Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Sajjad blogs about yesterday's Fort Cochin Heritage Walk Mapping party in Cochin. We had to wind up the two day mapping party on the first day itself. We had to leave the city immediately, a political hartal (strike) was due to begin the next day. The city transport system would grind to a halt leaving us stranded in the city.
Living on the fort cochin island itself was too expensive, the cost of rooms skyrocket around the fort cochin carnival time. Perhaps we hope return to the Fort Cochin soon to continue mapping the whole island. Perhaps better prepared next time guys! .
Fort Cochin is marked for one of the earliest establishments of foreign trade in Kerala. The heritage walk is an awesome 6 KM journey on foot, which takes us back to the 1700’s when the Dutch, the Portuguese and the English was busy trading the wealth. The island provided them a very wonderful place to trade and refresh. The heritage walk meets us at different monuments which reminds us of these historical landmarks.
I met Arky at the Ernakulam Boat Jetty, from where we collected few maps and other resources. 
Read more about the Fort Cochin Heritage Walk Mapping party
Saturday, 26 December 2009
Last week I traveled to Hyderabad to talk about 'Linux for Linguists' at the Sanskrit Computational Linguistics Symposium workshop. Department of Sanskrit studies, University of Hyderabad organized this national workshop titled "Sanskrit and Computers, Getting equipped to face new challenges".
Few years ago I spent sometime working with newly created department of Sanskrit Studies learning the fundamentals of computational linguistics. I return to the department every year to work with the researchers. They use Ubuntu Linux for their work, the Ubuntu logo kolam at the entrance of the workshop was a surprise. 
Linux Talk In Sanskrit
The event had yet another surprise in store for me. Thirumala Kulkarni introduced Linux in the Sanskrit, one of oldest language of the world. Can you match that ! .
Linux For Linguists Slides
The first part of my talk was a demo of Ubuntu Linux LiveCD and how to install Ubuntu Linux on their personal computers. In my talk I introduced Linux and its numerous toolset that can be used for linguistics research. The talk was peppered with humour rather than technical jargon and I ended my talk asking the research to contribute back to the Ubuntu Linux project.
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The response from the participants of the workshop was very positive and inspiring. The event did generate a lot of interest and hope it will help more people adopt gnu/Linux for their research work.
Friday, 25 December 2009
Thursday, 10 December 2009
After trying various gnu/Linux distributions for mobile devices, I choose Ubuntu MID (8.10 Intrepid Ibex), a keyboard / mouse driven distribution from Ubuntu. It was possible to use a spare PC laptop as my test development platform instead of a MID Development kit. The idea behind this experiment to try running Orca screen reader on devices other than gnu/Linux personal computers.
Ubuntu MID distribution is targeted at new Mobile Internet Device (MID) devices, though it doesn't include gnome-orca package. But don't let that stop you, you can get the packages and its dependencies from main repositories and install it manually with dpkg. Right now not possible to install the gnome-orca packages from the main repositories due to 'lpia' architecture package tag conflict.
The list of needed packages are given below.
- at-spi_1.24.0-0ubuntu3_i386.deb
- gnome-orca_2.24.1-0ubuntu1_all.deb
- libatspi1.0-0_1.24.0-0ubuntu3_i386.deb
- libbrlapi0.5_3.10-0ubuntu2_i386.deb
- libgail-gnome-module_1.20.0-1ubuntu1_i386.deb
- libgnome-speech7_0.4.21-0ubuntu5_i386.deb
- libxevie1_1.0.2-3_i386.deb
- libxevie1-dbg_1.0.2-3_i386.deb
- python-brlapi_3.10-0ubuntu2_i386.deb
- python-gnome2_2.22.3-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
- python-gnome2-desktop_2.24.0-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
- python-gnomecanvas_2.22.3-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
- python-pyatspi_1.24.0-0ubuntu3_all.deb
Once the packages are installed with 'dpkg -i *deb'. The orca can be enabled via the accessibility menu or by setting the gconf settings. Though the interface is not yet accessible, I was able to use midori browser with Orca without any trouble.
Sunday, 6 December 2009
Few hours ago I heard that my friend Jawahar Patani finished the documentary about Rural Internet Kiosks(RIK) project. I have been helping this project for while now. I hope that this documentary would spread the word about this wonderful initiative.
Please visit www.ruralinternetkiosks.com to learn more about this project.
About the Documentary
This short documentary features ICT development in Africa with emphasis on how the Rural Internet Kiosk (RIK) is changing the way rural Africa communicates. The Rural Internet Kiosk is 100% solar powered and is connected to the Internet via Satellite using Astra2Connect VSAT technology.
You can watch the part 1 and part 2 of this documentary on youtube.
After the first Open Street Map (OSM) mapping party in Calicut few months ago, we decided to organize more such parties. I suggested to have another one during the Scipy 2009. We are going meetup on sidelines of the conference and have a mapping party. Please join us here in Trivandrum (Kerala) on 12 December 2009.
More information about the event is available on the Trivandrum Mapping Party wiki page
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
We had a mapping party at NIT Calicut recently. After the first day of the event I shared some ideas to make such mapping parties better with GeoHackers team.
Sajjad Anwar created this 'How to organize a mapping party' guide based on those ideas. After few corrections over the weekend I felt it is ready to be shared with everyone. Perhaps we turn this into neat mini howto. If you are interested please leave a comment or get in touch with me.
Introduction
Map-making or Cartography aided mankind from the time when lived in caves, the geographic knowledge and the compass guided the progress of our civilization. Today such wealth is only available to those who can pay huge royalties or license fees. OpenStreetMap project (OSM) takes its inspiration from Free Culture philosophy and aims to provide geographic information of the entire planet to one and all.
Mapping parties are organized to teach map making skills and contribute to OpenStreetMap project. With the advent of GPS technology anyone with such a device and computer can build high quality maps. This document explains how one can organize a mapping party in their school or workplace.
The Tools
Lets look the tools that are needed for making maps, we need a GPS device, a personal computer to edit the mapping data and an account on OpenStreetMap servers to upload your data.
The GPS device
GPS is Global Positioning System. The earth is surrounded by 31 satellites, which provide us sufficient information to identify where we are on the planet. This tracking is processed with the help of geographic coordinates called Latitudes and Longitudes. There are lot of stand alone GPS receivers available in the market. Now most of the smart phones are equipped with GPS receivers. GPS devices are the primary data collection tool for mapping. The data collected in the GPS devices are used in the GPX format. This is the most easy and efficient method for fetching the data from the device. The GPX file is the collection of traces and waypoints. Map images in formats like .jpg, .png etc are also used. The OSM data subsets are available in the .osm format.
The Map Editor
Map editors are the workplace were we use the data collected from GPS to create the map. Creating the map involves proper tagging of the data. Many editors are available, like Java OpenStreetMap editor (JOSM),Potlatch ,merkaartor. Among these, JOSM is the heavy duty offline editor.
Getting an OSM account
We need to have a proper OSM account to validate and upload the map we created. You can create a new account here.
Lets start mapping !
The next important step is creating teams. The entire party is divided into small teams based on how many GPS devices you have at your disposal and size of mapping area. Each team should have at least one person with good sense of direction. Each team can be given a name or colored arm band (optional). Each team is equipped with a terrain map with landmarks that show the borders of their sector. Various services like google, yahoo. walking-papers.org provide terrain maps that can be printed before hand. A person can act as a control center co-ordinator. He is responsible to staying in touch with team in the field with mobile phone or portable 2 way radio (optional).
Data Collection and Downloading
Maps are created at this stage. The data we have mined are ordered, analyzed, and tagged. We need to make sure that all the team follows a naming convention or comment. The coordinator should watch for over marking / mis-marking of the same location. Once the data is properly tagged, it is time to upload it to the OSM server.
Feedback
Each team would be provided with a feedback form, which they are intended to provide sincere information regarding their experience in the workshop. This step is a sort of improvement and corrective measures for future mapping parties.
Saturday, 21 November 2009
Beer, Barbeque's and Blues at the The 12th Bar beach party in Kovalam
The beach 
The Music
The Blues 
And the food ! ( What more can one ask for)
12th Bar Band 
Johnny, You guys rock! 
Thursday, 19 November 2009
I lived in Kerala for over an year now. Never had a chance of watching Kalarippayattu, the oldest fighting system in existence. Last evening I visited Thapovan to watch a demostration of Kalari.
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Veli Tourist village on the other side of Trivandrum city is very popular with tourists. Thats one reason why I didn't visit it until now. The village was created by the kerala tourism is built on site where Veli lake flows into the Arabian sea. As you enter the Veli tourist village, there is park with couple of artificial ponds and huge fish in dirty murky water but it doesn't seems to matter much. Everyone around is happy snapping pictures and posing.
There are sculptures everywhere on the green grass. Some celebrating the beauty of female form other so obscure that no one gives them a second glance. And to top it all there is a huge power grid tower right middle of the park. Perfect !
Found a good spot on a stone bench and immersed myself in Philip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect. It can be trying experience to ignore the crowds gawking at you. Its too hot to go walking yet, have to kill few hours before I start walking along the pathway on lake shore and then onto the mile long beach. 
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
There is very little information on using DAISY : Digital Accessible Information SYstem ( DAISY ) digital talking books on linux operating system. In this post let me introduces two programs that allows linux users to read and produce DAISY digital talking books.
AnyDAISY DAISY Book Player for Firefox
You can read DAISY books with firefox web browser using AnyDAISY extension. Its been actively developed with the help of Benetech and Mozilla foundation.
odt2daisy DAISY Book Creator for OpenOffice
You can quick turn your documents into DAISY book by using odt2daisy extension. Download this extension and you can export your documents into DAISY format.
You can also use these extenstions on other operating system too. Please try them and report problems to the developers.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Some creative endeavors start in the most unlikely places. For me it was waiting for my turn to bat. With my thick glasses and diminutive size I was the lowest in batting order of our gully cricket team. I would spend most of time perched on the moss covered walls along the boundary line. It wasn't that bad. I turned my creative prowess to covering the walls in chalk graffiti. Primitive cricket scoreboards, insults and expletives addressed to no-one in particular and in the height of my creative fervor I produced a simian that looked like a classmate of mine. The later did landed me in great deal of trouble. The boys mother stormed my house in such fury which is quite uncommon in mid summer. My good-for-nothing uncle number three came to my rescue, for which I am still grateful. I often buy him a bottle sometimes when visit home.
Though my nascent career in mural arts was snipped at bud on that fateful evening. I kept on scribbling through math classes in high school. In college, it helped me pull through dreadful lectures on supply and demand. It seemed my interest to be always in short supply. The only consolation in this unproductive part of my life, I lived life my way. From hazy dorm rooms and to my own digs in the city, Art was everywhere in the chaos of my lodgings. The spatter of ketchup (or was that curry) on the far side of the wall was inspired by Jackson Pollock. And the CD's spread on the floor among the books was straight out of Salvador Dali's 'La persistencia de la memoria'.
Looking back now, I feel a loss of those personal creative spaces and collaborations that started with rolling of a joint. Visiting Protospace filled me with some hope, perhaps all is not lost. Good luck and thank you for having me protospace team!.
Sunday, 8 November 2009
Its sunday evening and it started to rain. It been raining for three days now. Sipping hot coffee I remember the weekend with fellow blogger Tys at his family estate in Nedumangad.
It was a hot day when we left Trivandrum . The weather turned mild as we drove up the winding road to Nedumangad. As the car turned away from Nedumangad town, I caught a glimpse of massive Thirichittoor Rock. Thirichi means 'turn' or 'return' in Malayalam. The monkey god Hanuman lifted this rock seeking a life saving herb but realizing it was wrong hillock he put it back and the name stuck.
We turned off the narrow main road, the sign above the gate says 'Silk Estate'. Before the Indian independence this was a mulberry plantation, the estate still bears the name. We stopped before a beautiful bungalow, it is surrounded by a rubber plantation. About 10,000 rubber trees the plantantion worker giving me tour told me. I never seen how natural rubber is made, all I know is what I seen in books and on television.
Rubber is collected in small cocount shells from the tapped tree. It is mixed with water and few chemicals, allowed to conceal in large flat bottom trays. Later water is rinsed out mechanically and the rubber mats are cured in large boxes with wood fires. This process of making natural rubber must have remained unchanged in decades.
Later we started trekking up the Thirichittoor Rock to enjoy the magnificent sunset. There are few place where illegal rock mining was rampant before it was finally put to stop. 
I hope to visit this beautiful place once again. For now I head out for dinner and a evening walk in rain.
