Thenmala Eco-tourism

Thenmala is India's first planned ecotourism project and it shows. The cost and scale of the project is very inspirating. That's the only good thing I want to say about this place, because its state of disrepair made me sick
dispite beautiful nature all around me.

On route to Themala



Railway bridge along the road




First view of Thenmala dam from the road



Sculpture Garden




Thenmala Dam









Arky on Thenmala Dam Boardwalk




Arky on Nature Trail




Elevated Walkway Thenmala




Beautiful view from the top of canopy




Jose and me on elevated walkway




Arky on Elevated walkway




Bird watching from elevated walkway





Waterfalls near Thenmala





Great place for fly fishing

Please visit www.thenmalaecotourism.com for more information and write to them giving a piece of your mind. I did! .

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National Workshop on Web Accessibility, Trivandrum September 2009

During the last National Workshop on Web Accessibility in Bangalore I said to Nirmitha (Center of Internet and Society) "Let have the next workshop in Trivandrum".

Thanks to support of Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment (SPACE), Insight ICT Centre for the differently abled and Kerala State IT Mission this event comes to Trivandrum, Kerala.

We want to take this workshop to other cities in India. If you are interested leave a comment or email me.

Announcement of National Workshop on Web Accessibility

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment (SPACE) are organizing a workshop on web accessibility for web developers from the public and private sector from September 25 to 26, 2009. The workshop will take place at Christ Nagar International School, Kowdiar, Thiruvananthapuram, between 09:30-17:30 hours each day.

The workshop seeks to bring together practitioners from Government Departments, as well as from small and medium enterprises across the country. The primary aim of this workshop is to demonstrate the importance of creating accessible web sites and to educate the developers of government and private web sites on how to incorporate accessibility features into new as well as existing web sites.

The training comprises both theory-oriented and practical sessions.The trainers are specialists in various aspects of web accessibility. The main focus will be on WCAG 2.0 guidelines. The workshop is for persons already involved in developing web sites with good knowledge of HTML, XML, CSS, etc. In addition to training web developers in accessibility, the workshop will also serve as a platform for capacity building by training potential accessibility trainers.

The programme is supported by Kerala State IT Mission, which runs INSIGHT - ICT Centre for the differently abled in association with SPACE.

Hurry! Interested persons are requested to register immediately as seats are limited.

Candidates may register directly on the website at http://c11.space-kerala.org/webw/

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Kovalam Light House

Martin and Gompo invited me over for a luncheon at Kovalam. We went for a walk on the Eve's Beach. The Kovalam beach looks very different from my last visit. The rough sea and high tides took over most of the beach, so we went up the lighthouse instead.

Where's the beach !


Kovalam Lighthouse


High waves hit the beach


Stairway to heaven (140+ steps)


Kovalam- view from lighthouse



Kovalam Beach - view from lighthouse


Lighthouse beacon housing


Martin at the top of lighthouse


Gompo and me

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Watching the sunset

Sitting on the boat jetty, watching the sunset. Sunset photos of a beautiful evening on campus.

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Trivandrum Hangouts :: Variety Fresh Juice

Traveling into Trivandrum city every few weeks for shopping is a chore. Leaving the serene and quiet lake side campus to go out into the bustling city is not a very attractive preposition. But there is one consolation, I get dig into delicious thick milkshakes at Variety Fresh Juice. Just walk down from Big Bazaar on East Fort main road. You'll find this shop tucked into the corner of a busy intersection. The milkshakes and juices priced at Rs.20/30 don't burn a hole in one's pocket.

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Cursor Jumps Around Screen :: Linux Annoyances

Heard lot of compliants about this strange case. The cursor seems to jump to different location on the screen while typing in OpenOffice on Ubuntu Linux laptops. I haven't faced this problem before. Perhaps checking 'Disable touchpad while typing' Touchpad setting in Mouse Preferences would fix this issue.

You can also use the following command to enable this setting from commandline.

gconftool --toggle /desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/disable_while_typing


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Hack a Mobile Phone with Ubuntu Linux and Python for S60

Managed to breath life back into my old hand-me-down Nokia N70. The phone was having White Screen of Death (WSOD) one too many, a new display IC fixed that. The original nokia battery (Nokia BL-5C) started to swell and needed to be replace.

Now the old war horse is battle ready, let me hook it up to my laptop via a bluetooth link and do something useful with Python on S60 series.

$ hciconfig reset 
hci0: Type: USB
 BD Address: 00:21:86:A8:BF:03 ACL MTU: 310:10 SCO MTU: 64:8
 UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN 
 RX bytes:1260 acl:0 sco:0 events:34 errors:0

$ hcitool dev 
Devices:
 hci0 00:21:86:A8:BF:03

$ sdptool add --channel=2 SP 
Serial Port service registered

# Now make sure the Python bluetooth console is running

$ rfcomm listen rfcomm2 2 

In your phone, make sure bluetooth is on, then go to the Python application and then select the Bluetooth Console. Select from the list of available devices your computer's bluetooth adapter (you might need to select search even if you think you have already defined the pairing). If the operation is successful, you should see something similar to the following on your computer's shell:

    * Waiting for connection on channel 2
    * Connection from 00:11:9F:BE:47:CA to /dev/rfcomm2
    * Press CTRL-C for hangup 

# Change to different terminal and connect to the device with screen. 
$ screen /dev/rfcomm2

# Run basic tests.

print u"hello"
hello
>>>
>>> import appuifw
>>> appuifw.note(u"hello world")
>>>

This Python S60 Bluetooth Console wiki page provides more step by step intrusions of the whole process.

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