CEG Alumnis - Why you should be attending CEGAM?

CEGAM 2011 - Why You Should Be Attending on Prezi

CEG's Heritage Main Building Under Threat From Upcoming 10 Story Building

College of Engineering Guindy is India's oldest engineering college. The beautiful main building of the college is more than 100 years old and has been rightfully declared as a heritage building. In normal times there would not be a need to explicitly say that this heritage building needs to be preserved, but these are different times.

It has come to light that Madras University, the parent University of CEG & Anna University, is planning to build a tall building (around 1o stories) at their site west of Anna University's play ground. Any one who passed on the Kotturpuram side of the campus recently might have noticed that the shrubs between the compound wall and the play ground have been cleared and a huge foundation pit is being dug.

An imposing ten story high building is not in the best interest of preserving a heritage building. I am not an expert in structural engineering or architecture, so I can not say how it is going to directly affect the main building. I hope the learned & eminent Civil Engineers will come up with proper technical explanation on why such a tall building should not be erected. But for now, I can definitively say the aesthetics of the heritage structure will be compromised by the new building. More over the building site is directly west of the main building and hence the main building's visibility will be completely obscured.

Apart from the above objections, what is more appalling is that it looks like Madras University probably has not got the clearance from CMDA. For a 10 story building, they may require a large front setback(I think two thirds of the height of the building is the standard). There is not that much space available for Madras University. Similarly, the main building being a heritage building, any near-by construction that may potentially disturb it should get appropriate clearance. It is not sure whether Madras University has got such clearance. Since Madras University owns another well know heritage building the "senate building", they should have known better.

Also, it seems they have not officially informed about the building plans to the leadership of Anna University even as a simple neighborly courtesy. Ironically the plan of ten story building has come to light when Madras University had submitted the plan to CEG's Structural Engineering department for analysis.

Of course, the leadership of Anna University should have protested strongly to this new and objectionable addition. However for some reason there seems to be more silence on their end than protest. So it has become the duty of the CEG and Anna University Alumni to raise whatever noise possible in protest. As alumni, we lose no opportunity to claim the pride for being cream of cream and for having CEG as our Alma-Matter and now is the time for taking some responsibility. So please spread the news.

You may be asking what is the source for the details listed above and if there is an URL to an MSM article. There is no MSM coverage on this yet. The alumni should come together and take steps so that it is noticed by MSM. I came to know about these during the Executive Council Meeting of CEG Alumni Association (which I attended as an invitee). A senior faculty member and office bearer of alumni association mentioned about this(Since I am not certain whether his name can be mentioned, I have not).

RIP:Monthly Paychecks, From 3-7-2000 To 2-7-2010

Long back when I was in college, once i had a discussion with a friend. What would we be after 10 years? I remember saying some thing like, "I don't know what I will be but I know that I don't want to be a manager or some thing like that in some company". Being a highly opinionated person, I used to make lot of such declarations. Even now my friends tease me that I am the biggest hypocrite, saying one thing and doing another thing. May be true. But I think I have kept at least one promise. Exactly 10 years after I joined my first job I am not a "some manager at some company".

This is what I have always wanted to do. To do something actually meaningful. To make some impact. To be on my own. Now I think I had run out of excuses for not doing it. So I have said good bye to my fat pay checks.

I am starting a venture.

Bar Camp Chennai Roundup

- The sessions started little late. Robin from ReachAccountants.com kicked off with a session on the accounting and tax related things any entrepreneur need to know. It was informative as most of the participants were techies and this is one area which techies don't fully understant.

- Praveen from Krea gave a talk on the importance of Market Research for start-ups. His take away was "Find the market and develop the product/solution". A discussion ensued with a counter point that there are many examples of super success startups where the product/solution came before there actually was a market(Likes of Google, Twitter...etc).

- Kannadhasan from Eagle Software gave a talk on how biometric based id cards are used for Healthcare delivery (TN government's insurance scheme). It was interesting and very good to know that technology is touching people and is reducing pilferage. As a side topic, a strongly opinionated discussion on the ethical and privacy concerns of collecting bio-metric information of all the citizens and how the government could misuse it.

- The high light of the bar camp was the presentation by Ms.Sonal Misra Deputy Commissioner of Traffic Police Chennai. She demonstrated what she had done with geo tagging of accident prone zones at Erode. Eventually there was a very involved discussion on how technology can be used in
- providing automatic traffic alerts
- traffic law enforcement.
- Senthil Nayagam of RailsFactory.com gave a speech on the need for Hackerspace. Good idea. I would for sure subscribe to one such hackerspace.

We had to leave after this....In general the Barcamp was good. It could have been better. Though it is an unconference, the discussion could have been lil bit anchored, if not moderated. Some times the discussions took a tangential path.

Hero of the Galaxy

As promised I indeed bought an Android phone. First I bought a Samsung Galaxy. It is a plain vanilla android phone. I was actually planning to buy a HTC Hero but "The Mobile Store" at Velachery did not have Hero. They only had Galaxy. They did not know a damn thing about Android but somehow oversold it to me. With the device being 7000 rupees cheaper than Hero while it had almost same spec and with their promise of replacing the device if there is any problem I ended up buying Galaxy reluctantly.

After buying the phone, I read the reviews, and they rated Galaxy as very average. Added to that the GPS did not work at all. I also realized Galaxy does not provide OTB MS Outlook Exchange server sync. Hmm bad. I had to visit "The Mobile Store" multiple times about these problems. Poor guys did not have any clue about GPS. They repeatedly tried convincing me that it is Airtel that needs to enable GPS. After lot of frustration and with the help of "GPS Status" app, I figured GPS would work if I go out and stand below clear sky. GPS receiver in Galaxy is very weak. Ok...fine. I was about to live with it and then came the killer. The regular EDGE itself stopped working. Even after lot of massaging Galaxy refused to budge. Terrified, I again rushed to "The Mobile Store". They told me that I need to go to an authorized Samsung Mobile service center and get a "Dead on Arrival" certificate and after that only they would replace the device.

I doubt if Samsung service center ppl also had any clue about this new model. I convinced them to give the DOA certificate. The incredible thing was just after getting the DOA, Galaxy started connecting to EDGE network. By this time I completely hated Galaxy so I kept quite about it. With DOA and another 7K I exchanged the Galaxy to a HTC Hero.

Hero is definitely nice. The Sense UI is cool. Couple of problems though, Android OTB does not support Tamil fonts. I will have to root the device to make Tamil fonts in. I am little scared to root 32K brand new babe. In addition I am not sure if I would loose or not the Sense UI when I root. I am continuing the research.

Will post updates...

Attack of Droids

Ok! So now the music starts and the screen is lifting. Party about to start.

There has been so much buzz about android phones to be unveiled before end of this year. And the most expected one, Motorola Droid, opens its counter tomorrow with Verizon. I am thrilled and excited about the prospect of Android to which I have become a fan.

Unfortunately Android options in India are too little and too costly. Airtel sells HTC Magic and HTC Hero at around 32K. I have been thinking, double thinking whether its worth 32k. But heck with it. I am going for one soon.

Android: The Platform of the Future.

As you may know last year T Mobile released its G1 phone powered by Android. It is a device in the league of iPhone. While G1 is pretty exciting, still every one said iPhone is still to be beaten. However this year there is emerging consensus that the platform to be beaten in coming days would be Android.

So what is Android? Android is a Mobile Internet Devices platform developed by Open Handset Alliance, which is primarily promoted by Google. Why there is so much buzz on Android

1) Unlike iPhone platform, Android is going to be open source and less restrictive. Any can develop applications based on Android and sell it in the market, while for iPhone apps, Apple needs to approve it before it can be posted in iPhone Apps market.

2) Android has received support from multiple handset makers including that of Motorola and Sony Ericsson besides a lot of small handset makers. In this year at three devices (One Chinese - Qiji, One Australian and another one Neo Free Runner from OpenMoko).This will result in a market that is flooded with devices powered by Android and hence a reason for developers to reckon with it.

3) Google targets Android not just for Mobile Phones. In deed Google mentions of "Mobile Internet Devices" rather than "Mobile Phones". So people are expecting devices from set-top-boxes to notebook to be powered by Android. Currently there are few cases where people were successful in running their laptops and other non-Android mobile phones with Android.

4) Google has released Android SDK for developing applications. This will follow java syntax, which would help developers who know Java(who are in plenty) to easily become developers in Andrioid platform.

5) To consider the local context and market in India, it is very clear that mobile phones are way ahead of PCs in people adaption. Hence, any strategy to address digital divide should consider Android type smart phones. Soon, there would be a lot of ultra cheap smart phones running android with intuitive user interfaces in vernacular languages with content of interest for local audiences. This would probably lead India to real digital and information revolution.