Returned from Foss.in yesterday night thanks to the Indian Airlines flight that was delayed for more than an hour. Besides crappy food, I find the IA services deteriorating. Air hostess walk on the aisle, banging into a sleeping passengers and do not even apologise -that sucks!! I ultimately resolved not to fly the national carrier as far as possible.
Foss.in is our yearly sabbatical and I was very glad I spoke to Aasim’s teacher and he could accompany us to the event. Aasim found some talks he wanted to attend and he did attend them too. He loves the way Atul presents, so he attended and perhaps understood some bits from Atul’s talk ”The impact of FOSS on Everything “. He also attended the ”Quake3 Fun and More” talk and bugged Shree Kumar for the rest of the conference to know/see more of Quake. This year Aasim was 95% of the time on his own, managed to eat properly (so what if it was just pizza and coke) and have fun. He is keen to attend foss.in/2006.
Meeting friends is always on agenda at foss.in and this year that was mostly *the* agenda. It was very nice meeting *the linuxchix* Sulamita. She is doing an important job in the FOSS world which I always thought would never be needed – but to my surprise after talking with many (typical) men I realise that it is indeed needed. OF the BOFs I attended, I must mention the ”FOSS for School Kids“ BOF -got some very good pointers which I intend to implement at Aasim’s school – I have been trying his school to adopt FOSS at least for some of the tasks.
I wish I could spend more time with people I meet once a year. Hope to see you all in the next event and have more fun.
The day end entertainment on second day, Laya Taranga was exhilarating
Phenom and Phriends was great as I knew it would be. This year Aasim was headbanging (which was not really a surprise, the boy is developing a distinct taste for hard rock). If anyone has pictures of Aasim head banging to Phenom, I would like to see them. I am not a hard core hard rock fan, but since I enjoy music of any kind, I enjoy hard rock just as well. I however wish the concert was in open, outside the hall so that people could multitask – a lot of people were going the same evening or the next morning and saying goodbyes is just as important
What came as a very pleasant surprise was finding out that Kishore and Jyoti Bhargava are also keen bird watchers. So after the event, Saturday morning we managed to be up at 7 and went bird watching and despite a slight drizzle, we managed to spot a lot of birds (42 of them to be precise) at Hebbal Lake, Bangalore in just under 2 hours.
Grebes, Cormorants
Great Cormorant
Little Cormorant
Herons, Egrets, Storks
Cattle Egret
Grey Heron
Indian Pond Heron
Intermediate Egret
Purple Heron
Great white Pelican (lifer!)
Ibises, Ducks, Geese
Common Teal
Cotton Pygmy-goose (Cotton Teal)
Spot-billed Duck
Birds of Prey
Black (Pariah) Kite
Brahminy Kite (lifer!)
Eurasian Marsh Harrier
Rails, Crakes
Common Coot
Purple Swamphen
Jacanas, Snipes, Sandpipers
Red-wattled Lapwing
Pigeons, Doves
Laughing (Little Brown or Senegal) Dove
Rock (Blue) Pigeon
Spotted Dove
Parakeets
Rose ringed (Ring-necked) Parakeet.
Cuckoos
Asian Koel
Pied (Pied Crested, Jacobin) Cuckoo
Swifts
House Swift.
Kingfishers
White-throated (White-breasted) Kingfisher
Bee-Eaters
Green Bee-eater
Shrikes, Orioles, Drongos
Black Drongo (King-crow)
Brown Shrike
Starlings (Mynas)
Common Myna
Jungle Myna.
Crows, Treepies
House Crow.
Large-billed (Jungle) Crow
Ioras, Leafbirds, Bulbuls
Red-vented Bulbul
Babblers
Common Babbler
Warblers
Ashy Prinia (Wren-warbler)
Booted Warbler
Clamorous (Indian Great) Reed Warbler
Common Tailorbird
Greenish (Dull Green Leaf) Warbler
Plain Prinia (Wren-warbler)
Chats, Thrushes
Indian Robin
Flowerpeckers, Sunbirds
Purple-rumped Sunbird