I am an early adopter of eeepc but never got a chance to write about it in detail. EEEPC became part of my must carry travel gadgets during my euro trip last year. Ever since them I have carried it to multiple conferences and backpack travels. The only problem I faced was battery life which was around 3.5hrs. Mind you I have the first gen 701 ssd, the recent ones have around nine hours of battery backup.
By default it had Xandros, based on Linux (not sure which distro). It had a tab based desktop specially made for eeepc. Others could go to command line easily. It was pretty decent.

You will always have that developers itch to install the new OS. And also upgrading on Xandros was pain as it had its own packaging system, etc etc.

So the next step was to install any other distro of Linux. I landed up using crunchbanglinux. It’s a true linux in the sense, it had proper desktop, controls etc. But I was not really happy with that. I always had problems getting on to Wifi which I never faced on Xandros. I survived few months but couldnt continue with it. Whats an eeepc with out connecting to wifi? So I decided to change. I must say I never tried to debug it. I am spoilt by the choice.
While installing crunchbang, I had thought about Jolicloud but it was still in alpha then. But then when recently I asked on twitter. Most of them suggested me to go with Jolicloud. So I did. The best part of Jolicloud was the download was available on bitorrent (I feel all the software should be downloadable and should be available through bitorrent. Why? thats another post.).
Even though I had problems while using default Jolicloud usb key creator. Their how to worked well for doing the same using diskimager. After that it was just reboot from USB and few clicks to install.

Once I completed the installation and rebooted. All I did was to register with Jolicloud online, to open more options. My most needed softwares are just a click.

The default desktop is again tab based, but feels much more polished than Xandros. Since Jolicloud is Ubuntu based, it would be difficult to install anything new.

By default everything worked well and I was online. I was able to install new apps by the click of the button. I still need to install some more apps like basic word processors etc which I think should have come by default. But I am very happy with overall UI and ease with which you can do anything. I am enjoying the Jolicloud. Looks like its going to stay on my netbook for sometime. You should try it too.

Wanted to write this post from yesterday night. But didnt know what to write.  26/11 was just one of those incidents which got world (media) attention but I see one such happening every day.  I go through various  emotions every time I read about such violence.

This post is not only for remembering 26/11 heroes but all those great souls which have fought against the violence from the beginning. I salute you all.

To all others

ಓಂ ಅಸತೋಮ ಸದ್ಗಮಯ,
ತಮಸೋಮಾ ಜ್ಯೋತಿರ್ಗಮಯ,
ಮೃತ್ಯೋರ್ಮಾ ಅಮೃತಂಗಮಯ
ಓಂ ಶಾಂತಿ, ಶಾಂತಿ ಶಾಂತಿಃ

om asathoma sadgamaya
tamasoma jyothirgamaya
mruthyorma amrutangamaya
om shanthi shanthi shanthi hi

Rough translation:
From false to truth
From darkness to light
From death to immortality
O kindly light..let there be peace

Woke up 4am on a sunday morning to go for cycling, with the thought it better be good, I have lost hours of sleep for this. After driving for an hour we reached Hesaraghatta which I had known only for two reasons a. Nrithyagram b. my father’s training there. Once we reached the place which marked the begining of our off-road cycling, I was happy. It was green, muddy and beautiful.

We didnt actually have any particular track in mind. We rode as we liked and ended up at Hesaraghatta Lake. We rode on the lake bund until we reached the end. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, now before you question my intentions, let me make it clear. It’s not about women, I think they are very capable (much more than men most of the time), it’s about where we work and work culture.

Also this is not based my experiences inside Infy alone (some kind of disclosure is required isn’t it?). I have spoken to many who work in TOP5 IT companies in India.

Lets be practical. Even if we talk loudly about equal rights/opportunities in India. 90% (good enough to generalize) of the working women has to work in two shifts. One at office and one at home. If you are a young mother then its 3.

The general working hours are around 9hrs/day. Even if I take the least amount of time to reach office it would be 2 hrs per day. Which makes it 11hrs. Remember, it doesn’t include time to reach bus stand, waiting for bus etc. That would make it 12hrs.

So you are left with 12hrs, out of which you obviously will spend around 6 hours ( again 8 is recommended) sleeping. So you are left with 6 hours, to take care of kids, home, parents (all of these are shared by both husband and wife. But be practical in 90% of the homes, only women do it) takes more than 6 hours.

Now you are in an IT industry, your work wont end at 5pm. You have onsite calls, customer calls, appraisal calls, firefight calls, status calls etc..etc. So you are taking break from your actual job (like spending time with child) to attend them.

If you are unlucky, you will be in a **development** project, with tight schedules (I haven’t seen one which doesn’t have tight schedule, yet), then you will end up spending your Saturdays in office too. That is another day lost, for your kid.

So whats the point?
Take a break for 4/5 years. None of the IT companies care for young mothers. You don’t fit into their business model.

This is what I suggested to my friend who is going to be a mother next month. Am I wrong?

PS: I would say even fathers should take a break for a year or two. There is nothing bigger than your family. Save enough to be a good parent later :)

Update:
Gartner study concludes the same:
“Women represent nearly 50% of the labor force and are improving their financial status. Many women will not wait for the traditional corporate ladder to come to them. “Paying their dues” is unappealing. Moreover, women are adamant about balancing their work, personal and family needs. If they must leave IT organizations to do so, while creating their own businesses and moving into other professions, they will.”
-© 2007 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates

I am big fan of RegExBuddy, but its windows only.

Even though I am not as efficient product developer as people at Just Great Software, I wrote a simple UI based RegEx tester called RegExGeleya. I used Netbeans, its a pretty cool IDE to develop Java UI.

You can get the code and app from Google Code, RegExGeleya. Let me know if you like to get involved.

BTW as of now RegExGeleya doesn’t have too many features. Its just a simple tester as of now. It was built for a simple personal purpose of quick testing. But now that it is open to the world, will add one by one as asked. You can request your favorite feature on Google code.

PS: Geleya means friend or buddy in Kannada.