Update – Some youtube links are not viewable or even seen on planet.debian.org. Seems p.d.o. tries its best to remove external links, sorry for the breakage.
Beware – some youtube-links would be shared in this entry, sorry couldn’t find a better/easier media platform to work with. If anyone knows any other platform or wants to suggest, feel free to either mail me or let me know in comments.
I want to start today’s sharing with a picture of Ganesha I saw today. It is and was public art hence sharing it without an issue.
This is starting of festivities time in India and Ganesha or Ganpati is looked up as a good omen in India.
The festival of Ganesh Chaturthi would be starting on the 25th of August and is a sight to behold. Just like Rio has its carnival, Ganesh Chaturthi is also a carnival. We also have parades where people come with Pandals (or temporary structures)
The mythology says he has a sweet tooth (hence lot of distribution of sweets, especially modak) and anything which might be troubling people, he creates solutions for them.
Here is one video of how people celebrate his immersion in India. This is from my home-town few years ago, every year the madness and the celebrations are becoming more and more. People from far off come to see how we celebrate and see how different people make their Pandals. While some are with music, others are with social messages. Usually people start going to see these structures after dusk and return home way after midnight or early morning. I hope to do this endeavour after many years. One is drunk from hearing all sorts of different kids of music, decoration, messages, a feast and a strain to all the senses.
Ganesha immersion celebrations – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjWfpGUryho
If one is interested one can find more info. at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesh_Chaturthi
After quite a bit of time, I wrote an article about various foss internships which I knew besides GSOC over the years. I finally penned them down at https://itsfoss.com/best-open-source-internships/
Interestingly, I was amazed to see that all FOSS U.S. projects (outside of GSOC) are for students who are either living or studying in U.S. and have a student work visa (which from private discussions I came to know is lot harder to get nowadays than before). Except for the National Science Foundation (NSF) which probably has U.S. defence relations and hence they might be sensitive, I fail to understand other institutes preferences for only getting people from the U.S. and hence having a lesser talent pool of people. This also affects the growth of the projects themselves. Just think how limited Debian would have been if it had decided to only have people from only any one community develop it. Dunno if this is due to the present President Trump or these policies had been there before. It would be nice and interesting if people in the know can share.
What has also been interesting to watch is Mr. Trump blaming low-cost manufacturing centres like India and China when as far as I recall, lot of manufacturing, specifically auto-mobiles manufacturing was shifted out of the U.S. to Ireland and other places years before which are relatively high-cost places (at least compared to India). I *believe* the change was as early as in 1980’s itself where India was insulated and had a limited market for everything (similar to Russian communism as shown in popular media but not so bad.)
Interestingly, it took almost a month for the perl 2.56 to make the transition smoothly. It took quite a bit of time for all the components to work together and be installable.
Also saw this few days back http://fortune.com/2017/04/12/auto-industry-decline/
While Tesla is expensive even by American standards the idea of lesser parts, lesser complexity and hence lower costs to use, maintain is good. I do hope that he and his team or any of the competitors do overcome the significant challenges. Any significant improvement in battery technology is bound to have huge impact in almost everything that is used in 21st century.
Two recent articles tell me the future may become present very quickly.
Toyota could finally start mass producing electric cars thanks to China
I do hope to see EV being prevalent before the next decade is over otherwise we don’t have any hope due to climate change.
As for my health, I am much better than before. Just to share some stats, before my “illness” for lack of better word, I was 120 kgs. , when I was kept in the hospital for about 2-2.5 weeks I came down to 95 kgs. and now back upto 108 kgs. Do go for exercising every other day and trying to get back the strength, stamina and increasing a bit of both. Doctors have given me another 4-5 months after which a brain scan will reveal if there are any remaining blood clots in the brain or not.
Lastly, while it has become somewhat of a sensitive issue to love Muslims or to talk about their work in any field in the current political climate, there are 4-5 music pieces I listen whenever I can, especially before going to bed. While almost all the pieces have been sung and written by Muslims, sadly I don’t know who the composers of these beautiful songs are.
While it is much easier to get the names of the singer and the lyricist, one of the more important roles in my view is the composer or/and music arranger. Without them, the songs would not have the same haunting quality that the songs have. While I have been lucky to find the names of the composer/music arranger for the pieces below but this is not the case if and when the songs comes on television. I do remember in old times at least on Radio they used to mention about who has given the music as well, dunno in modern times.
I am sharing the songs, and hopefully will also share the translations if I find on the web, please see the lyrics. The numbering is for convenience only and am torn in these 4-5 songs which is the best. Just to share these are all sufi love songs except the last one which I am sharing.
1.
Lyrical song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehqN6oTpmb8
Translation with video of song – http://www.bollynook.com/en/lyrics/6443/aaj-din-chadheya/
While there probably are stories with each song, I was lucky to find the story about this one. The lyrics of the song are actually a love lost Punjabi poet who writes in the memory of his beloved to which he could not marry and he pens those when standing in line for his liquor. The story goes on that he marries a girl later in life who bears a resemblance to his beloved whom he couldn’t forget till his dying day.
2.
Lyrical song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTC_2c83qn0
The same song has been sung by different people and I love them all the more for it.
Another video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G7Qg4LJ7WE
Another video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOsvNuR3m5Y
Translation – http://www.bollynook.com/en/lyrics/10703/o-re-piya/
3.
Lyrical song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG7Kms_YA5Q
The translation – http://www.filmyquotes.com/songs/885
The translation of the song is a bit crude but then translations are supposed to be crude 😦
Anyways, the above song is what would be called a perfect Sufi song. I hope people enjoy the longing and the silence which follows this piece.
Another classic one
4.
Lyrical song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ube5XhN_lpM
English translation – http://www.ardhamy.com/song/aye-dil-e-naadan
While the song is from the movie Razia Sultana and was a flop as the movie was about Race and controversial then as it probably would be now. As seen in the other songs of the same genre, it has strands of longing, loneliness as seen of the above.
5.
Lyrical song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv242qOnHJA
This one is not a sufi song but I love all the women and the girls and the way they enhanced the song. I dunno how much they must have practised as it’s a very fast and peppy song and doesn’t give time to the singer to breathe except for that one section which has a bit of Carnatic music.
At the very end I would like to share http://www.globalrhythm.net/ I have found some interesting sounds on the site. Hope the site enriches you as well. FWIW I have no links with the site except as somebody who likes to diversify his music listening.
Lastly, for a long period of time, I had been hearing the criticism, especially for FOSS games that they don’t have AAA quality assets. Recently I came across a game called Starship Theory (sadly its only for MS-Windows)
Game video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imaL2pjNURg
You look at the game and see the number of videos the guy has made. What FOSS game developers can learn from this, you don’t need high-end 2.5/3d models, clipart will do but need depth in gameplay which can make FOSS games be popular and also earn a pretty bundle. I do hope some FOSS game upstream developers take note and use that game’s inspiration to bring more depth.
That doesn’t mean games like 0ad are not liked by people but it takes huge amount of time and resources.
0ad video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHx5XBtypcQ
Hope you have a good time with all the ideas, anecdotes and videos I shared above.
Experiences in the community 