Last weekend, Kids had their talent show at Tamil school. Happy to see all the kids in school, participated and performed well.
Spring is here in Canada. Its time for Cherry Blossoms. We visited High park and Kariya Park. Happy to see the trees with pink/rose colors. Read more here about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_blossom
Attended KanchiLUG meet on sunday morning. If you know tamil and in Tech, dont miss the thoughtful discussions at KanchiLUG meet, every sunday. Check the calendar here โ https://kaniyam.com/events/
At the meet, we discussed collecting open data for tamil. After the meet, wrote a code for scrapping for wordpress code and started to scrap the contents in CC license. Working on adding more features like resuming when stopped, alerts etc. Will share code and data soon.
Gave a online Talk on Tamil data collection on 05.05.2025. Will share the video soon.
I am using facebook in computer. Annoyed by the short videos, advertisements, was looking for a way to get cleaner content. I want only the content from my friends, the pages I follow and the groups I am in. I dont want any other thing. Fortunately, found a nice firefox plugin. fbcleaner โ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fbcleaner/
With this plugin, the timeline is a breeze. It is available only for computer. Use this and save time.
By using computer, to access social media, I am more mindful. Not spending too much time there.
Completed reading two books. I am enjoying reading the physical books nowadays. 1. เฎเฎฎเฏเฎเฎฉเฏ เฎเฏเฎฒเฏเฎตเฎฐเฎคเฏเฎคเฎฟเฎฉเฎฎเฏ, เฎเฏเฎฉเฏเฎฉเฏเฎฏเฎฐเฏ เฎเฎคเฏเฎเฎณเฏ 2. เฎจเฎฐเฎเฎคเฏเฎคเฎฟเฎฒเฏ เฎเฎฐเฏเฎจเฏเฎคเฏ เฎเฎฐเฏ เฎเฏเฎฐเฎฒเฏ โ เฎเฎพเฎฐเฏ เฎจเฎฟเฎตเฏเฎคเฎฟเฎคเฎพ
Took G1 test for car driving. It is like LLR in india. After getting G1, we can learn driving car. After some 8 months, we can get G2 license, to drive car alone. Will learn car driving soon.
Last two weeks went super busy with office work, reading, library visits and few events.
Reading:
Completed reading the original book and rewritten version of โเฎชเฏเฎฃเฏ เฎเฎฉเฏ เฎ เฎเฎฟเฎฎเฏเฎฏเฎพเฎฉเฎพเฎณเฏ?โ โWhy women became slave?โ by originally written by Periyar. That book describes why Indian women are still slaves of family, society due to various reasons like marriage, childcare etc.
The sad part is, even though that book was written few decades ago, it is still relevant.
Like any other devotional books/stories are retold for every generation, this book should also be rewritten, once in every 10-20 years and it should be told on all modern formats like audio books, drama, shortfilms, shorts etc.
Reviewing and editing that rewritten version is one of the most satisfying action I did this year. Hope we can release this as a print edition and free ebook edition. Checking with few contacts to publish this. Will share the progress soon.
Still reading the book โAttention Spanโ. May take few weeks to complete.
Easter: Kids got some 4 days holidays due to Easter. They all went for a Easter egg hunting event.
HeartComonos: At HeartComonos, a social non profit organization, is conducting many free events here. Participated on a Bollywood dance event with family. Celebrated its lead Hardyโs birthday, along with fun filled dancing. Helped to capture the wonderful moments with Camera.
Library visit:
On the weekend, we visited Mississauga Central Library. It is one of the best places, as a family, we like to go anytime. Just being surrounded by million books itself a great feeling. Viyan is reading a lot. Iyal is still trying to read. Paari is yet to learn reading, but he can turn pages of books one by one for many hours. There are good comics books available. Both Iyal and Paari are creating their own stories, just by seeing and turning the pages. What else we need for kidโs mind to be filled with imagination?
Upcoming talk on Open Licensed Tamil dataset collection: On May 05 2025, I will be giving an online talk on curation of open licensed tamil dataset. Preparing for the talk along with collecting open data in Tamil.
KanchiLUG meets: Every sunday IST evening hours, ( my mornings) are going useful with interesting discussions on Linux, Free/Open Source software etc.
Tamil Skills contest for kids: Last saturday, attended a contest for kids with viyan. Good to see that around 100+ kids participated on the contest on Skills for Tamil reading,writing and speaking. viyan participated with last min preparation. Next year, hope all three kids will attend. Happy to see many friends like Natkeeran, Suba, Kent, Selvanayaki madam.Took care of capturing some wonderful moments of the events.
After the event, spent few hours in a library at Toronto Downtown. I skimmed on few books on black/white photography, Instagram posting, video making and Toronto Photographers collection etc. Discussing many things with viyan is one of my favourite things. When we travel along, we talk about many things like world history, war, mythology, comics, manga, atheism, Tamilnadu political history etc.
ComicCon Mississauga: Sunday, attended an event for Comics and Toy Collections. Around 100 sellers were selling old comics books, unopened hero toys. There were many kids buying those stuffs. I was wondering to see, there were many adults standing in line, exploring the old comics and toys, and buying them with wide open eyes.
First they create a cha rector, then bring as comic books, then toys, then computer games, then graphic novel, then text novel, then movies. This is how all the childhood characters are becoming immortal. The business behind this is very huge. Thinking why we the Indians can not bring such huge cycle of business, even though we have tons of stories. Among all the mythological stories, there are very little for children. We have to create more stories and do business with them.
Nithyaโs Video series on GenAI
Nithya started text series on GenAI at Kaniyam.com and a video series on her youtube channel, in Tamil. We had some good outdoor shooting for the intro video. Released the first video here
Writing weekly notes after a long time. Life is going super busy. We crossed a horrible winter, in the last few months.
Winter
The winter made me to live a minimalist life. Was doing only the very essentials things for life.
The cozy lifestyle helped to do the activities very slowly. Spent good time with books, movies, indoor games with kids and friends.
Winter days went with long office calls, many indoor events like daily dance, birthday parties, Deepavali celebration, new year party, library/museum visits, dance show by nithya & friends, movie times, Photoshoots, chess club hours, PyKids classes ( Python for kids), Python for adults, Few conferences, weekly tech meetings, community events by HeartComonos etc.
Finally, Spring is here now. It is a mixture of winter and summer. But, we are getting few warm days, which are making us to walk on the roads and play in the parks. Waiting for full summer days.
Books Completed reading เฎฎเฏเฎเฎเฏเฎเฎณเฎฟเฎฉเฏ เฎคเฏเฎเฎฎเฏ ( Country of Faces ) by เฎเฏเฎฏเฎฎเฏเฎเฎฉเฏ ( Jeyamohan ). The author travels across many Indian states and documents his experiences. There are many heart melting moments while reading the book.
Travel only can give tons of learnings of nature and people. The author is blessed to travel often. The very simple people around India, are helpful to others always. On giving food, shelter etc. I hope this will be same, all around the world. Thanks for all the people who make the world as a wonderful place to live.
Currently reading โ Attention Span โ by Gloria Mark. It is a book on the research of how the internet, smartphone and social media are designed to take all our attention and how to regain ourself from these.
Reading the book โเฎชเฏเฎฃเฏ เฎเฎฉเฏ เฎ เฎเฎฟเฎฎเฏเฎฏเฎพเฎฉเฎพเฎณเฏ?โ (How women become slave?) written by Periyar to compare/review/edit of a rewritten edition of the same book. The author of the new edition is following me for more than 6 months. Hope will complete and release soon as a low price print book.
Movies
Watched โA Minecraft Movieโ with kids. They enjoyed a lot. It is a good watchable one. The 3D is not effective. I still remember how the 3D illusions were coming near to our nose, on the movies like โMy dear kuttisathanโ
Good bad ugly. The worst movie of Ajith kumar, as per my view. It is only for the fanboys, to enjoy some 3 hours joyful concert of Ajith in theatre.
Theatres should plan to show good music shows, concerts, sports matches, to give more vibe moments for the audience.
Amaran and Officer on Duty are good movies to watch on TV.
Nithya watched a Korean movie, โForgottenโ with her friends, on a movie night. Seems, It is a sad movie, but the discussions she had after the movie are good.
Meetings
Attended Python for Tolkappiyam meeting and KanchiLUG meet. Asked for a talk on how to contribute for various Free/Open Source Software. KanchiLUG team should bring more contributors to FOSS.
Did some video shoots of nithya, in nearby places of our building, as we see the good warm weather outside. She is working on a text and video series on GenAI in Tamil. Read the text content at https://kaniyam.com/tag/genai/
Thanks Swaroop, for releasing your wonderful book โA Byte of Pythonโ https://python.swaroopch.com/ in Creative Commons License.
Social Reading
I have to agree that I waste many hours on mindless scrolling on social media. Have to regain my hours from the phone and social media.
I go to social media, to read content and to know what others are doing. In the search of little good content, we spent more time. The signal-to-noise ratio is too high nowadays.
I started to focus more on newsletters and RSS feeds, where there is no advertisement. We can get displayed only what the writers are sharing.
I am collecting the websites, blogs in the topics of Literature, books, tech, photography in Tamil. Thinking to host one more public website to deliver all the contents from these sites in a single place, so that readers can enjoy reading them without any distraction.
Emacs
Discussed with a tamil author, on the problems of text editors with huge tamil content. Wondered to know many text editors are showing wrong word count for the tamil text. Explored VSCode, it is good, but bulk.
Working with KanchiLUG friend Thanga Ayanar, to bend Emacs as a very simple text editor.
Writing weekly notes after a long time. Life is going super busy. We crossed a horrible winter, in the last few months.
Winter
The winter made me to live a minimalist life. Was doing only the very essentials things for life.
The cozy lifestyle helped to do the activities very slowly. Spent good time with books, movies, indoor games with kids and friends.
Winter days went with long office calls, many indoor events like daily dance, birthday parties, Deepavali celebration, new year party, library/museum visits, dance show by nithya & friends, movie times, Photoshoots, chess club hours, PyKids classes ( Python for kids), Python for adults, Few conferences, weekly tech meetings, community events by HeartComonos etc.
Finally, Spring is here now. It is a mixture of winter and summer. But, we are getting few warm days, which are making us to walk on the roads and play in the parks. Waiting for full summer days.
Books Completed reading เฎฎเฏเฎเฎเฏเฎเฎณเฎฟเฎฉเฏ เฎคเฏเฎเฎฎเฏ ( Country of Faces ) by เฎเฏเฎฏเฎฎเฏเฎเฎฉเฏ ( Jeyamohan ). The author travels across many Indian states and documents his experiences. There are many heart melting moments while reading the book.
Travel only can give tons of learnings of nature and people. The author is blessed to travel often. The very simple people around India, are helpful to others always. On giving food, shelter etc. I hope this will be same, all around the world. Thanks for all the people who make the world as a wonderful place to live.
Currently reading โ Attention Span โ by Gloria Mark. It is a book on the research of how the internet, smartphone and social media are designed to take all our attention and how to regain ourself from these.
Reading the book โเฎชเฏเฎฃเฏ เฎเฎฉเฏ เฎ เฎเฎฟเฎฎเฏเฎฏเฎพเฎฉเฎพเฎณเฏ?โ (How women become slave?) written by Periyar to compare/review/edit of a rewritten edition of the same book. The author of the new edition is following me for more than 6 months. Hope will complete and release soon as a low price print book.
Movies
Watched โA Minecraft Movieโ with kids. They enjoyed a lot. It is a good watchable one. The 3D is not effective. I still remember how the 3D illusions were coming near to our nose, on the movies like โMy dear kuttisathanโ
Good bad ugly. The worst movie of Ajith kumar, as per my view. It is only for the fanboys, to enjoy some 3 hours joyful concert of Ajith in theatre.
Theatres should plan to show good music shows, concerts, sports matches, to give more vibe moments for the audience.
Amaran and Officer on Duty are good movies to watch on TV.
Nithya watched a Korean movie, โForgottenโ with her friends, on a movie night. Seems, It is a sad movie, but the discussions she had after the movie are good.
Meetings
Attended Python for Tolkappiyam meeting and KanchiLUG meet. Asked for a talk on how to contribute for various Free/Open Source Software. KanchiLUG team should bring more contributors to FOSS.
Did some video shoots of nithya, in nearby places of our building, as we see the good warm weather outside. She is working on a text and video series on GenAI in Tamil. Read the text content at https://kaniyam.com/tag/genai/
Thanks Swaroop, for releasing your wonderful book โA Byte of Pythonโ https://python.swaroopch.com/ in Creative Commons License.
Social Reading
I have to agree that I waste many hours on mindless scrolling on social media. Have to regain my hours from the phone and social media.
I go to social media, to read content and to know what others are doing. In the search of little good content, we spent more time. The signal-to-noise ratio is too high nowadays.
I started to focus more on newsletters and RSS feeds, where there is no advertisement. We can get displayed only what the writers are sharing.
I am collecting the websites, blogs in the topics of Literature, books, tech, photography in Tamil. Thinking to host one more public website to deliver all the contents from these sites in a single place, so that readers can enjoy reading them without any distraction.
Emacs
Discussed with a tamil author, on the problems of text editors with huge tamil content. Wondered to know many text editors are showing wrong word count for the tamil text. Explored VSCode, it is good, but bulk.
Working with KanchiLUG friend Thanga Ayanar, to bend Emacs as a very simple text editor.
We will get volunteers from SJIT college and Payilagam.
We can give the below activities for volunteers โ
web site design logo design promotion event organizing Free Software Demo GNU/Linux Installation any other pre conf events like hackathon, game jam, OSM party, packaging party etc.
Student volunteer should colloborate with any GLUG, to do any activities. volunteer should prepare for a talk on any FOSS sofware. prepare slides, write a blog, make a video and then show a demo on the conf event or pre/post event.
We can have a panel discussion with all GLUG team.
GLUGs/communities should have a stall to showcase their activities with computer or banner/poster.
Freebies :
For the partipants, we can give free stickers For the speakers and volunteers, we can print Dhuruvangal book and give it as gift.
Book โ 200 Rs/per book we can print 35 book. 200* 35 = 5000
stickers 18 * 350 = 6300
Total = 11300 INR
events :
mini CTF plan for as a last item, if we get time. should host on a external server.
Linux Install Fest
FOSS demo stalls
Book sale
Give some gift for all the people who support from collge, like hall arrangers, cleaners, lab incharge, AV team etc.
Next, plan for agenda plan for stickers plan for book print plan for cost plan for registration ( 100 INR min for external participants )
prepare a sheet for all the contacts, action plans and share.
plan to host a online game session for volunteers. veloren luanti (minetest) xonotic supertuxcart 0ad
Thanga ayanar will check with kalai for other network games.
plan for a OSM event, with all the volunteers.
Let us connect once in two weeks till may end. then we can meet, weekly once, till the conference.
We will get volunteers from SJIT college and Payilagam.
We can give the below activities for volunteers โ
web site design logo design promotion event organizing Free Software Demo GNU/Linux Installation any other pre conf events like hackathon, game jam, OSM party, packaging party etc.
Student volunteer should colloborate with any GLUG, to do any activities. volunteer should prepare for a talk on any FOSS sofware. prepare slides, write a blog, make a video and then show a demo on the conf event or pre/post event.
We can have a panel discussion with all GLUG team.
GLUGs/communities should have a stall to showcase their activities with computer or banner/poster.
Freebies :
For the partipants, we can give free stickers For the speakers and volunteers, we can print Dhuruvangal book and give it as gift.
Book โ 200 Rs/per book we can print 35 book. 200* 35 = 5000
stickers 18 * 350 = 6300
Total = 11300 INR
events :
mini CTF plan for as a last item, if we get time. should host on a external server.
Linux Install Fest
FOSS demo stalls
Book sale
Give some gift for all the people who support from collge, like hall arrangers, cleaners, lab incharge, AV team etc.
Next, plan for agenda plan for stickers plan for book print plan for cost plan for registration ( 100 INR min for external participants )
prepare a sheet for all the contacts, action plans and share.
plan to host a online game session for volunteers. veloren luanti (minetest) xonotic supertuxcart 0ad
Thanga ayanar will check with kalai for other network games.
plan for a OSM event, with all the volunteers.
Let us connect once in two weeks till may end. then we can meet, weekly once, till the conference.
this is a test post to demo org2blog in kanchilug meet, on this special day of โRichard Stallmanโโs birthday.
Explore emacs and start using it. it will be a lifetime editor for you.
this is a test post to demo org2blog in kanchilug meet, on this special day of โRichard Stallmanโโs birthday.
Explore emacs and start using it. it will be a lifetime editor for you.
In Canada, we have around 15 days of winter break for all school kids, covering Christmas and New year.
These celebrations are helping much to come out of the winter worries.
Winter is scary word, but people have to go through it, as life has to go on. As we can not travel much and there are no outdoor events/games, we have to be at home, all the days, weeks and months. Organizing indoor events are costly.
To spend the winter actively, many celebrations days are occurring. Halloween, Christmas, Boxing day, New year, Valentine day and more are there, to make the winter active.
Keeping the kids at home for 17 days winter break is tough. We have to engage them whole day. In our apartment, we are conducting many kids events like weekly chess hour, dance hours, board games day, movie time, sleep over nights etc.
Computer Literacy is good here. Kids are learning to use computer at school, from Grade 3 itself. They play many educational games at school. Homework are done with google slides and google docs, from grade 5. Scratch programming also trained here at grade 5. So, they know very well to use computer, read text online, search the internet and gather some info etc.
PyKids
This time, thought of having some tech events for kids. Called for 10 days training as โPyKidsโ, for grade 5 and above. The announcement was welcomed well by many parents. We had around 17 kids participated.
As our house is empty mostly, ( thanks to Nithya, for the minimalistic life style ), our hall helped for gathering and teaching.
By keeping the hall empty, we are using the place as Daily Zumba dance hall, mini party hall, DJ hall, kids play area and now as a learning place.
Teaching Python for kids is not easy. The kids are not ready to listen to any long talks. They can not even listen to my regular โpython introductionโ slides. So, jumped into hands-on on the day one itself.
My mentor, Asokan Pichai explained how we have to goto hands-on on any python training, few months ago. Experienced the benefits of it this time.
Even-though, I am using Python for 10+ years, teaching it to kids was really tough. I had to read few books and read on more basics, so that I can explain the building blocks of python with more relevant examples for kids.
The kids are good at asking questions. They share feedback with their eyes itself. It is a huge different on teaching to adults. Most of the adults donโt ask questions. They hesitate to say they donโt understand something. But, kids are brave enough to ask questions and express the feedback immediately.
With a training on 4-6 pm everyday, for around 10 days, we can cover so little of python only.
On the final day, my friend Jay Varadharajan, gave a Pizza party for all kids, along with a participation certificate.
Thanks for all the questions kids. Along with you, I learnt a lot. Thanks for all the parents for the great support.
PyLadies
Nithya wanted to try out full day training for her friends. Getting a time of 9-5 to learn something is so luxury for many people. Still, around 10 friends participated.
Nithya took the day with all hands-on. She covered the variables, getting input, if/else, for/while loop, string/list operations. The participants were happy to dive into programming so quickly.
Gave this link as asked to read/practice regularly. Hope they are following the book.
Hall for PyLadies meetup
Home as Learning Space
Thus, we are converting our home as a learning space for kids and friends. Thinking of conducting some technical meetups too. ( I am missing all the Linux Users groups meetings and hackathons). Hope we can get more tech events in the winter and make it so interesting and productive.
In Canada, we have around 15 days of winter break for all school kids, covering Christmas and New year.
These celebrations are helping much to come out of the winter worries.
Winter is scary word, but people have to go through it, as life has to go on. As we can not travel much and there are no outdoor events/games, we have to be at home, all the days, weeks and months. Organizing indoor events are costly.
To spend the winter actively, many celebrations days are occurring. Halloween, Christmas, Boxing day, New year, Valentine day and more are there, to make the winter active.
Keeping the kids at home for 17 days winter break is tough. We have to engage them whole day. In our apartment, we are conducting many kids events like weekly chess hour, dance hours, board games day, movie time, sleep over nights etc.
Computer Literacy is good here. Kids are learning to use computer at school, from Grade 3 itself. They play many educational games at school. Homework are done with google slides and google docs, from grade 5. Scratch programming also trained here at grade 5. So, they know very well to use computer, read text online, search the internet and gather some info etc.
PyKids
This time, thought of having some tech events for kids. Called for 10 days training as โPyKidsโ, for grade 5 and above. The announcement was welcomed well by many parents. We had around 17 kids participated.
As our house is empty mostly, ( thanks to Nithya, for the minimalistic life style ), our hall helped for gathering and teaching.
By keeping the hall empty, we are using the place as Daily Zumba dance hall, mini party hall, DJ hall, kids play area and now as a learning place.
Teaching Python for kids is not easy. The kids are not ready to listen to any long talks. They can not even listen to my regular โpython introductionโ slides. So, jumped into hands-on on the day one itself.
My mentor, Asokan Pichai explained how we have to goto hands-on on any python training, few months ago. Experienced the benefits of it this time.
Even-though, I am using Python for 10+ years, teaching it to kids was really tough. I had to read few books and read on more basics, so that I can explain the building blocks of python with more relevant examples for kids.
The kids are good at asking questions. They share feedback with their eyes itself. It is a huge different on teaching to adults. Most of the adults donโt ask questions. They hesitate to say they donโt understand something. But, kids are brave enough to ask questions and express the feedback immediately.
With a training on 4-6 pm everyday, for around 10 days, we can cover so little of python only.
On the final day, my friend Jay Varadharajan, gave a Pizza party for all kids, along with a participation certificate.
Thanks for all the questions kids. Along with you, I learnt a lot. Thanks for all the parents for the great support.
PyLadies
Nithya wanted to try out full day training for her friends. Getting a time of 9-5 to learn something is so luxury for many people. Still, around 10 friends participated.
Nithya took the day with all hands-on. She covered the variables, getting input, if/else, for/while loop, string/list operations. The participants were happy to dive into programming so quickly.
Gave this link as asked to read/practice regularly. Hope they are following the book.
Hall for PyLadies meetup
Home as Learning Space
Thus, we are converting our home as a learning space for kids and friends. Thinking of conducting some technical meetups too. ( I am missing all the Linux Users groups meetings and hackathons). Hope we can get more tech events in the winter and make it so interesting and productive.
Can join with any browser or JitSi android app.
All the Discussions are in Tamil.
Talk Details
Talk 0:
Topic : my Elisp โload random themeโ function
Description : I wanted to randomly load a theme in Emacs during startup. After i search in online, I achieved this
functionality using Emacs Lisp. this my talk Duration : 10 minutes
Name : Krishna Subramaniyan
About :GNU/Linux and Emacs user
Talk 1:
Topic : PDF generation using python
Description : To demo a python program which will generate a PDF output. Duration : 20 minutes
Name : Sethu
About : Member of KanchiLUG & Kaniyam IRC Channel
Talk 2:
Topic : distrobox โ a wrapper on podman/docker
Description : Intro about the tool, why I had to use that and a demo Duration : 15 minutes
Name : Annamalai N
About : a GNU/Linux user
Talk 3:
Topic : Real Time Update Mechanisms (Polling, Long Polling, Server Sent Events)
Description : To demo Real Time Update Mechanisms with JS and Python Duration : 30 minutes
Name :Syed Jafer (parottasalna)
About : Developer. Currently teaching postgres at https://t.me/parottasalna
After Talks : Q&A, General discussion
About KanchiLUG : Kanchi Linux Users Group [ KanchiLUG ] has been spreading awareness on Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) in
Kanchipuram since November 2006.
Anyone can join! (Entry is free)
Everyone is welcome
Feel free to share this to your friends
Can join with any browser or JitSi android app.
All the Discussions are in Tamil.
Talk Details
Talk 0:
Topic : my Elisp โload random themeโ function
Description : I wanted to randomly load a theme in Emacs during startup. After i search in online, I achieved this
functionality using Emacs Lisp. this my talk Duration : 10 minutes
Name : Krishna Subramaniyan
About :GNU/Linux and Emacs user
Talk 1:
Topic : PDF generation using python
Description : To demo a python program which will generate a PDF output. Duration : 20 minutes
Name : Sethu
About : Member of KanchiLUG & Kaniyam IRC Channel
Talk 2:
Topic : distrobox โ a wrapper on podman/docker
Description : Intro about the tool, why I had to use that and a demo Duration : 15 minutes
Name : Annamalai N
About : a GNU/Linux user
Talk 3:
Topic : Real Time Update Mechanisms (Polling, Long Polling, Server Sent Events)
Description : To demo Real Time Update Mechanisms with JS and Python Duration : 30 minutes
Name :Syed Jafer (parottasalna)
About : Developer. Currently teaching postgres at https://t.me/parottasalna
After Talks : Q&A, General discussion
About KanchiLUG : Kanchi Linux Users Group [ KanchiLUG ] has been spreading awareness on Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) in
Kanchipuram since November 2006.
Anyone can join! (Entry is free)
Everyone is welcome
Feel free to share this to your friends
Few weeks ago, Niagara had its Christmas lighting started. Went there with friends. We went there in the evening. Niagara is one of the greatest natural beauty, which we can see a million times. Visited the Casino there. Got 10$ free card and played with few slot machines. Won 3$ and lost all 13$. Though it was a free money, it was tough to stop the game.
Then, visited the wonderful lighting. It was a very long walk, in dark roads, along with glittering lights on the road sides. Kids enjoyed much to see them all.
Last Saturday, we had a grand event to celebrate the winter, organized by HeartComonos team. I volunteered a little amount for the event. We had nearly 2 months of preparation. All the volunteers made the event a memorable one. We had around 300 participants. The Bollywood dance team won all the attention. I had a makeover as ELF and was giving candy to all the kids there.
Daily IRC meetings for open source project mentoring
We are having daily meeting for open source project mentoring. Around 10 people are doing different projects. We are discussing many things like linux, Emacs, productivity, book reviews etc. Read the logs here โ https://ircbot.comm-central.org:8080/kaniyam
2025 planning for kaniyam
Started a thread to plan the 2025 activities for Kaniyam Foundation. Write there what do you think on what we can do next year.
Ravishankar is the founding member of FreeTamilEbooks.com and a mentor for kaniyam. He started to work on these tasks. He gave a new theme and improved the SEO. Need more volunteers to work on other items. Let me know if you can spend few hours for FreeTamilEbooks.com
Winter / Snow started
Today, we got the very first snow fall of the year. It is mesmerizing to see all the green lands are turning into white. For 4 months, we will be in hibernate state. Have to plan many indoor events. I have tons of books to read, tasks to complete.
LLM dataset part 3 released
We are collecting large amount of Tamil text with shareable, open licensed content, for LLM and other research works. So far, collected 1.6 GB of text, from Tamil Wikipedia, FreeTamilEbooks, project madurai, tamilmunn publishers books, etc. Get the data from here โ https://kaniyam.cloudns.nz/tamil_datasets/
Around Dec 25 to Jan 5, we will get winter break for schools. I am thinking of teaching python or scratch for kids in this break. Learning scratch for that. The graphics, the colors, drag/drop may be easy for kids. But it is tough for me as a terminal dweller. Yet to think and plan more on the training for kids. At least, I should teach the basics of programming and show a taste of making computers to obey our orders.
Weekly chess hours for kids
Started to teach chess for our condo kids. we conduct a weekly chess hour, to teach and play with other kids. Good to see that many kids know chess already and they all enjoy the game hours.
Moana 2
Watched Moana 2 yesterday. Viyan loved it. It is very difficult to being a part 2 movie as good as part 1. Moana team did a great job on this. Stunning graphics, good story line, nice music, heart melting songs make the move as a wonder. Donโt miss to watch it in theaters.
Books
completed โ เฎชเฏเฎเฎคเฏ เฎคเฏเฎฐเฎฟเฎจเฏเฎค เฎจเฎฟเฎดเฎฒเฏเฎเฎณเฏ โ sramakrishnan. Took it from a local library. It is a book full of review of world movies. Happy to read a physical tamil book apart from 1000s of miles.
In progress โ Drupal, LLM, Digital Museums
100% savings on Thanksgiving Day
As usual, got 100% savings on Thanksgiving Day sales. Bought nothing. As we are following minimalism as much as possible, we feel that we have all the things required. I was thinking, if the name of the day is like โGenocide Memorial Dayโ, we wonโt be rushing for shops to get offers and sales. They should rename the day to show the history.
Self-hosted social media โ gotosocial
I am running a social media platform on my desktop, and interacting with the world using that. It is a software called โGotosocialโ. It is like twitter, but we can install on our own servers. The Fediverse activitypub protocol connects with other millions of such servers around the world.
Happy to see many Emacs, FOSS, Linux, Self hosting lovers are there to interact. Getting replies for all the questions I am asking there. It gives much happiness, to be with like-minded people, around the globe.
Few weeks ago, Niagara had its Christmas lighting started. Went there with friends. We went there in the evening. Niagara is one of the greatest natural beauty, which we can see a million times. Visited the Casino there. Got 10$ free card and played with few slot machines. Won 3$ and lost all 13$. Though it was a free money, it was tough to stop the game.
Then, visited the wonderful lighting. It was a very long walk, in dark roads, along with glittering lights on the road sides. Kids enjoyed much to see them all.
Last Saturday, we had a grand event to celebrate the winter, organized by HeartComonos team. I volunteered a little amount for the event. We had nearly 2 months of preparation. All the volunteers made the event a memorable one. We had around 300 participants. The Bollywood dance team won all the attention. I had a makeover as ELF and was giving candy to all the kids there.
Daily IRC meetings for open source project mentoring
We are having daily meeting for open source project mentoring. Around 10 people are doing different projects. We are discussing many things like linux, Emacs, productivity, book reviews etc. Read the logs here โ https://ircbot.comm-central.org:8080/kaniyam
2025 planning for kaniyam
Started a thread to plan the 2025 activities for Kaniyam Foundation. Write there what do you think on what we can do next year.
Ravishankar is the founding member of FreeTamilEbooks.com and a mentor for kaniyam. He started to work on these tasks. He gave a new theme and improved the SEO. Need more volunteers to work on other items. Let me know if you can spend few hours for FreeTamilEbooks.com
Winter / Snow started
Today, we got the very first snow fall of the year. It is mesmerizing to see all the green lands are turning into white. For 4 months, we will be in hibernate state. Have to plan many indoor events. I have tons of books to read, tasks to complete.
LLM dataset part 3 released
We are collecting large amount of Tamil text with shareable, open licensed content, for LLM and other research works. So far, collected 1.6 GB of text, from Tamil Wikipedia, FreeTamilEbooks, project madurai, tamilmunn publishers books, etc. Get the data from here โ https://kaniyam.cloudns.nz/tamil_datasets/
Around Dec 25 to Jan 5, we will get winter break for schools. I am thinking of teaching python or scratch for kids in this break. Learning scratch for that. The graphics, the colors, drag/drop may be easy for kids. But it is tough for me as a terminal dweller. Yet to think and plan more on the training for kids. At least, I should teach the basics of programming and show a taste of making computers to obey our orders.
Weekly chess hours for kids
Started to teach chess for our condo kids. we conduct a weekly chess hour, to teach and play with other kids. Good to see that many kids know chess already and they all enjoy the game hours.
Moana 2
Watched Moana 2 yesterday. Viyan loved it. It is very difficult to being a part 2 movie as good as part 1. Moana team did a great job on this. Stunning graphics, good story line, nice music, heart melting songs make the move as a wonder. Donโt miss to watch it in theaters.
Books
completed โ เฎชเฏเฎเฎคเฏ เฎคเฏเฎฐเฎฟเฎจเฏเฎค เฎจเฎฟเฎดเฎฒเฏเฎเฎณเฏ โ sramakrishnan. Took it from a local library. It is a book full of review of world movies. Happy to read a physical tamil book apart from 1000s of miles.
In progress โ Drupal, LLM, Digital Museums
100% savings on Thanksgiving Day
As usual, got 100% savings on Thanksgiving Day sales. Bought nothing. As we are following minimalism as much as possible, we feel that we have all the things required. I was thinking, if the name of the day is like โGenocide Memorial Dayโ, we wonโt be rushing for shops to get offers and sales. They should rename the day to show the history.
Self-hosted social media โ gotosocial
I am running a social media platform on my desktop, and interacting with the world using that. It is a software called โGotosocialโ. It is like twitter, but we can install on our own servers. The Fediverse activitypub protocol connects with other millions of such servers around the world.
Happy to see many Emacs, FOSS, Linux, Self hosting lovers are there to interact. Getting replies for all the questions I am asking there. It gives much happiness, to be with like-minded people, around the globe.
At FreeTamilEbooks.com we have published 850 ebooks. All in sharable creative commons license. There are many people asking for the text only content of all these books many times. As it is a big task, took long time for it. Thanks to Lenin, Anwar of Kaniyam Foundation, all the contributors, all the writers and readers for making this project alive and a great success.
We are publishing the books as epub format, along with PDF format. Epub is just a zip file of HTML files. So, we can copy all the content from it as unicode text. Pandoc is a wonderful open source software, which can convert an epub to plaintext file.
There are the list of actions we have to do.
Get URLs of all the 850+ epub files
Download them all.
using pandoc, convert to text file.
So far, we dont have a metadata file for all the books published. Getting the links of all epub files need some programming. As Python is a swiss knife to automate anything, started to explore the wordpress REST api with python to get all the books pages content.
Thamizh_mann publishers are publishing the public domain and nationalized tamil books for many years. Few years ago, with a collaboration with the Library at University of Toronto, Scarborough, Canada, and Thamizh_mann publishers, the kaniyam foundation team helped to release all the 1000+ tamil books as PDF and Docx formats for free online.
Thanks to UTSC, Thamizh_mann team for the great gift for the tamil Diaspora.
Now, we have 1000+ books in Unicode Docx format. Next is to convert them all as PlainText and use them. Natkeeran and Parathan helped on this.
Along with this, they helped to scrap project madurai books and tamil WikiSource books. They published all in a git repo here โ https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/open_tamil_texts along with the scripts and metadata.
I am adding those text in our open licensed tamil data collection.
We have 1.6 G of text data to work on LLM or other works.
Go ahead, use it and build more models and tools using this data.
Hope this may not enough to get any good output. But, if we can bring something out of this, even though they are not good, then we can ask people to release their recent contents, blogs, social media posts in creative commons license.
There are few bloggers, magazines are already released their content in CC license. Now, we need your help to scarp them. If you know any programming language and can help for this project, please do webscrapping for the websites mentioned here. share the data and code.
Thamizh_mann publishers are publishing the public domain and nationalized tamil books for many years. Few years ago, with a collaboration with the Library at University of Toronto, Scarborough, Canada, and Thamizh_mann publishers, the kaniyam foundation team helped to release all the 1000+ tamil books as PDF and Docx formats for free online.
Thanks to UTSC, Thamizh_mann team for the great gift for the tamil Diaspora.
Now, we have 1000+ books in Unicode Docx format. Next is to convert them all as PlainText and use them. Natkeeran and Parathan helped on this.
Along with this, they helped to scrap project madurai books and tamil WikiSource books. They published all in a git repo here โ https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/open_tamil_texts along with the scripts and metadata.
I am adding those text in our open licensed tamil data collection.
We have 1.6 G of text data to work on LLM or other works.
Go ahead, use it and build more models and tools using this data.
Hope this may not enough to get any good output. But, if we can bring something out of this, even though they are not good, then we can ask people to release their recent contents, blogs, social media posts in creative commons license.
There are few bloggers, magazines are already released their content in CC license. Now, we need your help to scarp them. If you know any programming language and can help for this project, please do webscrapping for the websites mentioned here. share the data and code.
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