kinshuk sunilit aint no, dessert if therez no caek

Who we are:
We are the team behind the What I Say! Blog – India’s hottest emerging review blog

What is to be made:

1. A new web design for our Wordpress blog
2. A new logo + Avatar/Display Pics for the various social network
3. A new Twitter Background + other social media assets as needed
4. Some other things might come up in between as well, this is very open ended right now

What will you give:

1. All logos and arts in a vector format of your choice
2. A HTML+CSS website design (we can also try and work on a image-based design only as well), in any case, we will use the design given by you to code our own wordpress theme
3. All work will be done by you under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 India License

What will you get:

1. A Credit mention in the website footer (visible on all pages)
2. We will sell the design made by you (coded by us as a theme) as a premium wordpress theme at a price that will be decided after the theme has been made and 25% of the first 10 sales will be shared with you on your Paypal.

Contact for more details at: relations@whatisay.in, mention in subject: “New Design from the InterTubez“

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.

Hello

For some time now, I had been running a fun & humor blog called Abu Sez.

From Today, Abu Sez will be an independent entity. While, I will continue with publishing the funny emails that we all recieve, soon Abu Sez will move in to original comic content, including cartoons and satires. I have plans for opening up Abu Sez for commercial authors as well (but not in near future).

Please visit http://abusez.in, go through the content and subscribe to the feed.

Also note that now there is a new twitter account to handle everything Abu Sez. Connect to me at @abusez then.

I am actively working on writing focussed blogs. The segregation of Abu Sez from KinshukSunil.com is step one. Soon, I will discontinue the reviews category from the blog and only focus on personal endeavours and insights at it aint no dessert, if therez no caek.

More Later
Kinshuk

I am so tired. Its been a tough month for me. A tougher month awaits. First was OSScamp Pantnagar, then was the MozillaCamp (I will be talking about it in this post). Now, upcoming are OSScamp Delhi and OSScamp Chennai. But then, they are immense events in prospects and i do hope to get a lot of community support (unlike the previous times). It would be unfair to add that kudos to the Pantnagar student for the awesome camp they organised in their university. The only thing lacking in OSScamp Pantnagar was the absence of professionals. It was predominantly a student’s camp.

Now about the recent MozillaCamp – How and what of it. (And, I am sorry for writing this post so late)

It all began with a phone call I received from Mohak, when he introduced himself and his idea for MozillaCamp Delhi. The basic idea was that Arun and Seth were coming to India for Techkriti and GNUnify. Mohak talked with Mary Colvig at Mozilla and ensured that Arun and Seth spend a day at Delhi too. Problem was they’d be in Delhi on Tuesday the Tenth. And so started our endeavour to organise a technology unconference for working professionals on a weekday. If anything was supposed not to work, this was it.

Mohak’s first and foremost instruction to me was ‘meet me before you leave for Pantnagar’ and we worked on a number of issues related to sponsorships and venues on phone. Finally, we met for the first time at JIMS (Rithala), to scout it for a venue. In the meanwhile, I had got us our only sponsorship – from OSSCube (my company, but that doesn’t mean it was easy).

In the meanwhile, I also asked Yadu to design the visual assets for the camp and he did a splendid job. Mohak and his team of volunteers did a lot of running job to all sponsors, printers, and supporters. Mohak’s efforts on pre-event promotion paid of really well. But the event was on Tuesday and we had our doubts about the possible attendance. Registrations on the wiki were only about 150.

The biggest challenge for us was to find a venue at such a short notice. We shifted from JIMS (Rithala) to IIT Delhi to finally at Indian Social Institute.

Came Tuesday. Untill 11 only about 10 participants were on the venue. But soon, the hall was full with over 80 participants. It made a grand sight. Arun and Seth were to join us by around 2. So for the morning session, the participants were left at the mercies of me and Mohak. And we ran rampant! The morning session was a drag without any quality session and while breaking for lunch my main concern was – how many will return ?

Return they did from a not-sponsored lunch. (There was hardly any point in sponsoring it either – the venue didnt allow a caterer and their canteen sux). Then, we were joined by Seth and Arun and the rest as they say is history.

The first session was by Pascal Finette on the Concept Series by Mozilla Labs. He talked in length about what is the aim of Concept Series and how is it creatign a better Firefox and a better web. Seth, then, introduced us all to Mozilla and their efforts on Localisation. He discussed emerging issues and challenges in localisation over the web. Then the floor belonged to Arun who talked at length about the new and exciting things coming up in Mozilla Firefox 3.1, HTML 5, Video Tags, and Canvas. His sesion included a number of live demos and was very entertaining event for the non-geeks (a small section of the audeince).Soon it was 5:30pm and we had to wind up.

Mohak and I joined Arun and Seth, then, at the India Habitat Center for a short interview that I recorded for OSSCube, which basically discussed the emerging issues and challenges on the web.

You will find a lot of pictures from the event at: http://tr.im/gd3b and http://tr.im/gd3e
Videos will be uploaded soon at http://youtube.com/osscube . Keep watching that space.

The OSScamp community announces another chapter of India’s biggest unconference on open source. This time the Chennai community takes the initiative.

OSScamp Chennai March 2009 is scheduled for March 13-14, 2009 at the Chennai Trade Center. It is being organised with the OSI Tech Days 2009.

With the growing trend to open source and a higher awareness and tenacity to open source, Open Source is now a reckoning in India. In our efforts to promote Open Source Implementation and Development, we now look at Chennai to take the initiative and take us a step forward.

The alignment with OSI Tech Days will result in a confluence of Geeks and the Demi-gods of Open Source in Chennai. OSScamp Chennai will bring these together in an informal, unconference environment.The camp will thus be a great place to share stuff you have been working at, challenges that you have faced or the innovations you are making. For the newbies, it will create an immense learning opportunity as they can learn and discuss open source tools and technologies with the front runners of the same.

Details about the camp: http://chennai.osscamp.in
Sign Up for the camp: http://osscamp.in/node/147/signup (You will need an OSScamp.in Accoutn First)
Add talks for the camp: http://osscamp.in/node/add/talk
Vote on Talks: http://osscamp.in/category/talk-camp/osscamp-chennai/march-2009
Twitter: http://twitter.com/osscamp

Help us spread the word: Blog about us, Tweet about us, Write about us.
Tag your posts with osscamp or #osscamp.

Come and Participate!