The second session was by Praseed Pai on FOSS in Kerala – a case of inmates running the asylum? One of the interesting points put forward by Praseed was that a developer should be comfortable with all platform and he also pointed to the fact that FOSS users only talks about licenses.

The third session was on Campus Blogging where Hari spoke about his experience with creating a campus blog.

The next session was on Blender an awesome open source tool for creating 3D animations, followed by a demo of a movie Sintel created by this tool.

Hiren talked about the Open movie project Chamba, which sounded interesting. But to talk about this project the complete Sintel movie was shown to the audience which I felt was unnecessary as most of the audience was not interested in watching a animation movie at a BarCamp. This was pretty evident from the tweets which was going around at that time.

Audience was getting desperate with lunch session and thanks to the organizers, they had arranged an “Full Open Source” lunch, yes its was free lunch at Amrita. I guess it was a combination of Free as in “Free Beer” and Free as a in “Freedom”.

Post Lunch session on Open Street Maps looked good and the presenter showed some of the capabilities of the maps when compared to Google Maps. But the main issue for Open Street Maps is its data, unless users contribute to it, its going to be useless.

Next was a session on PhoneGap by Sherin followed by a session on Wi Fi. The WiFi session was pretty too basic explaining the concepts of Wireless networking and the demo was not very effective as the screen was not very much visible to the audience.

There was also a session on Machine Learning in practise followed by an interesting session on Haptics. There was a live demo on Haptics by Unnikrishnan as well.

There was a live tweet board at Amrita which showed all the tweets with the tag #bck9 which was really nice idea.

It was nice networking with lot of people and had a great time at Bar Camp Kerala 9th edition.

Not sure how many noticed this, but it was more or less an Open Source Bar Camp . The organizers had a big banner at the center stage which showed Firefox and Linux logos indicating the support for FOSS among the organizers.

Recently I read the review of BSNL 3G by Compixels and there the author was using Huawei E122 USB modem to connect and getting very good speeds of 2Mbps and above. I decided to try the USB modem and ordered on from eBay. The unlocked Huawei USB modems are priced at Rs 2900/-

Within a week, I had the USB modem E1750 with me. It comes with a SIM card slot, microSD card slot and also the software & drivers bundled. It supports speeds of upto 7.2 Mbps and automatically switches to 2G network where ever 3G coverage is not available. Below are some of the images of the modem.

Configuring the Device- Since I was already using Tata Photon + connection on Huawei Modem, both the installations seems to open Huawei Access Manager.

Go to Tools-> Options.

Here, under the Network Settings, click New and then Add name as BSNL, APN as ‘bsnlnet’ (without quotes), access number as *99# and then click OK.

Now select this network and click connect. If everything configured correctly, your BSNL 3G should be working right now. Please note the Huawei Access Manager interface might vary based on the version.

Here is the speed which I’m currently getting on BSNL 3G.

The unlimited connection (which is truely unlimited with no FUP) is priced at Rs 2499 + tax which comes to around 2700/- (in Kerala and might vary in different circles).

Thanks to Binoy X J for helping me configure the modem.

I’ll be posting the full review of the car soon, probably after the first service at 3000 Km. Overall very much satisfied with the car.

It was around 9:10 PM and we were driving behind a fully laden lorry. Just as the lorry passed a huge tree on the side of the road, it pulled down one of the biggest branches on top of the road and it fell crashing on our car from a height of almost 8m.

It was a real lucky escape as I had put the brakes and it fell on the front windshield, has it fallen on top of the car, it would have been more serious. Luckily both of us came out unhurt, it was indeed a narrow escape.

I was not a fan of Wagon R from Maruti, but this car indeed saved our life because of its tall body status.

Note: Photos taken today afternoon.

The beach walkway was really crowded with people and the walkway in itself was too narrow and most of the places it was broken down. The beach was really dirty, wish the Corporation did something to clean it up once in a while. The Chinese fishing nets still remain and are actively used for fishing.

The fish stalls, I remember seeing them when I was a child, still exists in the beach area and sells some top quality and fresh fish although need to bargain to get the best deal.

One good thing about Fort Kochi is the number of quality restaurants available, which serves all types of dishes from around the world. We headed to DLips restaurant, which was run by Malayalam Film start Dileep. The building is the old house of famous singer Yesudas and the restaurant housed on the top floor. The speciality of this building is that there is a big Mango tree in the center of this building and hence the name Mange Tree for the restaurant.

The food was pretty decent and so is the ambience, there were only a couple of Indians and rest all were tourists. The service was not the very best and it took us lot of time to get the orders. Make sure you carry enough cash when you go to this restaurant as CCs are not accepted, which was quite strange for a restaurant of this standard.

We returned back home by around 9PM and had a great time visiting or rather revisiting Fort Kochi.

Now the Laptop has got a fresh life with 4GB of RAM and a massive 12 Cell Battery. The 12 Cell battery is in fact 2 six cell batteries back to back and as a result it projects out of the Laptop. Here are few images of the 12 Cell Battery.

Specifications of ASUS EEE PC;

• Intel Atom Processor 1.6 Ghtz
• 1GB RAM
• 160 GB Hard Disk
• 7 Hour Battery
• Windows XP
• 3 USB Ports
• Wi-Fi and Ethernet cable port
• MMC SD Card Reader
• In build speaker
• 10GB EEE Online Storage

Overall I’m very much satisfied with the performance and now I’m planning to install Windows 7 home version once it is released along with Windows XP.

The film starts off with the brief introduction of the characters and from the first 10 min, we can easily predict who the actual villains are. The story is easily predictable and goes in direction where there is a real ghost (Mammoty in double role) which is friendly and being kept in a bottle. At this point the film starts to become boring and to add to this some worst jokes and the voice of Ghost becomes so irritating. Siraj Venjaramoodu is the only character which atleast tries to make the movie a bit interesting with his jokes, but there is no script in place for this comedy to get more attention.

The Ghost was pretty managable in the movie if you consider it as  a timepass movie, but the graphics where the ghost saves the heroine dates back to 80s. In this era where technology take a peep into every aspect of our life, this movies lacks it. There is scene where hero tries some circus on horse and the morphing of his face was done so badly that the face and body movements were totally out of sync.

The script is very very weak and the story is easily predictable and totally unrealistic. In the first places, I couldnt even imagine how Mammoty could take up such a bad film. The director Johny Antony who is famous for comedy films like CID Moosa, fails to deliver with this movie. This is one movie which Keralites would like to easily forget.

On the songs side, there are only 2 songs and both of them are just OK, nothing to write about. Heroine Kavya is totally wasted and if she wasnt there in the movie, it wouldnt have made any difference. Some of the jokes are very bad that I was tempted to leave the theatre.

Rating: 0.5/5 (The 0.5 is to give atleast some point for Siraj Venjaramoodu’s comedy)