and Puranchour. Both trip took us around 35 minutes; though it was said that Dhikurpokhari was far than Puranchour, the pitched road made the difference negligible. The views were just magnificent as one keeps on ascending.

The boating at Phewa lake was totally splendid. It was really calm, soothing... words are not just enough, you have to feel it.

And the wonderful view of Mount Machapuchere and Annapurna himalaya range from Sarangkot (half-an-hour drive from the city). We didn't ascend to the top of Sarangkot, around 1 hour walk from the place till where transportation is possible. Anyways the views we saw were enough for us. And we also didn't have much time to walk that distance.

Wiki presentation at ICIMOD

Today we, ICIMOD, invited Bellanet resource persons to talk on Wiki, their experiences, knowledge. I was to speak on implementation portion, I have already integrated mediawiki, one of popular wiki software, in our intranet. I also gave a brief background on the usage, how to format wiki content and some features. It went fine, with quite a good number of audiences. But presonally I felt that it was a little too much comprehensive for the audiences to digest. They have no idea of Wiki at all. It went for almost an hour. Overall I find it good and informative, which is actually our primary purpose. On the other hand, we could have made this more interesting and exciting by dropping some unnecessary portions (for the beginners). Otherwise it was perfect.

Kathmandu: A death zone?

I was amazed to find out that Canada, the second largest country in terms of area (9,984,670 Km2), has an estimated population of 32 million; whereas Nepal, with an area of 141,181Km2, has an estimated population of 27 million (as of July 2005). Our population almost matches to that of Canada. These days, it is heard that there are almost 2 million or more people in the Kathmandu city (area 50.67km2) alone. Can you imagine that? Which means that there are almost 20,000,000/56.67 people per km2 that is around 394,710/km2 density. You can clearly notice that in the evening, with lots of traffic jams, crowds, smoke, dust. (I was stuck in a jam today for almost 15-20 minutes, which otherwise would take me 2 minutes) I wonder how long will it take Kathmandu to top the most polluted and crowded city. The only alternative to reduce crowd in the capital is to move capital out of Kathmandu, which does sound ridiculous. But there's no any other solution. It won't take time for us to get lung problems and so many different types of diseases. There are already such cases. I heard that almost 50 traffic policemen or more got bed-ridden at the same time a month or two back, cause smoke, dust, pollution. I don't know the exact source. It's very likely for such news. I ain't and won't be surprised at all.
Certainly it won't take long for Kathmandu to be called "a death zone".

Google Reader! i don't miss anything now

I used to use personalized google homepage where I have subscribed to couple of tech-related sites. I used to miss a lot of articles if I happen to login a little late and sometimes even miss entire day news. I hadn't realized about rss reader, I mean I know there are but never thought of using them. ( i feel stupid for not using them before). After reading on lifehacker on google reader, I thought to give it a try and now i don't miss anything from slashdot, digg/technology, stevepavlina, yahoo news,..... did i mention lifehacker? Oops!! Thanks lifehacker.

To be happy...

We convince ourselves that life will be better once we are married, have a baby, then another.

Then we get frustrated because our children are not old enough, and that all will be well when they are older.

Then we are frustrated because they reach adolescence and we must deal with them. Surely we’ll be happier when they grow out of the teen years.

We tell ourselves our life will be better when our spouse gets his/her act together, when we have a nicer car, when we can take a vacation, when we finally retire.

The truth is that there is no better time to be happy than right now.
If not, then when?
Your life will always be full of challenges. It is better to admit as much and to decide to be happy in spite of it all.

For the longest time, it seemed that life was about to start. Real life.
But there was always some obstacle along the way, an ordeal to get through, some work to be finished, some time to be given, a bill to be paid. Then life would start.
I finally came to understand that those obstacles were life.

That point of view helped me see that there isn’t any road to happiness.
Happiness IS the road.

So, enjoy every moment.
Stop waiting for school to end, for a return to school, to lose ten pounds, to gain ten pounds, for work to begin, to get married, for Friday evening, for Sunday morning, waiting for a new car, for your mortgage to be paid off, for spring, for summer, for fall, for winter, for the first or the fifteenth of the month, for your song to be played on the radio, to die, to be reborn… before deciding to be happy.


I think I am happy now. Are you? I just love getting such forwards!!

Interesting Conversation: how do you explain god's existence?

An atheist professor of philosophy speaks to his class on the problem science has with God, The Almighty. He asks one of his new students to stand and.....

Prof: So you believe in God?
Student: Absolutely, sir.
Prof: Is God good?
Student: Sure.
Prof: Is God all-powerful?
Student: Yes.
Prof: My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to God to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But God didn't. How is this God good then?
(Student is silent.)
Prof: You can't answer, can you? Let's start again, young fellow. Is God good?
Student: Yes.
Prof: Is Satan good?
Student: No.
Prof: Where does Satan come from?
Student: From...God...
Prof: That's right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?
Student: Yes.
Prof: Evil is everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything. Correct?
Student: Yes.
Prof: So who created evil?
(Student does not answer.)
Prof: Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don't they?
Student: Yes, sir.
Prof: So, who created them?
(Student has no answer.)
Prof: Science says you have 5 senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me, son...Have you ever seen God?
Student: No, sir.
Prof: Tell us if you have ever heard your God?
Student: No, sir.
Prof: Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God, smelt your God? Have you ever had any sensory perception of God for that matter?
Student: No, sir. I'm afraid I haven't.
Prof: Yet you still believe in Him?
Student: Yes.
Prof: According to empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your GOD doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son?
Student: Nothing. I only have my faith.
Prof: Yes. Faith. And that is the problem science has.
Student: Professor, is there such a thing as heat?
Prof: Yes.
Student: And is there such a thing as cold?
Prof: Yes.
Student: No sir. There isn't.
(The lecture theatre becomes very quiet with this turn of events.)
Student: Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don't have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.
(There is pin-drop silence in the lecture theatre.)
Student: What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?
Prof: Yes. What is night if there isn't darkness?
Student: You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light....But if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and it's called darkness, isn't it? In reality, darkness isn't. If it were you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?
Prof: So what is the point you are making, young man?
Student: Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.
Prof: Flawed? Can you explain how?
Student: Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can't even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life: just the absence of it. Now tell me, Professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from monkeys?
Prof: If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do.
Student: Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?
(The Professor shakes his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument is going.)
Student: Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist but a preacher?
(The class is in uproar.)
Student: Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor's brain?
(The class breaks out into laughter.)
Student: Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor's brain, felt it, touched or smelt it? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, sir. With all due respect, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?
(The room is silent. The professor stares at the student, his face unfathomable.)
Prof: I guess you'll have to take them on faith, son.
Student: That is it sir... The link between man & God is FAITH. That is all that keeps things moving & alive.

The forwarded email claims that this is a true event and that student is Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, the current President of India.

PS:Don't know about the source!!

Technology: now and then...

I bought a new keyboard and a new mouse, 3/4 months after having bought new ones. I was very elated to get then for quite a cheap price then, but it didn't last even 6 months. I am off to buy new one and the recent ones were little expensive than the former but overall they were quite expensive as I have to buy two keyboards and two mice( i am not sure whether mice or mouses). Anyways the point is gadgets are getting more and more cheap and yet less durable. I still remember my first keyboard, that came along with my computer almost 6 years back, lasted for almost 5 years. It was quite expensive then. Now you can get the same computer with half the price than 6 years back and with even higher specifications but less durable. But again if you are buying some quality computer then they are still expensive. Most people would try to buy the cheap ones, mainly due to lack of knowledge and also financial problems. But in the long run, they will be wasting their money on service charges. One good (or bad??) thing on buying new computers here is you get everything you need ..i mean softwares. Entire Office package and anything you want ( Maya, 3D studio, autocad, Acrobat, photoshop,.. you name it). Piracy has some thing to offer to people and yet so-seemed-boom is a curse to software company because people wouldn't understand the value of softwares.. they are getting so many things for free.

Software Freedom Day 06

The software freedom day 2006, on 16 Sep 06, seemed to be quite successful, considering the crowd seen on that day. However the success will lie upon the coming days and how FOSS Nepal tries to create FOSS-awareness in Nepal and among the Nepalese. It's going to take time; well Richard Stallman has been in this movement for 2 decades and still advocating for Free Softwares and believes that there's still a lot to done to make his dream come true. Now his dream is not his anymore, thousands of people around the world share the same dream.

What I like about FOSS Nepal community is that they also have such communities in colleges, mostly technical/engineering colleges. I think college students are the best target group of FOSS movement. If FOSS-Nepal can arouse the needs of FOSS, then no body can stop them from embracing the FOSS philosophy. And the future world can see the proliferation of FOSS, though it may take a long time, say 10 years from now.

On that event day, there have been several paper presentations on various subjects, mostly related to FOSS, there was also one technical paper on IPv6. Most presenters was novice, many from colleges. I didn't attend last two presentations. Well i had a comment then. They didn't manage time for lunch. So i reluctantly left the presentation hall.

Then there were open space discussions and I was one of the initiators of Drupal Community in Nepal Group. Our objective was to create a drupal user group where we would be sharing our views on one of the most popular CMS, discuss on ways to create awareness of drupal in Nepal, possibly by organizing writeshops (this was an idea proposed by Bibhusan from Bellanet), helping our nepalese drupal developers learn eachother. We have also created a google group to further discuss on drupal and help drupal community grow in Nepal.

The SFD ends with a documentary on code-breaker. I could not stand heat inside the hall; unwillingly left the show. I also bought a FOSS T-shirt, costing Rs.250/-. Fair enough!. I liked the penguin :).

This is a hard yet must-do job. I think FOSS Nepal should come up with some strategy with what they are going to do next, say for another year to lessen their distance from their goal. As i have mentioned before, students are the easy yet effective target group of FOSS. Their focus should go beyond technical/engineering colleges to other faculties (commerce, social-science...) also. Other effective step would be convincing governmental organizations; they are wasting huge amount of money paying for MS products. And this is almost impossible unless people start FOSS as their business, well there should be plenty of choices to choose support from. The most important thing is to create FOSS entrepreneurs in Nepal and at the same time create an environment to make the FOSS business posible. I don't see this as an easy task. Long and difficult road ahead. I just hope they don't abandon it before.......

Firefox...sometimes annoying

I am an open source advocator whenever, wherever possible. Nodoubt Firefox is one of my favorites and have been using since v1.0. Full CPU consuming happened at times in the past. It's been several months that FF is running without a hitch. My simple solution, then, was to close and open it [I can't afford to look in the code. I downloaded it once when I tried to write FF extensions, but unfortunately wasn't able to give time.]. Two days back i downloaded Firefox 2 Beta, installed and using side-by-side with Firefox 1.5. Since then, i am again experiencing full CPU usage, with both the versions. I wonder why, these two versions reside at different locations. Process Explorer shows jpeg_fdct_islow thread is actually consuming CPU. Googling shows other FF users having some problem but not any address from the FF Community yet, as of 18 Sep, 06.

Bhairab Risal...we salute you!!

Today I read an interview of journalist-turned-activist Bhairav Risal, who got one of the country’s most prestigious awards, Jagadamba Shree Puraskar, which also includes a lump-sum of Rs. 200,000. That's a huge amount of money for any Nepali but not for selfless Risal. I am pretty much struck with his altruistic words.

"I am capable enough of earning my own living to sustain my life and my family, so why should I spend the money that I receive through the award on myself? Of course, if I pay back my loans with this amount, I would be relieved but I have decided not to do so. This has come to me all of a sudden. Had I not received this would my life be ruined? Definitely not… I believe if my small effort can bring a difference in society then why step back?"

I wonder there are still people like these in this world and particularly in Nepal. I am not talking about billionaires. The simple person living in Nepal, who earns enough for his family is going to donate that huge amount of money to social cause is much more than what Gates Foundation is doing, at least for me.

Risal, almost in eighties , set an ambition to bring light to Humla, the remotest, impoverished and forgotten village at extreme north-west corner of Nepal, since 2004.

"Other than for a few more kilometers of roads leading to Humla, the entire district has remained virtually unchanged for almost three decades. It still has no electricity, nor tap water and heating for homes except firewood."

Can we even imagine living in such condition?

Perl? ha ha ha Try Python

Well I found this interesting ad by O'Reilly on the net and there's even apology for such sarcastic and harsh remark. I myself had started perl before python. Perl is probably the reason that caused me to look for simple yet powerful scripting language, yes it's python. Especially I don't like using nitty-gritty in manipulating values in variables, arrays, lists in perl. The entire thing is really confusing, and not just for newbies. I won't recommend perl if one asks between perl and python. But if one really wants to understand the simplicity of python, then i would rather ask her to try perl once.

FOSS Nepal... I am happy and again sad!

Today I found that there is also a FOSS Community in Nepal. I am happy and again sad to hear that. I am happy that people are already aware of it. I am sad that they haven't done much job in creating awareness on FOSS. I went to GPLv3 Conference at Bangalore on 23th, 24th Aug 2006. I was confronted by several participants asking whether I was from FOSS community from Nepal. I said no and i even further said that there's still not such community in Nepal. Now I feel embarrassed to find out that I was wrong and also that there was no one from FOSS Nepal or even from Nepal, except me to attend that conference. I see that there's still a lot to be done in FOSS by FOSS Community and I am willing to be an active member of FOSS Nepal. There's going to be an event on Free Software Day on 16th Sep 2006 and I'm definitely not going to miss that opportunity.

"What is my fault that I am here?" ...

"What is my fault that I am here?" well it's not what I am saying but the old lady citizens counting the end of their lives at Senior Citizens Residence, Matatirtha. It's on the way to Thankot. I visited that place almost 2 months back as a member of Leo Club of Kantipur. We donated some food like biscuits, noodles, toiletries to each of 20 women living there. That plastic bag content would last for not more than 2 weeks. Besides we also donated a sack of rice and other things (like sugar, flour.. i don't remember all now) to the committee working for the Residence.

It was just an idea of some of my friends from Leo club who visited that place and said that we should be doing something for them. Continuing our support to them is not practical for us, as we collected money from ourselves only. It's hard to approach people asking for money, even for selfless work like this. Because there are many people, organizations working on same and with some fake people also, causing such job difficult.

Reaching and talking with them was the only thing that would have been enough for them. I don't remember how many times they thanked us. Many of them were saying, only our presence would have been enough. They get so less visitors, only seeing people beside their beds was much more than food they get. My friends had already warned us not to provoke any stories from them. For they would start crying, and you wouldn't know what exactly to do. Well it seemed stupid when asked not listen to them. My friends didn't mean that. Just don't talk about their history and don't ask why are you here. It was true, their stories would haunt everyday. Ah.. you can't do anything to help them, you have jobs, families to take care of, friends to give time to, so many other things you want to accomplish in your life. Their disheartening stories would never let you concentrate. It had happened to me when I used to tutor at an orphanage, ah... everyone of those boys have their own painful stories. One day I even felt tears in my eyes.

The world is not perfect, it's highly biased. Yet we find ourselves powerless to do anything. There are so many things boggling your mind, you just can't keep yourself happy every time. Family, friends, job.... these things just trick you to give a sense of happiness for a short time. I understand this and yet I am after those. In my heart, i really want to see smile in the faces of people, who have never taste happiness in their lives and those who have forgotten how does it feel to be happy. There are many NGOs, INGOs, foundations established by actors, actresses, that are working to help these staggering number of people. And yet so little has been done and so much has to be done.

I still remember their smiles and gratefulness. Each room contains atleast 6/8 ladies.

There's a beautiful story about a boy throwing starfishes, brought to the beach by the waves,
back to the sea. A grown-up man seeing the futile attempt to throw the starfishes back to their home, smiled and approached the kid, "You see this entire beach is filled with starfishes. You are not going to make any difference." The boy threw one starfish back to the water, "See I make a difference to this one".

There's so much to be learned from that little kid. Why don't all of us start with what we can. We don't have to donate huge amount of money. Like I said above, just a humble visit will provide orphans, homeless senior citizens, a lot of happiness you and I could ever imagine. What we need is a humble, selfless heart to say them "No, it's neither your nor our fault, that you are in this position." and i don't know what to say after. Maybe you can.

Worldlink... really disappointing

I am using Worldlink cable internet, night surfing only, which means that i will get to use internet from 8:30 PM to 8:30AM and full day on Saturday. This is not the first time that my internet gets disconnected while I am surfing. The problem is I couldn't connect to internet after it gets disconnected. Now without internet, i am blogging in my notepad and will post after internet connection resumes. Last Saturday and Sunday, I couldn't use internet at all. I am greeted with a message "The remote computer didn't respond.". Now I am getting the same error message. I called for support and no one is picking up the phone. I understand that Worldlink is one of the most busiest ISPs of Kathmandu and hopefully Nepal. The system they are using is bottlenecked by the clients they are supporting. I don't see a reason why they are not doing anything to pacify their customers. Well I would have a full page complaints by now if I had jotted down every time i get a problem. I thought ok.. maybe they are doing their best. This is simply too much. Worldlink don't know how to retain their clients at all. I don't know if they assume that once client gets to their door, they won't leave. I will be more than just happy to leave them at once, without second thought. By the way Worldlink is not just losing me, they are losing everyone in my circle. Ok.. finally internet connection resumes after around 30 minutes. This is just simply intolerable.

God and his creations...

The image below shows the newly constructed beautiful sculptures on both sides of Buddha. You can still see people working deliberately on those sculptures . I wonder how long does it take to those hard-working people to complete that. This location is behind the Soyambhu Nath Stupa. I was near that location for Paro Bhoj (party) on Aug 26, 2006, a gesture to an end of a month long Gunla, which ended last wednesday. In Gunla we have to go to Soyambhu everyday and play cultural drums. But it's not mandatory. I went only once during the entire Gunla. The crowd is unimaginably huge at Soyambhu, the entire month.

I am very touched to see two little girls scrubbing the stairs to the Buddha above, in the rain with people walking every now and then. These little girls looked to be content with what they are doing, at least to me. I just wonder if they have ever been to school. It seems that the so called God is indifferent to his little creations.

2 Evenings at Bangalore

I was in Bangalore for 4th International GPLv3 Conference on 23th and 24th Aug 2006. I didn't want to miss RMS (Richard Stallman, Chairman and founder of fsf, and a very famous personality). That was one of the major reasons why I was there. Unfortunately I missed his session due to flight problems. Never trust flying in air. I missed my flight on 22nd Aug from Delhi to Bangalore. I had to stay a night at Delhi.

My first impression of Bangalore is it's a huge, crowded city, and pretty much expensive compared to Kathmandu. The biggest disadvantage for its hugeness is you need at least 30 minutes to go to anywhere. The problem gets even bigger when you have to travel at evening, especially if you don't own a vehicle. The public vehicles, (there are mostly autos in the city), don't agree to go to any crowded places and even if you finally managed to get auto-driver to agree, he would put his own rate, sometimes very high compared to actual rate. There are public buses, but only if you are the experienced locals, with climbing and hanging skills. Certainly walking in streets like MG roads, Brigade road is interesting, with lots of bright lights, shinning glasses. But again if you live far from those roads, then you will have a problem getting to your place; public transport dependency is costly.

Bangalore is no doubt the information hub of India. Virtually all the big and successful IT organizations have their presence there, you name it... Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, IBM, Bosch, Intel, SAP to name a few...... The boom in IT sector has little to do with the overall development of the city. I have tried to catch a snap showing garbage place infront of Oracle building. I had a hard time, not to close my nose, while getting a snap in front of Oracle home. Slums, dirts, crowds, smokes are kind of glued to South-Asian countries.

Dog sitting over garbage, in an alley in front of Oracle Building, Bangalore

I didn't realize public toilets in front of Oracle Building, Bangalore

The most interesting thing that happened to me was I drank 3 glasses of lime water at 3 different places at 3 different prices, IRs 18, IRs 8, IRs 5, in chronological order. I never intended to find the cheap places. I saw a shop and asked for the lime. My friend was saying that there is one place where I would be able to get the same at IRs 4. I was already full by then. Interesting... isn't it? To be honest, IRs 18 lime water was bad compared to the other two. There's one restaurant where if you stand up you would get the food at half the price than you would get while sitting. And of course there's a table where you can place your food while standing. Anyways that's a huge price to pay for a seat.

I am not talking about Bangalore McDonnalds. I am sure they won't have such variable rates for their customers. I just had two evenings to roam around Bangalore, the entire day being spent at the conference at IIMB. Obviously I couldn't visit every corner of Bangalore. I am wondering how the order parts of the huge Bangalore are like.

READ Nepal...Excellent job!!!

I just read that READ Nepal bagged $1 million Gates Foundation Award in the himalayan times online. READ (Rural Education and Development) Nepal has in fact done an excellent job in installing libraries in various remote locations of Nepal. They have built 39 community libraries as illustrated here. This page explains about a little procedures of library development. The success of the project is the sustainability of the community library by the locals themself, with timely visits by READ. Their work is indeed the genuine recipient of the Gates Award.