Showing posts with label Diary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diary. Show all posts

Friday, March 14, 2014

What if I had a Smartphone, Laptop and Bike? #RandomThinking :)

By 5:16 PM , 1 comment
Three things, no big deals (Steve jobs words :) ). I am not putting smiley coz they will be everywhere. When I see people playing CS everytime on laptop, running here & there via bike without any specific task, and chatting whole time on facebook from smartphone, I think as if if i had those stuffs there would be no one like me who will utilize them fully. May be all people who have them plan as i do before they have these things. So, i get puzzled sometime whether these things are still luxury or necessity? Any way, let that be in luxury item until i have them :)

What if I had a smartphone?

-Would have scored 100+ in flappy bird and some more than my friends’ score in Subway surfer

-Created a viber account. I don’t have one and my pc don’t have blue stack supportable graphics.

-Tested my simple android app more faster. It takes 2 min to load the app on my pc.

-Who don’t tweet photos from instagram? Why wouldn’t I ?

-You might be thinking I will never be offline from fb. But if you are on my friend list, i may not to tell any more.

-Oh, i forgot the most important point, i would not have to see people’s face for 2 hours daily on bus.

-I should not have to use this site once a day. My current cell phone is Nokia 5130. Now, i may not to say more :)

And if I had a laptop?

-Do i need to write the first point here? I am sure your mind is not that much sluggish. If you are so, thats our daily festival- loadshedding. And having a bright screen while the festival celebration is not only an awesome moment, thats awesomest moment ( i don’t know thats the word named -est, google that)

-One thing I am sure, if I had a laptop, I would definitely have learned or even mastered (I know I couldn’t be that soon :) ) in some programming language: php or java. Now, here comes the debate, its necessity or luxury or half-half. There are some of my classmates who have learned that a lot without the lappy thing. We have a saying in nepali too: खाने मुखलाई जुँगाले छेक्छ र ? But I can’t agree with this too. Most of the time, while the “festival celebration” I cannot divert full mind on study but if i have “that” there could have been best utilization of time too.

-I have stopped reading the online posts about hackathon and some techie trainings because of this. This really sounds sad. Doesn't it?

And finally if I had a bike?

Oh, this is still not in my required category. You know, there is recent petrol price hike. How to make this moving without a permanent type (which is negotiable) or any business to fill its tank? But still owing bike saves nearly 3 hours per day from home to college and return. How much loss in a semester with 3 hours per day. Is there any more thing than that than getting one? But getting two wheeler needs “that”. and……… fill it :)

image compilation from: maximumpc.com, articulo.mercadolibre.com.pe, 1024wallpapers.com
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Sunday, November 10, 2013

A Day in Mozilla Nepal Meetup #HappyBirthday #Firefox

By 4:18 PM , , Leave a Comment

Happy Birthday Firefox.
On 9th November I attended Mozilla Nepal Meetup organized on the occasion of firefox’s ninth birthday at SAP Falcha, Babarmahal,  Kathmandu, Nepal. I knew the meetup will be awesome just by going through facebook timeline of Mozilla Nepal Community. The day started with good news of Nepali locale added in Firefox OS.

Talking about Firefox, On November 9 - 2004, nine years ago, the Mozilla foundation launched the first version of open-source Web browser Firefox which battled with Microsoft's Internet Explorer monopoly (which had numerous security issues) and won the race too as the safest, fastest and most secure browser. From that day to now, the race  has begun from browser alone to  mobile OS for which it has already released Firefox OS based on HTML5 as open source Boot2Gecko project.  The step has made firefox much wider than limiting as third-party browser on other company’s operating system (Android).

The event which was third in a series of three meetups organized by Mozilla Nepal Community. Starting from the brief outline by Shashi Khanal, it was successfully conducted with more participants than expected and most of them stayed till the end of the program. It was an excellent meetup with many free and open source enthusiasts and a number of web developers from Nepal.
The meeting started with attendees introducing with a quick update on what each of us had been working on or studying. Community introduction by Mozilla rep Surit Aryal  and Avash Mulmi  brought flashback of Mozilla Nepal. Up to now, the Nepali Community had conducted various events inside various places inside the country and participated several programs outside the country.
Words on theme of this year “Open Web For Open Education” by Subir Pradhanang who is President of FOSS Nepal Community and also program manager of OLE Nepal was a moment to capture. In country like Nepal where students and general people cannot afford paid software, open source software could be the best option. As there is problem of internet service in many regions of the country which may be due to physical difficulties (hilly region) and lack of investment in these sectors in the rural area, proper implementation of plans has become difficult. Language barrier is also a big problem. Almost of the government schools teach their students in Nepali language and in the other hand, most of the web applications are on English language. So, localization is very much important in the context. Hempal sir who is  Vice-President of FOSS Nepal said that government has allocated budget to provide computers for schools in rural area as a part of education project.

Nootan Ghimire talked about FSA (which he calls Fun Student Activities)  benefits, challenges and problems faced with some past events conducted in different colleges. Questions by Dadhiram Nepal sir who is FOSS Nepal member made the meetup more interesting and informative too. Dadhiram sir, who was from non-technical background shared experiences while working in rural areas. He also pointed out that localization is the key factor for improvement in participation in tech stuffs from local level. There are more than 30 Firefox Student Ambassadors in Nepal from different places including Kathmandu, Chitwan and Pokhara.

Firefox birthday celebration was a moment to remember. Though Hempal sir had brought some candles (may be left over of Tihar :)), none of them were used. Thanks to the guy who ordered the cake of exact size enough for all participants except Shashi and Surit who enjoyed two times :). Oh, the lottery for 5 T-shirts was interesting though my luck was not in favour. Those whose luck was as mine did not stayed calm when the name of Sristi Baral came instantly without a round of name though it was just a coincidence. But there was no T-shirt fit for her (small sized:) ). So, the lottery extended to 6 T-shirts.

SWOT(Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis by forming the group of about 5 participants based on their involvement in the community in past. I also stayed in a group which helped me to introduce with some new friends ( but actually they were my seniors).
We discussed about the Open source software and related communities including Mozilla Nepal’s contribution and suggestions too. Such kind of communities help a lot for involvement and leadership development, habit of collaboration, framework for programmability and of course skill development and have enough opportunities for future also. Our team was named “Himalayan Fyauro” by our team leader (I forgot to take our group members web address. If you are reading this, please ping me once).

The weakness points of the community was found to be lack of publicity and Kathmandu focused programs. Also, which Avash, Mozilla Nepal rep  had already accepted the fact that the members are below 30, some college administrations did not showed much interest in such activities though educational institutions are the main target of the community through which the related info could be spread over large volume of people across the country. Some points on threats were also discussed. Such kind of open source projects are run financially from donations but if at some point of time, if the donations are not sufficient, there could be problem in proper implementation of plans.

The presentation from Shristi, FSA Nepal on Women Empowerment was just awesome. As usual, the number of female participants was very less (only 2) in the event. She thought women attracts women in such sector (which spread laugh in the hall). Emphasizing about WoMoz, a community composed of female members from different Open Source projects and Mozilla dedicated to improving women's visibility and involvement and to increase the number of women contributors. As diversity is an important part of every community, women participation should be increased. But in IT sector the involvement is low which is due to our community train and the job is tedious also according to Shristi. In fact, most of ladies in our society seems to be attracted in medical or management fields than technical stuffs.

Though there was not enough time, discussions in group of people with different interests was beneficial. I stayed in localization team (there were two teams in Localization) with Manish Dangol who is really cool :). He showed demo of how to involve in localization. We found some members including Avash, Nootan were actively participating there.

By this time, the clock had hit 5:45 pm and we had one session left: Future Plans of Mozilla Nepal Community and Questions & Answer Session. At first, no questions was raised on the floor. Hempal sir (being eldest of all) took guide for that and talked about what he realized from the meetup.
Others’ answer in this context was also positive. He also focused on finding target consumer if we want to go ahead commercially in IT sector. Additional points by Dadhiram sir was also catchy. It was an excellent event, with many of the core committers on hand to present and answer questions.
From freshers to the older members of the community, all of them seemed to have got a lot of new things from the event. We thanked Mercantile Nepal representative for providing internet service for the event. The representatives of Mozilla Nepal expressed their plan of extending the community outside the valley too and enhance the activities with the help of FSA (Firefox Student Ambassadors).

And last, the dinner time (though it was called musical, there was no music till I left the venue) was awesome. Despite having free dinner always seems awesome. Ha Ha!! , it was nice one with papad, half cooked saag and amilo achar :). But we missed something. Group photo and beer party for answering Avash's question. But he has promised to give treat soon. In fact, I don't take beer.
It was a great event but it was unfortunate that some other community members could not make this time around but hope next meetup will be rocking one !!!
Image via: buddhi tuladhar and Nikesh Balami
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