pratul dot in /home/lut4rp

Announcing the first edition of the great Delhi Drupal Meetup! DDM1 will be held on 1st March 2009 at IIT Delhi (Block II, LT1) 1PM onwards. This isn't going to be a beginner meetup, we're going to try and hack some code (module or a theme). We even have prizes for best on-the-spot module and theme!
Please carry your laptop with a Drupal development environment with you.

For all the other details, and to sign up for the meetup, visit http://www.lug-iitd.org/Delhi_Drupal_Meetup
See ya there!

For everyone to take note - if you receive a tinyurl.com link from an IM contact that points to a website called http://viddyho.com please don't open it. It will ask you for your Gtalk user name and password. Once you do that, it smartly IMs all your contacts with tinyurls pointing to viddyho.com. You'll go crazy defending hundreds of questions on why you sent them this link, what it contains etc.

Smart business spam it is, but a total pain. DONT OPEN IT! >:o

[[edit]]
For all those who already did enter their passwords, you'll be forced to change your password by Google, the next time you log in to Gmail. Even if you don't, I suggest you change your password ASAP. As far as the reports are concerned, data has not been compromised by the site.

Come 12th February, and IIT Kanpur will hold FOSSkriti (under its Techkriti technical festival's banner). As the name quite well puts it, FOSSkriti deals with all Free and Open Source Software. And this time in 2009, we'll see workshops and sessions on Mozilla technologies, HTML 5, Sahana, YUI and yes, Drupal!

Me and Gurpartap will be leading a Drupal sprint on 13th February, 10PM onwards, focussed on Drupal 7 Usability. For those who follow the Drupal community, know that a formal D7 usability testing will be conducted at the University of Baltimore, 10 days before Drupalcon DC starts. We hope to help out the Usability team by reviewing and hacking on their patches before the formal testing begins. Also, we will be helping new contributors learn their way around and explain how the Drupal core machinery works :-) After all, even something as awesome as Drupal needs thousands of man-hours of work before it ships!

To participate in the sprint, you need:

• A computer with any CVS client (*nix people have CVS, Windows has TortoiseCVS)
• Some knowledge of PHP and MySQL (more than hello-world ;-)
• An interest in Drupal!
• Willingness to hack and pursue world domination.

We hope the hackathon is a great success and hope you have tons of fun! Do join us if you can!

What is the value of 500 Rupees in today's world? (approx. USD 10)
This video by Open Space India attempts to show the vast inequality in people's thinking and beliefs today. Watch it. (Thanks to Mohit for sharing this with me.)

After struggling with my shared host for a couple of months now, I finally decided to shift to a newer one. This time I chose a VPS called WebFaction. Though, its not *exactly* a VPS, I'd call it a quasi one. It took me quite a bit of time to setup my domain, transfer files and verify everything, but hopefully I'm done! I'm quite impressed with WebFaction's performance and feature set, and if you're considering a VPS but don't want to shell out that 'moneh', check it out.

Also, I might add that I am *not* redesigning this site. I've come to realize that it takes a lot to design from scratch (which is what I essentially need to prevent an identity crisis). I could have converted an xHTML/CSS design to Drupal, but bleh to it! But, Prateek Saxena (prtksxna) has expressed his desire to pour his supreme graphic magick into a design for me. I am happy to add my site to his portfolio, and will wait till his class XII exams get over. Let's see what he dishes out :-)