kinshuk sunilit aint no, dessert if therez no caek

Sorry guys for not being in touch these few days. I was seriously unwell. Bam! Just like that! But these days have been exciting.

First of all let me explain to you the topography of my room – in my room there is a big window with a ledge outside it. In the initial room design, there were only the window-doors on this window and I was practically wasting the ledge space. Pigeons used this space to shit and make their nests, which was very unhygienic. So, in a flash of inspiration – the decision was taken to cover up the whole ledge space with a grill. Now, as luck might have it – there was, perhaps, a nest of pigeons on my AC. For 2 days after setting up the grill (yesterday morning), my mom and I noticed a baby pigeon inside the window.

Now we all were concerned of the pigeon-ling. Its care and nourishment. The biggest dilemma was how to ensure its safety and how to re-unit it with its mother. For we saw the mother coming to the window sill every other hour and the son (by the way, how do you check if its a male pigeon or a female one?) running towards her, both sharing some moments together and then the mother flying away and the son left stranded. We felt so sorry for the poor thing that mom and I decided that we should nurture it. I placed some rice grains and some water near it, and left it in peace. This was around 11.

I checked again around 3 and found him trying to hide behind the glass panes in the window-door due to the sun. His little cage must have been burning. The best I could do at that moment was to create a make-shift home for him using a carton box. He likes that shelter very much. It was then that we decided naming it and I came up with the name ‘Tunnu‘ – cheesy! I know! Yet all nicknames in my family are rhyming to the ‘-unnu’ sound so we went forward with it.

Tunnu has been drinking some water, but not touched any food as yet. This was worrying me very much. He should eat or how else would he have the strength to live. This went on whole of yesterday and till 2pm today.

It was then that I observed that the mother who has been coming every other hour to the window, is actually feeding the child through the grill. So now I am not very worried about feeding Tunnu, now my only concern is to how to reunite Tunnu with his mother. His beaks and claws scare me so i don’t think I would be courageous enough to lift him from the window ad place him in an open environment from where he can fly away. I am not even sure if he knows how to fly. Even if I “free” him, I am worried about his sustenance in the ‘wild’ world. The only option that seems viable to me is break open the grill so that Tunnu can learn to fly and fly to freedom one day.

Can you think of any better solution? If yes, any help is welcome.

These days with Tunnu have also been very illuminating. It is very inspiring to see pigeons exhibit complex relations. I had only heard of them, now I am seeing them first hand.

Yesterday, I was invited to the Nokia Music Store India launch event – the Nokia Music Bootcamp. I have written about it here. I went to the event with fellow bloggers Honeytech, Praval, Gaurav Mishra, Sachin Khosla, and Abhijeet Mukherjee. Also met Sayantan Pal and Priyanka Sachar at the event. The event was a splendid experience, what with Nokia doing a new service launch, but more about the music band – advaita, that performed at the event. Advaita is coming up with their new album – grounded in space, and has made some amazing music. Their way of blending rock and folk is very new and fresh and the music feels soothing.Look up these guys, they are amazing.

What was more about the evening was the company of these bloggers – makes you realise how much more there is to learn and yet their friendly demeanour keeps you at ease. Abhijeet and I have had a small stint as co-bloggers during my authorship at the Make Use Of Directory. Meeting him was an old wish that finally came true. After all that I had heard about Honeytech, meeting him was a very different exeprience – energetic, wise, and young. And his affection for good music.

I look forward to meeting these guys and a many more bloggers and community people across the nation. Just realised there is so much more to learn :)

I guess, learning is a constant process, it keeps going on.

Mid-Day did an interview with me on one of the community Initiatives I am working on – Indie Game Development, India, Community. The interview is included below:

Gaming is no more a waste of time, it’s serious business. and even if it isn’t, who cares? Living by this law are the members of a freshly formed community DiningCamps. Its founder Kinshuk explains the highs of the game

Not many understand that online or console games develop intelligence, skills and decision-making power.

Especially, IT administrators give video-gamers a hard time because they consider gaming applications as a wastage of space, conducive to viruses and obviously and impedence to Internet speed.

They realise that these very geeks are probably much smarter and creative than you. Here comes a group of game developers who not only want to shed all the myths about gaming, but also give it a corporate twist.

Over to Kinshuk.

Read full interview on Mid-Day website. OR read the scan below (click on image to full view the article)

Folks

I have been working on this idea and concept for some time now. Since, my early open source game-dev days (early 2004), I have felt the need for having a pan-india indie game development community. Me and Yadu kept discussing it for so long, its hard to even recall. This all happened while we kept jumping projects on Sourceforge.net and then Launchpad.net.

November 2008, saw the setting up of a mailing list on Google Groups. I called it Indie Game Developers India (InGDIn) community. With no active promotion taking place, the community kept growing at a snail’s pace to the present day 32. That was until yesterday.

On September 2, 2009, Yadu and I, we have finally come up with the InGDIn Community formally. Currently, the website is under development – so we have an active presence on Facebook. See the InGDIn Page on facebook and become a fan as well (just to stay updated). InGDIn is also on twitter now! Follow us!

To propel the whole idea forward, and give us momentum, we have also come up with the idea of DiningCamps (organised by InGDIn). The objectives of DiningCamps are three-folds:

1. Create a platform to interact and network with people interested in game development – create a talent pool
2. Create a platform to showcase one’s work, find team members, investors and publishers – create an indie marketplace
3. Have loads of fun while doing the above both

A lot of stuff has still to be planned. Check out the event page on facebook – DiningCamp 04.10

A lot more will follow… keep your fingers crossed!

Have fun!

Folks,

I have 10 invites for the CodeChef Tech Talk Geek Symposium scheduled for Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad on September 11, 12 and 13. For more details about the event, please read the CodeChef Website.

These invites are available courtesy the CodeChef community for the OSScamp Community. If you are interested in participating at the event, please leave a comment on the post on the OSScamp Community Blog.

Hope to catch you all on OSScamp Delhi September 2009.

I also have another exciting announcement, coming up in the next blog post. Watch out!