Even though I’m not a Microsoft enthusiastic, I’m very much glad to say that FIT won the Imagine Cup Locals for the 3rd consecutive time after the beginning of the tournament. 1st place, 3rd place and 4th place all came under FIT logo and seemed like FIT dominated the tournament this time. So I wish “SARA” the team which will be going to Korea for the international tournament all the best and hope they will be able bring pride to the island.
Last week 5 students from our faculty(including me) went to the Faculty of Applied Science of University of Sabaragamuwa. The Faculty is situated in Buttala at a separated place from the Sabaragamuwa University. We went there on last Wednesday(13th June) and stayed there for 4 days and did a stall with some of our projects representing our faculty.
The participation for the exhibition was overwhelming. In all 3 days there were non-stopping cues of school children coming to see the exhibition even from the farthest corners of the central area of Sri Lanka. When we talked with those who were coming to see the exhibition we really understood the state of IT literacy of Sri Lanka. That’s to say that most of the IT literacy and IT boom is centered in mainly Colombo western province and we can even make it focus only to Colombo area. Some of the school children that we talked didn’t even have a computer in their schools much less a computer lab. So even though there’s a GIT (General IT) subject for O/L and A/L students it seems like IT knowledge is not going to rural areas successfully.
But all the credit should go to Faculty of Applied Science of University of Sabaragamuwa for their effort in making that exhibition a success because at least they are taking an effort to take IT to rural areas and hopefully they will get some cooperation from government or private sector in their future efforts. Also I have to thank the students of the faculty for all the help they gave us and the hospitality of the students were amazing and we would certainly help them again if an opportunity is presented because this sort of things are truly in need to make IT spread in Sri Lanka and bring it to a level which will make IT not a luxury for people but a necessity of people.
About 3 weeks after the acceptance into my SoC project I thought of putting a note saying what’s going on with the project.
Actually there’s a fair amount of work going on with SoC already. Even though we are not to start coding until May 28, there are things that have to be done before coding starts.
We have been given extra 2 months ahead of coding in order to better preparing for the project and get to know the community. It’s really good to have some time to understand ethics, ways and workings of new environment. that we are working with in next 3 months and may be for quite some time after that. So most of the organizations seem to using this extra time wisely and getting to know about their SoC students and making them comfortable with the community.
Talking about Gnome, it’s really great to work with them. Gnome got 29 projects selected for this year SoC and they are giving a great support to their students. After getting selected first thing I did was chat with my mentor and other guy who will be doing the other part of the project. ( Since the scope of this project seemed too long for SoC time line, Gnome divided the work load into two, thereby giving me most of GUI and may be some widget works and giving Phenatic most of inner works such as subversion integration, adding functions to send patches, more widgets.etc). So we had a sort of group discussion with 4 of us(Me, my mentor, Phenatic and his mentor) in IRC. Then I subscribed to Gnome SoC and Developer mailing lists. Gnome-soc mailing list is the place where all the Gnome SoC students can express their problems, progress in their projects and also can be used as a meeting place. After that I sent my blog and Hackergotchi to Gnome and hope it’ll be integrated into Planet Gnome soon. Yeah, above is my Hackergotchi ( I know it seems funny). And if any one interested in the FoieGras project you can reach us through IRC, gimp.net #doc or #gnome chanels.
I also requested for a new SVN account in Gnome because it’ll make my works easier to have a separate account when doing the coding. There are some strict policies into getting a new account in Gnome and they seem to take security of the accounts very seriously and I agree with that. And also we have to give a sort of a report of what we have done in every week to Gnome starting from this Monday. Yeah, Gnome is taking a head start into the SoC projects and I think it’s a good thing, to keep in touch and correct mistakes ASAP before being too late.
And finally, in personal matters I’ve been doing some python and working with pyGTK which will be used to do the GUI parts of the project. And also I bought a wireless router so I can completely move into Ubuntu. (By the way, if you haven’t tested Fiesty, it has some good features, give it a try.). Hmm, Eventful days these are with nearing the start of SoC projects.
As a Sri Lankan cricket fan I’ve really enjoyed the tour of Sri Lankan cricket team of Caribbean. They have played wonderfully, with great vehemence against best cricket nations and came top on most occasions or gave a dead fight in the only 3 games they were defeated for the whole tournament.
The final match at Barbados was a very exciting match, but seeing as it was an Australia’s day, all went for their likings and we were defeated by a margin of 53 runs. But considering the run chase they put up with close to 7.5 runs per over it was a great batting performance by Sri Lankan cricket team. If we had any luck on that day, we could have won, but no such luck was to be seen.
But I’m not disappointed about it that much, we have played brilliant, we came second in the cricket world cup (and everyone says that we deserve the second position, no one seem to doubt our position as was in 96 ) , made few world records , all the batsmen came into runs , all bawlers did brilliant in every match and Malinga became a renown fast bowler. So there’s nothing to be shamed of.
“Australia were the deserved winners of this contest, and in truth Sri Lanka were worthy runners-up – they plugged away with composure in the face of overwhelming odds, and the margin of Australia’s victory was their slimmest in both the tournament and in their three latest World Cup wins” – Cricinfo.com
I sincerly hope Sri Lankan cricket team all the best and wishes good luck in their future endurances.
It’s with great pleasure that I say, “I’ve been accepted for GSoC this year”. The results were updated in the 12th, April morning and even though there was some confusion at the beginning the day turned out to be a great day of my life. And if this will help any one, this is my proposal for GSoC.
GSoC Proposal for GNOME-FoieGras
As I’ve mentioned previously, GSoC for this year is progressing now. Google Summer of Code is a programme funded by Google to improve the FOSS community in the world. More on GSoC can be found here, Google Summer of Code 2007
I’ve applied for only one project, that is a Gnome project – creating a doc editor for their documentation system, Mallard. The code name for the doc editor is “Foie Gras” and it’s still only a few good ideas and plans. So it’ll have to be implemented completely during the SoC duration.
“Foie Gras” will be done in python and XML. So using this doc editor, writers will be able to edit wikis and XML related documents easily. So hope it’ll be a good asset for the future doc writers who are using Gnome related products, especially Ubuntu.
GSoC-Foie Gras.
Also all my 2 fellow Vesessins who applied for the SoC, Lakshan
and Amila have been selected; so this really a great occasion for us and also it indicates the strength within Vesess. Also representating Vesess, special thank should goto Prabath who gave us a great support from the very begining. And also good luck and congrats to all the GSoC selected people out there and don’t lose your hope who hasn’t got selected this time. You may very well get the chance next time!