And suddenly when I check my pocket for cell phone , its not there. Something heavy dropped down in my stomach. I liked my cell very much. I dunno what really took me – my like for the phone, or the thing that I had lost it or what my parents might say! Then along with my friends Started searching for it. It took a minute to grasp the situation and then i called my number using my friend’s mob. One full ring – no one takes, connection canceled. Another full ring , no answer still. I ran back to the place where I ate , all the while calling my number. I was searching like a mad fellow at the eating place. Then some one took the call. Thank god it was some guy I knew and I got back my phone.

But after I got my phone back , I started wondering. How much we get attached to our stuff. And how bad it is in situations like this. I once had a discussion with hari about losing a cell phone and breaking one’s own phone.He said losing one’s phone is very bad than actually one damaging it oneselves’ knowingly . I guess I get his point now.

PS : I knew the guy like this : He had attended MGL classes and my phone had a Micro SD card named suren and few of my photos in it.

Volume 1

Volume 2

and the actual site i got it from is this

Meet GNU/Linux ’07 is a small course introducing Linux to Beginners organized by third year students of GLUG-T, GNU Linux User Group Trichy. After two successful versions of MGL coordinated by Alagu and Hari in 05,06 respectively, I am coordinating the event this year. Already First batch is over and Second batch is due to start on coming monday.

Organizing this classes has given me a lot of mixed experiences. First i learnt that , i am not a good organizer as in I could have done a lot of things better. Got so many new friend’s from my new year. The best part was we had a team working rather than i am the only person working ! The team includes Aditya Rao, Sreenivas Prasad,Viswanath, MSk, Vinod, Deepak, Madavan, Yazhini,Nishad, Vinod,Ankit and Anshu Prateek. All of them great in their own way. I mean i never thought i will have the privilege of working with all of them at the same time .Whats better we had fun. We went for few treats and had some fun also there. I dont deny we had some problems here and then but mostly it went well taking it into account that I was new to this organizing stuff and all !!

Here is a small gist of what all happened during the five days!!

Day – 1:

I stated the session with Introduction into Linux showing them demo of my Beryl 3D Desktop and other features. Unfortunately in our college we don’t have a proper common Linux lab. So had to run VNC from two main Linux servers. Then the session had to be followed by Srinivas Prasad on basics of Linux shell. Well he did start it , but then i got a bit hyped up and joined him taking the class (Something which i later regretted i should not have done though that session )went fine !!And not to forget something really funny -Anshu took a marker pen and wrote a big A on the projector screen while he got carried away explaining something !!

Day -2 :

Vishwa explained about Linux file hierarchy very cleanly. It was followed by Aditya Rao and Vinod who shared between them explaining various applications in Linux. Then Deepak started explaining how to programme in Linux using gcc and gedit. I dont know what happend after that – the vnc’s started crashing and we were getting funny errors. Deepak’s session was really cool – he was explaining every point. It was my mistake, should have tested the VNC sessions beforehand

Day – 3:

Madavan started with the Files, users and permissions and thankfully VNC’s worked properly and first time people asking doubts and this was were myself learnt a few things.Madavans’s session as expected was great ! His knack of putting things was really nice . The session was followed by MSK’s demonstration on Gimp and Gparted. Then it was followed by Ankit’s Linux in LAN. As such day 3 went really nice without any problems.

Day – 4 :

By far the best sessions were on Day4. Yazhini explained advanced shell commands in shell like cut,tr and stuff ! It was nice and i learnt most of them only then. Followed by Nishad who took on shell scripting. And in the beginning we taught them vim also so that instead of gedit they can use vim to edit files. and Deepak just had revisited on his earlier programming session but people tried out this time !! Day 4 was the best !! and as such there were funny incidents like Nishad telling things like “the commads are case sensitive that is, it is not case insensitive” and yazhini like “can any one answer my question?? , oh no u cant” even without pausing to ask

Day -5 :

Sreenivas and Msk taught python the first session . Other were preparing a online test . Earlier we had announced a Glugt Tshirt to toppers of the test. But the test was a complete fiasco as the test module I used suddenly was not working.Quoting hari “Murphy is God”. Then we announced the tests will be held later and then I rounded off the session with telling them how to install Linux.

We also had an anonymous feedback webpage which was great but for a few which were like “suren is a moron” and stuff like that. We gave them a printed booklet for future reference and also distributed fedora-7 dvd for all those who participated. All participants will get a participants certificate. We took a total charge of Rs 250 per head for the whole class and I guess on the whole it was worth it but given some more time i could have had few more sessions. But as students even we have our own limitations and third year is hectic already.

As such i am happy that, we pulled of something of this magnitude and more importantly we now have a nice working team . Hope to do better for second batch.

Found this when I did this poster for MGL