Reproducability

• From this blog, I got aware of this reproducibility issue in RL i.e execution of same alogrithm in same enironment gives different results each time. It might be due different initial conditions, seeds etc for e.g. issues faced when reproducing a deep RL paper by Matthew Rahtz.

• For which the author proposes some statistical tests and he has a written a paper about this.

May be I have to have a look on it later.

• ACL has been already implemented by these guys.

• Some Eng resources I got,

  1. Nuts and Bolts of Deep RL Experimentation by John Schulman
  2. Notes by Falcon
  3. Nuts and Bolts of Deep RL Experimentation by John Schulman
  4. Notes by Falcon

micro-ROS

Today I did a hello world in micro-ROS. micro-ROS is used for interfacing ROS with resource constrained embedded devices. I had bought an ESP32-WROOM board since micro-ROS supports ESP, I thought of trying it and followed this post. In which I did,

• I had compiled the int32_publisher example using idf.py(provided by ESP) and flashed it to my ESP board.

• Then ran a micro-ROS agent(docker container) on my laptop and which recieved messages from ESP.

Basically we have to write a C code using ESP,micro-ROS and RTOS(FreeRTOS) libraries which then can be compiled & flashed into ESP and then it works accordingly. I had this issue with specifying the port for the agent.

Have to go through the rclc API.

I am gonna work on some project like with FreeRTOS & micro-ROS ?

As summer is here, the days are long. We are going to nearby park in most of the evenings.
Viyan started to play basket ball. I am also learning it along with him.
Got a kids guitar for him. He started to practise it daily.

On Last saturday saturday, Tamil classes concluded for kids, for this academic year. In this month end, we will get 2 months holidays for kids. There will be more outdoor, park, library visits.

TossConf25 ( Tamil Open Source Conference) is happening next month. July 18,19 2025 at St. Joseph’s Institute of Technology, Chennai. Dont miss it if you are in or around chennai.
Interesting talks and workshops are planned. Book your ticket now here – https://TossConf25.kaniyam.com Thanks for the organizing team for the awesome efforts.

I am collecting huge tamil corpus from around 200+ websites daily. Getting content from RSS feeds are easier than scrapping. But need patience to build the huge text content daily. From 200+ websites, getting around 10 MB text content daily. Colelcting the new words and frequently used words, to build the base
of tamil spellchecker.

I am thinking of hosting one more FreshRSS instance with all these RSS news feeds.
We can read adfree news with RSS Feeds.

On exploring the news websites, found the below things

• Too many advertisements. Signal to Noise ratio is too high. We will lose interesting reading with this high amount of advertisements.
• Many websites dont provide RSS feeds. The custom platforms they use dont have RSS feed feature.
• For few of the wordpress websites, the admin disabled RSS feeds.
• Few site feeds provide only headings on the feeds.
• Cloudflare prevents feeds to be read by any feed reader, except the browser.
• Many writers have their websites, but not writing there frequently. But so active on social media.
  They should atleast keep a copy on their websites,blogs.
  
  Used the below plugin to get the RSS feed link from the websites. – Rsshub Radar – https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/rsshub-radar/kefjpfngnndepjbopdmoebkipbgkggaa

Sad to see that Google is showing only 7-8 pages of text content websites. After that, for all queries, we are getting only youtube video links. Whatever we write, google will show only form the mainstream websites.

I am reading more about the copyrights and Rss feeds.
Is it fine to get the full text rss feed and open them all to the public for free reading?

It will be super good to read text without any advertisements, banners, popups, and distractions.
But, the copyright is tricky here. Writers will agree to send their content via email for subscribers, via RSS feed for any personal feed readers. But, may not agree for public feed aggregators.

is it okey to give login credentials for users, to read the content?

I will check with few friends and mentors on what they think.
Reply here on what you are thinking on this.

Here is a screenshot of freshrss shows content from various websites.

Work is going super busy with many new activities. Lot of new learnings on AWS and networking.

Published a video by Nithya on “Basics of IT” in tamil. Watch it here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7sMgZZw0CY

Slowly building local tech community. There are many neighbours interested in learnig tech things.
Will do a python workshop for adults.
Will plan for few tech trainings for kids in the upcoming summer break.

Achutha, nithya’s friend is going to give a demo on azure pipeline this saturday evening.

How are you learning new things? If you have any tech people around you, how are you creating a community of learning together? Share your thoughts.

As summer is here, the days are long. We are going to nearby park in most of the evenings.
Viyan started to play basket ball. I am also learning it along with him.
Got a kids guitar for him. He started to practise it daily.

On Last saturday saturday, Tamil classes concluded for kids, for this academic year. In this month end, we will get 2 months holidays for kids. There will be more outdoor, park, library visits.

TossConf25 ( Tamil Open Source Conference) is happening next month. July 18,19 2025 at St. Joseph’s Institute of Technology, Chennai. Dont miss it if you are in or around chennai.
Interesting talks and workshops are planned. Book your ticket now here – https://TossConf25.kaniyam.com Thanks for the organizing team for the awesome efforts.

I am collecting huge tamil corpus from around 200+ websites daily. Getting content from RSS feeds are easier than scrapping. But need patience to build the huge text content daily. From 200+ websites, getting around 10 MB text content daily. Colelcting the new words and frequently used words, to build the base
of tamil spellchecker.

I am thinking of hosting one more FreshRSS instance with all these RSS news feeds.
We can read adfree news with RSS Feeds.

On exploring the news websites, found the below things

• Too many advertisements. Signal to Noise ratio is too high. We will lose interesting reading with this high amount of advertisements.
• Many websites dont provide RSS feeds. The custom platforms they use dont have RSS feed feature.
• For few of the wordpress websites, the admin disabled RSS feeds.
• Few site feeds provide only headings on the feeds.
• Cloudflare prevents feeds to be read by any feed reader, except the browser.
• Many writers have their websites, but not writing there frequently. But so active on social media.
  They should atleast keep a copy on their websites,blogs.
  
  Used the below plugin to get the RSS feed link from the websites. – Rsshub Radar – https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/rsshub-radar/kefjpfngnndepjbopdmoebkipbgkggaa

Sad to see that Google is showing only 7-8 pages of text content websites. After that, for all queries, we are getting only youtube video links. Whatever we write, google will show only form the mainstream websites.

I am reading more about the copyrights and Rss feeds.
Is it fine to get the full text rss feed and open them all to the public for free reading?

It will be super good to read text without any advertisements, banners, popups, and distractions.
But, the copyright is tricky here. Writers will agree to send their content via email for subscribers, via RSS feed for any personal feed readers. But, may not agree for public feed aggregators.

is it okey to give login credentials for users, to read the content?

I will check with few friends and mentors on what they think.
Reply here on what you are thinking on this.

Here is a screenshot of freshrss shows content from various websites.

Work is going super busy with many new activities. Lot of new learnings on AWS and networking.

Published a video by Nithya on “Basics of IT” in tamil. Watch it here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7sMgZZw0CY

Slowly building local tech community. There are many neighbours interested in learnig tech things.
Will do a python workshop for adults.
Will plan for few tech trainings for kids in the upcoming summer break.

Achutha, nithya’s friend is going to give a demo on azure pipeline this saturday evening.

How are you learning new things? If you have any tech people around you, how are you creating a community of learning together? Share your thoughts.

Missed weekly notes for few weeks. Got some interesting days. I reduced the time spent on facebook, twitter, instagram and youtube.
Wanted to work on some long year dreams. I am happy on the progress. Still have to do a lot on these. But giving a start itself a good thing.

• Working on word lookup based spellchecker for tamil language.
  Implemented bloom filter, bk tree based search/suggestion solution.
  Need to improve with error free tamil words.
  Collecting good words from available tamil datasets.
  May have to work on applying few grammar rules.
  It is a long dream to bring a open source tamil spellcheker.
  Giving some time and focus to work on the dreams.
  
  see the POC demo here – https://iyal.kaniyam.ca/
  It is just a POC. there are tons of things to improve.
  Stay tuned or contribute, to see the changes.
  
• I want to reduce the content consumption from social media.
  But still want to read the content by beloved writers and bloggers.
  Fortunately, few of them are still writing in their blogs, websites and online magazines.
  Collected the websites of the tamil writers, publishers, literary magazines.
  Hosted a FreshRSS instance here – https://reader.kaniyam.ca/
  You can also read good tamil content here daily, without any advertisements, promotions, algorithms.
  
  Let me know if we can add any more tamil sites that are related to literature and technology.
  The only requirement is that the website should provide RSS feeds.
  Sad to know that many webmasters are removing the RSS feeds from their sites.
  Please enable RSS feed in your blogs and websites, so that the content will reach many readers.
  
• As I am exploring many websites for good tamil content, found that many websites disappeared from the internet. One of the major reason is missing of domain renewals. we give some email id when registering the domains. But, we switch emails very often. When we get email alerts on the email accounts that we never check, we loss the domains. Working on a dashboard to show the list of domains and their expiry dates. Thanks to python, prometheus and grafana.
  Added around 200 domains to the monitoring list, which I know the persons who manage the domains. I am sending them private messages in whatsapp or telegram or email reminding to renew. Will try to automate the notification. Let me know if you like to add your or any domain to monitoring list.
  
• Will release all the code for all of the above this week.
  
• Many of my friends are worrying about the future of IT jobs. The recent AI tools are generating good code. Will they lead to human losing the technical jobs? I expect the same. There will be change always. We have to keep on learning new things and be ready to do any kind of job.
  The days of doing same role for many years are gone. In future, we all should be knowing backend, frontend, database, deployment tools. Interesting days are on the way. Be open to learning new things.
  
• Nithya released 4th video on GenAI series in Tamil – Next word prediction using LSTM – see it here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f0QMUOdfOg
  
• Tamil Open Source Conference 2025 is happening next month, in chennai. Check the details here – https://TossConf25.kaniyam.com
  
  Call for speakers is here – https://forums.tamillinuxcommunity.org/t/tossconf25-call-for-speakers/2913
  
• On Saturday’s Tamil Grammar meetings, we are working on writing python code for tamil grammar rules using the very old book Tolkappiyam. Join and contribute, if you like to help for tamil language.
  
• On Sundays, we meet at Kanchi Linux Users Group online meetings and discuss various open source things. We mentor students and job seekers to do some projects. Dont miss these meetings, to dive into older and modern technologies.
  
• All our events are listed in the calendar at https://kaniyam.com/events subscribe to the google calendar there using computer. Thanks to Vanaja for curating all the events and publishing there.
  
• Syed Jafer from parottasalna.com is one of the passionate FOSS contributor. He is a good trainer on Python, redis, data structures, git etc. He started a forum to discuss tech things. Post your questions here – https://forums.parottasalna.com/ Happy to see many forums are being built. Contribute to the open forums, open websites and keep them active and alive.
  
• Books completed – சமயங்களின் அரசியல் – தொ. பரமசிவன். , ஓம் ஷன்ரிக்கியோ – பா. ராகவன்
• Currently reading – What the internet is doing to our brains – The Shallows – by Nicholas Carr
  
• What are you doing interestingly? Write them on your blog as individual blogs or as weekly notes like this.

Missed weekly notes for few weeks. Got some interesting days. I reduced the time spent on facebook, twitter, instagram and youtube.
Wanted to work on some long year dreams. I am happy on the progress. Still have to do a lot on these. But giving a start itself a good thing.

• Working on word lookup based spellchecker for tamil language.
  Implemented bloom filter, bk tree based search/suggestion solution.
  Need to improve with error free tamil words.
  Collecting good words from available tamil datasets.
  May have to work on applying few grammar rules.
  It is a long dream to bring a open source tamil spellcheker.
  Giving some time and focus to work on the dreams.
  
  see the POC demo here – https://iyal.kaniyam.ca/
  It is just a POC. there are tons of things to improve.
  Stay tuned or contribute, to see the changes.
  
• I want to reduce the content consumption from social media.
  But still want to read the content by beloved writers and bloggers.
  Fortunately, few of them are still writing in their blogs, websites and online magazines.
  Collected the websites of the tamil writers, publishers, literary magazines.
  Hosted a FreshRSS instance here – https://reader.kaniyam.ca/
  You can also read good tamil content here daily, without any advertisements, promotions, algorithms.
  
  Let me know if we can add any more tamil sites that are related to literature and technology.
  The only requirement is that the website should provide RSS feeds.
  Sad to know that many webmasters are removing the RSS feeds from their sites.
  Please enable RSS feed in your blogs and websites, so that the content will reach many readers.
  
• As I am exploring many websites for good tamil content, found that many websites disappeared from the internet. One of the major reason is missing of domain renewals. we give some email id when registering the domains. But, we switch emails very often. When we get email alerts on the email accounts that we never check, we loss the domains. Working on a dashboard to show the list of domains and their expiry dates. Thanks to python, prometheus and grafana.
  Added around 200 domains to the monitoring list, which I know the persons who manage the domains. I am sending them private messages in whatsapp or telegram or email reminding to renew. Will try to automate the notification. Let me know if you like to add your or any domain to monitoring list.
  
• Will release all the code for all of the above this week.
  
• Many of my friends are worrying about the future of IT jobs. The recent AI tools are generating good code. Will they lead to human losing the technical jobs? I expect the same. There will be change always. We have to keep on learning new things and be ready to do any kind of job.
  The days of doing same role for many years are gone. In future, we all should be knowing backend, frontend, database, deployment tools. Interesting days are on the way. Be open to learning new things.
  
• Nithya released 4th video on GenAI series in Tamil – Next word prediction using LSTM – see it here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f0QMUOdfOg
  
• Tamil Open Source Conference 2025 is happening next month, in chennai. Check the details here – https://TossConf25.kaniyam.com
  
  Call for speakers is here – https://forums.tamillinuxcommunity.org/t/tossconf25-call-for-speakers/2913
  
• On Saturday’s Tamil Grammar meetings, we are working on writing python code for tamil grammar rules using the very old book Tolkappiyam. Join and contribute, if you like to help for tamil language.
  
• On Sundays, we meet at Kanchi Linux Users Group online meetings and discuss various open source things. We mentor students and job seekers to do some projects. Dont miss these meetings, to dive into older and modern technologies.
  
• All our events are listed in the calendar at https://kaniyam.com/events subscribe to the google calendar there using computer. Thanks to Vanaja for curating all the events and publishing there.
  
• Syed Jafer from parottasalna.com is one of the passionate FOSS contributor. He is a good trainer on Python, redis, data structures, git etc. He started a forum to discuss tech things. Post your questions here – https://forums.parottasalna.com/ Happy to see many forums are being built. Contribute to the open forums, open websites and keep them active and alive.
  
• Books completed – சமயங்களின் அரசியல் – தொ. பரமசிவன். , ஓம் ஷன்ரிக்கியோ – பா. ராகவன்
• Currently reading – What the internet is doing to our brains – The Shallows – by Nicholas Carr
  
• What are you doing interestingly? Write them on your blog as individual blogs or as weekly notes like this.

• 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 – 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.
  
• Released few videos on GenAI in tamil, by Nithya. Watch them here – https://www.youtube.com/nithyaduraisamy
  
• 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 – 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. எம்டன் செல்வரத்தினம், சென்னையர் கதைகள்
  2. நரகத்தில் இருந்து ஒரு குரல் – சாரு நிவேதிதா
  
• 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 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 – 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.
  
• Released few videos on GenAI in tamil, by Nithya. Watch them here – https://www.youtube.com/nithyaduraisamy
  
• 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 – 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. எம்டன் செல்வரத்தினம், சென்னையர் கதைகள்
  2. நரகத்தில் இருந்து ஒரு குரல் – சாரு நிவேதிதா
  
• 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 “பெண் ஏன் அடிமையானாள்?” “Why women became slave?” 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 “Attention Span”. 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 Hardy’s 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 kid’s 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.

check https://kaniyam.com/events and subscribe to the calendar there for more interesting events.

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.

Nithya’s 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.

See Nithya & Friend’s folk dance here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6XYVAq60y0

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 முகங்களின் தேசம் ( Country of Faces ) by ஜெயமோகன் ( Jeyamohan ). The author travels across many Indian states and documents his experiences. There are many heart melting moments while reading the book.

https://www.commonfolks.in/books/d/mugangalin-desam

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 – Attention Span – 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 “பெண் ஏன் அடிமையானாள்?” (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 “A Minecraft Movie” 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 “My dear kuttisathan”

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, “Forgotten” 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/

I started to write a tutorial on Python in Tamil, in a funny way.
Read it here – https://kaniyam.com/category/let-us-learn-learn-python/

Thanks Swaroop, for releasing your wonderful book “A Byte of Python” 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 hosting a tech blogs aggregator here – https://blogs.kaniyam.cloudns.nz at my selfhosted homelab.

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.

Read the explorations here – https://forums.tamillinuxcommunity.org/t/need-help-to-make-emacs-as-fullcsreen-edtior-like-writeroom/

What are you doing? Share the things you do as weekly notes like this, in your blog.

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.

See Nithya & Friend’s folk dance here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6XYVAq60y0

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 முகங்களின் தேசம் ( Country of Faces ) by ஜெயமோகன் ( Jeyamohan ). The author travels across many Indian states and documents his experiences. There are many heart melting moments while reading the book.

https://www.commonfolks.in/books/d/mugangalin-desam

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 – Attention Span – 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 “பெண் ஏன் அடிமையானாள்?” (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 “A Minecraft Movie” 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 “My dear kuttisathan”

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, “Forgotten” 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/

I started to write a tutorial on Python in Tamil, in a funny way.
Read it here – https://kaniyam.com/category/let-us-learn-learn-python/

Thanks Swaroop, for releasing your wonderful book “A Byte of Python” 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 hosting a tech blogs aggregator here – https://blogs.kaniyam.cloudns.nz at my selfhosted homelab.

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.

Read the explorations here – https://forums.tamillinuxcommunity.org/t/need-help-to-make-emacs-as-fullcsreen-edtior-like-writeroom/

What are you doing? Share the things you do as weekly notes like this, in your blog.

• For the past few months, I was preparing for an English Exam called CELPIP. It is an exam to check the Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking. Though we know English, preparing for an exam is an exhausting one. We took online training from “Galaxy Training Academy“. https://galaxytraining.in The coach “Jay Kumar” gave nice intro about exam pattern. He gave many mock tests and gave good feedback on how to improve, on each test. Last month, Nithya and I cleared the exam. It is a good feel to released from exam fear. Postponed many activities because of the exam preparation. Will roll out them all soon. If you are preparing for any English Exam, I suggest taking training and mock tests with “Galaxy Training Academy”.
  
  ——
  
  
• In Canada, Daylight saving ended yesterday. This happens every year in fall season and referred as “Fallback”. The clocks are moved one hour back. This is to adjust the dark winter season. It seems like all in a sudden, we got one hour extra to sleep in morning.
  
  ——
  
  
• On Oct 31, we had Deepavali, Halloween and our Marriage day. Deepavali day went with great remembering our childhood memories. The evening was filled with fun, as we went to neighbourhood houses, with friends and kids, to play “Trick or Treat”. Saw many weird, spooky decorated houses and people. Kids collected a bag full of chocolates. Last year, it was too cold. This year, the same day had a nice weather, to roam around in the evening.
  
  ——
  
  
• On Nov 1, we celebrated Deepavali with firing crackers. Bought a few crackers, which emit light. Here, we don’t get loud-full crackers like atom bombs, 1000 piece fireworks shots etc. With limited available crackers, kids enjoyed firing them, with all their friends together.
  
  ——
  
  
• On Nov 8, we are planning for a mega Deepavali event with around 250 people here. I am contributing on the planning/photography. Nithya and kids are practicing dance with their friends. Hope it will be a fun-filled evening.
  
  
  ——
  
  
• On Nov 2, gave a talk on tolkappiyam Canada monthly meeting, about our efforts on writing python code for tamil grammar rules in Tolkappiyam book. It was a good meeting. Few of the participants accepted to collaborate. You can read our progress here – https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/ProjectIdeas/issues/214
  
  
  ——
  
  
• Few weeks ago, gave a talk on open-tamil python library, at Kanchi Linux Users Group ( KanchiLUG) meet. Video is here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtIrbvw2V-w
  
  
  ——
  
  
• Kids started going to tamil school on every Saturday morning. This week, they received books. Viyan is good at Tamil and English. Iyal started to read Tamil and English. Paari is trying to learn writing.
  
  ——
  
  
• We conduct daily meetings in a text based chat system called IRC (Internet Relay Chat). daily, 7-8 pm IST. Good to see many people are joining and discussing many things about open source software and mentoring to contribute to open source software. More details here – https://goinggnu.wordpress.com/2024/10/21/open-source-projects-mentoring-via-irc/
  
  ——
  
  
• Practicing Manual mode in photography for few weeks. Feeling like learning linux and Emacs. It gives the most flexible options and results are stunning. It is better to learn it in early days, so that we can do more magics with lighting.
  
  
  ——
  
  
  The one thing I follow in photography is – shoot a lot, share a little. I keep and share only 10%. All others are deleted. Though it is hard to select the best photos, sharing only 10% is easy for viewers and brings a Wow from them.
  
  
  ——
  
• Completed reading books in last week.
  • வாலிப வார்த்தைகள்: vaaliba vaarthaigal – book about poet Vaali – https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B08F3KGF1B
  • எழுதுதல் பற்றிய குறிப்புகள்: (Art of Writing) – https://www.amazon.in/-/ta/dp/B09XHZYGZD kombu muLaithavan:
  • கொம்பு முளைத்தவன் – https://www.amazon.in/-/ta/dp/B07YJ4PJQK
    
    ——
    
    
    
• currently reading these books.
  • Crash Course Drupal 10 Site Building – https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B0CKQ8MK8H
  • Archives, Ethics and the Law in India – https://ethics-law.archives.ncbs.res.in/
  • Understanding Large Language Models – https://www.amazon.ca/Understanding-Large-Language-Models-Technologies/dp/B0CJ2C8TXQ

• For the past few months, I was preparing for an English Exam called CELPIP. It is an exam to check the Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking. Though we know English, preparing for an exam is an exhausting one. We took online training from “Galaxy Training Academy“. https://galaxytraining.in The coach “Jay Kumar” gave nice intro about exam pattern. He gave many mock tests and gave good feedback on how to improve, on each test. Last month, Nithya and I cleared the exam. It is a good feel to released from exam fear. Postponed many activities because of the exam preparation. Will roll out them all soon. If you are preparing for any English Exam, I suggest taking training and mock tests with “Galaxy Training Academy”.
  
  ——
  
  
• In Canada, Daylight saving ended yesterday. This happens every year in fall season and referred as “Fallback”. The clocks are moved one hour back. This is to adjust the dark winter season. It seems like all in a sudden, we got one hour extra to sleep in morning.
  
  ——
  
  
• On Oct 31, we had Deepavali, Halloween and our Marriage day. Deepavali day went with great remembering our childhood memories. The evening was filled with fun, as we went to neighbourhood houses, with friends and kids, to play “Trick or Treat”. Saw many weird, spooky decorated houses and people. Kids collected a bag full of chocolates. Last year, it was too cold. This year, the same day had a nice weather, to roam around in the evening.
  
  ——
  
  
• On Nov 1, we celebrated Deepavali with firing crackers. Bought a few crackers, which emit light. Here, we don’t get loud-full crackers like atom bombs, 1000 piece fireworks shots etc. With limited available crackers, kids enjoyed firing them, with all their friends together.
  
  ——
  
  
• On Nov 8, we are planning for a mega Deepavali event with around 250 people here. I am contributing on the planning/photography. Nithya and kids are practicing dance with their friends. Hope it will be a fun-filled evening.
  
  
  ——
  
  
• On Nov 2, gave a talk on tolkappiyam Canada monthly meeting, about our efforts on writing python code for tamil grammar rules in Tolkappiyam book. It was a good meeting. Few of the participants accepted to collaborate. You can read our progress here – https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/ProjectIdeas/issues/214
  
  
  ——
  
  
• Few weeks ago, gave a talk on open-tamil python library, at Kanchi Linux Users Group ( KanchiLUG) meet. Video is here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtIrbvw2V-w
  
  
  ——
  
  
• Kids started going to tamil school on every Saturday morning. This week, they received books. Viyan is good at Tamil and English. Iyal started to read Tamil and English. Paari is trying to learn writing.
  
  ——
  
  
• We conduct daily meetings in a text based chat system called IRC (Internet Relay Chat). daily, 7-8 pm IST. Good to see many people are joining and discussing many things about open source software and mentoring to contribute to open source software. More details here – https://goinggnu.wordpress.com/2024/10/21/open-source-projects-mentoring-via-irc/
  
  ——
  
  
• Practicing Manual mode in photography for few weeks. Feeling like learning linux and Emacs. It gives the most flexible options and results are stunning. It is better to learn it in early days, so that we can do more magics with lighting.
  
  
  ——
  
  
  The one thing I follow in photography is – shoot a lot, share a little. I keep and share only 10%. All others are deleted. Though it is hard to select the best photos, sharing only 10% is easy for viewers and brings a Wow from them.
  
  
  ——
  
• Completed reading books in last week.
  • வாலிப வார்த்தைகள்: vaaliba vaarthaigal – book about poet Vaali – https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B08F3KGF1B
  • எழுதுதல் பற்றிய குறிப்புகள்: (Art of Writing) – https://www.amazon.in/-/ta/dp/B09XHZYGZD kombu muLaithavan:
  • கொம்பு முளைத்தவன் – https://www.amazon.in/-/ta/dp/B07YJ4PJQK
    
    ——
    
    
    
• currently reading these books.
  • Crash Course Drupal 10 Site Building – https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B0CKQ8MK8H
  • Archives, Ethics and the Law in India – https://ethics-law.archives.ncbs.res.in/
  • Understanding Large Language Models – https://www.amazon.ca/Understanding-Large-Language-Models-Technologies/dp/B0CJ2C8TXQ

PhD in Family

My brother Arulalan, completed his PhD IIT Delhi. It was a very long path for him with tons of sacrifices. All the efforts are worth as he is the first PhD in our family. I think he is first in our street, in our generation. May many get inspired from his works and get more PhD researchers.

He works for India Meteorological Department 

Hoping to see him on TV shows and news explaining weather situations soon. Please give more leaves.

TNPSC Group 2A in Family

My another brother Suresh, got selected in TNPSC group 2A. Already he is a group 4 employee. On his efforts to get into good roles, he puts tons of efforts on exams. Hoping to see him even great roles soon and to train many people to get into govt jobs.

PhD in Family

My brother Arulalan, completed his PhD IIT Delhi. It was a very long path for him with tons of sacrifices. All the efforts are worth as he is the first PhD in our family. I think he is first in our street, in our generation. May many get inspired from his works and get more PhD researchers.

He works for India Meteorological Department 

Hoping to see him on TV shows and news explaining weather situations soon. Please give more leaves.

TNPSC Group 2A in Family

My another brother Suresh, got selected in TNPSC group 2A. Already he is a group 4 employee. On his efforts to get into good roles, he puts tons of efforts on exams. Hoping to see him even great roles soon and to train many people to get into govt jobs.