Villupuram Tamil Blog Camp - Photo tour

Its a nice time attending the Tamil Blog Camp event with the opportunity to network with bloggers from neighbouring towns like Pondy and Villupuram.

Left home by 5.20 a.m. and picked up by my colleague Kumaresan and then landing up at Moolakulam in Pondy for my colleague Shiva's house warming ceremony.

The previous day, there was an invitation from Ra.Sugumaran to join him at Pondy and then travel to Villupuram by car with other friends. Ofcourse when I left Shiva's function and called Sugumaran at 7.00 a.m. he was taking bath. He had gone to sleep only after 2.00 a.m. after the hectic work of completing the eleventh hour preparations for the event.

A change in plan...
I shall reach my Father-in-Law's house situated 10 kms before Villupuram and then catch Sugumaran while he crosses that place.
At 8.20 a.m. my mobile rings, Ra.Sugumuran calling...
We are nearing your place, where shall we catch you...

Where are you now?

We have crossed Madagadipet and travelling in a blue Indica car
Ok I shall stand 1 Km after Valavanur. I am wearing a white shirt...
By the time I approached the highway the Indica car sped past...
Oh !
Alas caught a tempo and reached Sugu's group waiting near the Koliyanur Road junction..
What a surprise, already the car is fully packed with 5 people + driver.
Sir, I shall come by bus.
No no, Come with us, we can adjust and go.
A good reception.
This is the first time I am meeting Ra.Sugumaran in person.
Although its very hard to get ourselves jam packed inside this Truly Indian Car, our friends were cool and receptive to this extra person intruding into their already packed car.
But in spite of the too short time and myself delaying their time a bit and making the people feeling more hardship inside the car, I could see the warm reception to this additional member inside the Tata Indica Car
Is this the Tamilian touch, I felt a feather in my cap on being a Tamilian.
A great feeling to get a good company of nice friends.

Then the car started and Sugumaran giving introduction of who's who. In the next 15 minutes we reached the venue.

Though Villupuram happens to be a District Headquarters the road leading from the main road to the Aringnar Anna Arts college is too worst and is full of pot holes. Is this the Indian roads, Why no body cares for such a condition which makes foreigners make fun of we Indians.

We reached the venue at around 9.00 a.m. and got surprised to see the internet connection working. Posted the first update of the event.

The technical staff of the computer lab of Aringnar Anna Arts college had already done the task the previous day to keep the PCs tuned up for the event. The college management was keen to see that everything is to the satisfaction for those attending the event.

Welcome to the camp.

Many persons at the event were new for me and I could not grasp many of their names.

This elderly person was giving out the forms and getting them back after being filled up by the attendees. The respect in his wordings were truly pleasing. A salute to you Sir.

The event has started and people are seen testing their just learned blogging concepts. I was doing a bit of live blogging of the event from that computer.

Almost all the PCs in the college are having Windows98 and many functions in the blogger website is not working. I wonder how the students of the college will succeed in updating their computer skills and make themselves fit to the needs of the emerging career secenario with this outdated operating system.
To be noted is - Microsoft has discontinued this operating system from mid 2006.

Ko.Sugumaran and Mu.Elangovan at the event.

Its surprising to see such a good number of girls were eager to learn the blogging stuff. Really interesting to know their urge to know about the blogging.

A satisfaction to me of having got an opportunity to teach a person on blogging.

The LCD projector which had done a promising work for the event. Although the image output is somewhat dull the projector worked non-stop making the event complete.


Hon. Minister of Higher Education Shri.Ponmudi giving out his talk.

To mark the occasion, a blog for Hon. Minister in his name was created.
URL - ponmudi2008.blogspot
There was a comment that though DMK's colour is Yellow the blog was designed with green colour - trademark of the party's rival - AIADMK

A photo session going on.

A session on insertion of photos and videos in a blog post is going on.

Myself giving out a session of google reader and igoogle.
Some of the participants felt that its really useful tool and thanked me of giving out this information.
Thanks for the encouragement.


Certificates getting ready.

A book in tamil titled "Important rivers, dams and water falls of Tamil Nadu" written by Mu.Nakkeeran was gifted to me as an appreciation for making out a session.
Actually I was left out in the list and it was Ra.Sugumaran who was particular in noting the mistake and ensuring that the gift was given out to me. A really good thing.

Mr.Raveendran, Deputy General Manager of BSNL, Cuddalore giving out his talk before presenting certificates to the participants. He is the only person other than me to come from Cuddalore. After the event I got lift in this Car to get dropped in Cuddalore. So much wonderful discussion with him that he had assured of helping out in conducting a tamil blog camp in Cuddalore.


A few more photos are there, I shall put a slide show in the next article.

Photo courtesy : Ko.Sugumuran

Tamil Blog Camp Update - 3.00 p.m.

Just finished lunch.

This camp has made many of the attendees hook on to the Computers around. Half of them are from the fairer sex, a good strength and so many people tied up with the event with interesting discussions in the native language coming out from the dedicated speakers.

The camp has made these people learn the first step of blogging and they are found sticking to the computers.

I shall be giving a talk on using the google reader the wonderful free tool from google. This tool enables one read the blogs and rest assured of not missing any single post from their favorite blogs.

Of course since so many people are on the internet the bandwith not supporting its taking longer times to proceed. I have to post the photos only after I go to home.

Tamil Blog Camp Update - 12.30 p.m.

Hon. Minister Shri.Ponmudi has arrived at the event and giving out speech on importance of Tamil.

The venue is now jam packed with around 150 people most of them standing and catching the moments of the tamil blog camp.

A blog with the name of Hon. Minister Shri.Ponmudi is being created.

Tamil Blog Camp Update - 11.30 a.m.

Hon Higher Education Minister Ponmudi is expected to grace the event.

The strength here is nearly 75 and a few bloggers from Chennai have arrived at the event.

A session on creating a simple blog using a blogger.com account is going on. Attendees were being taught on how to create a simple blog using a blogger.com account. For creating a blogspot address, a gmail id is required. So there were a number of people creating gmail accounts from the venue. Many of them getting sucked since the website does not allow to create an id. Then it was told that since many number of email ids were created from the same IP address, the website blocks creation of a number of accounts to prevent a possible spam.

But the fact that more number of email ids can't be created at the the same time from the same IP is a lesson.

Tamil Blog Camp Update

Reached the venue - Aringar Anna Arts College - Villupuram.
We a group of Six people including Ra.Sugumaran, Ko.Sugumaran and others arrived at the venue.
Break fast going on.
Internet Connection is already working - A Big Satisfaction
Arrangements such as Computers and stage requirements are going on in full swing.
Shall update about this intersting camp as quickly as possible.

STAY TUNED

Tamil bloggers camp

The tamil bloggers group at Villupuram is organising a one day event on blogging.

The event is taking place on Sunday - 11 May 2008 from 9.00 am onwards
Venue : Aringar Anna Govt. Arts College, Villupuram


An opportunity for me to rub shoulders with bloggers from around my neigbouring town.
Await for an article shortly...

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Newspaper switch over at home

Having been sticky readers of Indian Express newspaper for the past about 15 years we have not changed over to any other newpaper. Now this bold newspaper has undergone changes in the layout and it looks too good. But hitting the belt is the font size which is unfriendly to elders like my Daddy who is 59 years old.

Few days before he had done a switch over to Deccan Chronicle. I was not able to get tuned to this newspaper.

I have got attached with Indian Express (IE) due to its crispy & bold news. Many of the news reports in this paper have resulted in big shots losing their political status. So much was my attachment that its difficult to miss out this newspaper even for a single day.

Now what happened, the new design was good for me but my dad find it difficult reading the new smaller fonts. So he switched to Deccan Chronicle. After three days of reading this news paper the vote from Mummy, Wife, Grandpa and me is for Indian Express. Oh, I shall get my favourite newspaper back, Wow:

All these three days I am forced to buy this Indian Express from the bunk shop while i return from office in the evenings.

Today its Sunday and the decision to switch back was informed to the daily paper walah, but pity, he does not have the stock of today's issue, so i have to go down to the market in the morning and to my pity the bunk shop wallah tells that "Indian Express sold out sir" Phew(: Did some extra travel upto Cuddalore bus stand to get my sticky paper.

I had to convince my Dad that I was not able to compromise on DC over IE, the DC is boring and i fold back the paper in just 20 minutes whereas IE makes up for a 60 minutes of contended reading.

There were few feedback from readers in the "Letters to the Editor" column in IE for making the font sizes bit larger. They have also made some modifications to the fonts, but my Dad is still not satisfied and he favours for the font size which came out in the paper 6 months back.

Yesterday evening while returning from office I got to two shops to buy this newspaper, at the first bunk shop the person manning the shop was not able to pick out Indian Express from the bundle of different newspapers and he gave me a reply that its not available. When I went to the second shop, I discovered that the design in the IE is confusing at the first instance. The new design has a big logo " ie " which is similar to the " le " of the Deccan Chronicle paper. After a little delay, he unfolded the newspaper and confirmed its IE.

The design ie is confusing and the shop keepers are finding it difficult to pick out IE from a bunch of English News Papers.

The old heading "Indian Express" was appealing, now the little two letters is confusing the shop keepers to pick the IE from the bunch.

From tomorrow onwards I will not have the hardship of hunting down to bunk shops for this news paper. But, let me see when this paper will modify their fonts to suit the needs of elderly people like my Dad and Grandpa.

Phissing emails

I got this email which asked me to update my Citibank account information.


The site which opens on clicking the links looks perfect and did not raise any suspicion.


The surprise for me is that I do not have an account with Citibank.

I do not know how many people have fallen prey in passing their vital bank information to these kind of phissing emails.

Weekend Cricket game on today's agenda

Hey today is Sunday
Should catch up my friends here and go to the beach for the cricket game at the ground near the beach.

This fever started some 15 years back. We some of the folks here in neighbourhood grouped to play cricket and peddled our bicycles to the Devanampattinam Silver Beach area (one of the longest beaches in Asia).


This vast greenish ground situated opposite to Periyar Govt. Arts & Science College near the beach plays host to some seven teams play cricket simultaneously. In the olden days some 10 people join to play this game. Our team has a special rule - only rubber ball to be used.
Why?
Not much professional players in our team to take down injuries of this lazy game with those hard cricket ball.

Since all were finding it difficult the rules had got changed - Thanks to Ramprasath who was working in Infosys for simplifying the game rules like - "One pitch catch" - Implies that, even if a fielder catches the ball after it makes one bounce on the ground, the batsman is ousted. Another rule is that the ball should not fly off to the boundary, in which case the batsman is to bid adieu. We find it more enjoyable since the rules were modified. Ofcourse these bent up rules are making the play easy and on the other way preventing outsiders requesting to get into the game.

Many instances were there, during which outsiders with good playing talents get a "gaugee" and make the team members run far and wide to get control of the score. These bent up rules keep these outsiders at bay.

Olden days many school and college going friends of my neighbourhood team up for this weekly rendezvous. The journey for this starts with pedalling the bicycles for a 4 Km up wind. Of course the sweating due to upwind pedalling exercise is too good to get a little burnout to the otherwise lazy me. But the return trips is so cool for us without the much needed effort of pedalling. The westward cool winds in the late evening gives a little push for us to enjoy the pedalling back to home. But its now hard to see guys arriving at the play ground on bicycles only bikes na! The return trips usually see one of the folks sponsoring to quench the thirst of the hard played team members. The team's favourite Paneer Soda is the thirst buster. People claim it the non-polluted drink, yes we avoid the so called Urea contaminated drinks.

Nowadays many of the folks have got jobs, bought bikes, most of them married and some settled at places like Chidambaram, Chennai, Hosur, Banglore or some place in the US of America.

Oh! now very few people are getting into the weekend frolic, with myself too absenting most of the time and missing the fun. Of course the blogging hobby on the weekends is eating up the time which otherwise was spent visiting the cool climate of the playground during the pre broadband era. Is internet killing my weekend fun, ofcourse internet is doing a lot of good too.

Today I am free with wife and son away from town to her mummy's house to spend the summer vacation. So I should make it to the play ground, although my stamina should spruce up to do some little runs.

So let me see my luck for today a Sunday and this evening I should catch up my guys to have a nice time playing the cricket game with the laze of the cool winds of the Cuddalore beach.

Twitter forces police to release student

Buck 29 an American was in Egypt on a trip. He was taking photos of a protest when police grabbed the memory chip from his camera mobile phone, but failed to grab the mobile phone itself.
The word ARRESTED twitted by Buck, reached a large network of his friends across the world. U.S. friends on his Twitter net called the university and the American Embassy. They also alerted the Associated Press, the International Herald Tribune and other media, which helped put the heat on the Egyptian authorities. He was released on Friday and returned home on Sunday.
More of the happening here.