Anoop John

World over people have been slowly realizing the seriousness and enormity of the problem of global warming. One of the campaigns that has been growing in size and reach has been the Earth Hour campaign. Join hands with the global community for Earth Hour 2009 and turn off your lights for an hour at 8.30pm Saturday 28 March. Zyxware has pledged support for the campaign by displaying banner on our website also by powering down at the said time.

When you work in the software industry, either in the services sector, or in the products sector, you never get to see the harmony, the cooperation and the amiability that, you find in the Free Software Community. I am not claiming that, it is all friendly, harmonious and amiable, but you get to feel it very often, and in quite a lot of communities, and when you do, it is bliss. I had earlier written on the monetary aspects of Free Software development. Today I will share one of my personal experiences in getting a feel of the bliss mentioned above.

Ministry of Health, Government of Kerala, announced that free anti-rabies vaccine will be provided to all dog-bite victims in the state. This generosity was triggered by the new intra-dermal vaccine that is far cheaper than the earlier intra-muscular one. Pledging solidarity with the Government's gesture, I will be offering Free Chickenpox immunization for anybody interested.

I was asked by the magazine editor of College of Engineering Trivandrum to prepare an interesting article on Free Software covering the various aspects around it. The article is supposed to go into the CET College Magazine. I have prepared a reasonably elaborate article and have posted it in my longer and philosophical blog. It would be great if you can please chip in and review the article here - Making Money with Free Software

The monday before last was yet another normal day at office for me. But towards late evening everything went topsy turvy. It started with a bad bout of vomiting and then was followed by a very high fever. By midnight I was running close to 104 degrees temperature and was delirious. After that I went through the full torture of being a dengue patient for almost two weeks. I am back at work but still feeling the tiredness of the fever.

I am sure that there are quite a few out there who would like to do what I have done, only that they might not have the courage and determination to do so. Yes I taught Kerala Police a lesson this week. As a matter of fact, it was not just one but really a handful.

Like mentioned in my previous post there is a new initiative by a group of youngsters to contribute towards building up the awareness about the importance of keeping our environment clean and in managing waste. As part of this initiative we are planning to conduct a 2 hr Museum (Trivandrum) cleanup drive. Since the major reason why we have to deal with waste in the first place is a lack of awareness/concern among the general public, that is the aspect that we are trying to address through thIs clean-up drive. Do read more about the museum cleanup and join the mailing list if you are interested.

At around 5:30AM today morning, a bearded young man walked inside Alwaye railway station. He was carrying a dark duffel bag and a carry bag containing something really heavy. He walked confidently to the ticket counter and took a ticket to his destination. Taking his bags he walked to the far end of the railway station and identified a strategic seat next to a halogen lamp post.

One of my friends who used to work with Supplyco has moved on to a new job with KSFE. He had recently called me up to see if I wanted to invest in KSFE. I said no, as a matter of fact I am not looking to invest in anything but Zyxware. I promised him to let my friends know about this. So here I am.

There are certain aspects about Free Software that resonates very closely with my philosophies of life. One of that is the fact that it enables people who would like to get things done, to go ahead and get them done. This was exactly what I did for converting the Microsoft Excel template for filing Kerala VAT returns into OpenOffice Spreadsheet format.