PyCon India Bengaluru

"Be cordial in open source or be on your way"

"Code solves problems created by humans"

                                          
29th August 2013, the day of Dahi Hundi festival, just came back home from Dombivli where my play(theatre) friends, Digambar Acharya and others have their rehearsals. The trip wasn't planned at all. I called my uncle and told him about the event and the location. Without a second thought he told me to book the flight tickets and forget the worries of accommodation.

I was new to Bangalore and it was my very first outing all over alone. The decision was taken in such a haste that I couldn't apprise my friends too.

It was 9pm and that time my colony guys were forming human pyramids to break 2nd Dahi Handi. It was a great time watching all pals playing music, dancing, eating, & forming human pyramids.

Vidhana Soudha

30th Aug: Next day morning, I went to office. Taking half day leave after lunch, I had my flight @4.20pm to Behngaluru. As it was cutie Yashu's(at who's place I was going to stay in Bengaluru) birthday, I got chocolate tin pack for her.

As usual Air India flight got delayed by 1 hour.

At Bengaluru, Yashu, and her parents had come to receive me. It was after 10 years I was meeting them.  They actually belonged to Hebal, Bengaluru. Reaching their place, I met another cutie, Sonu(their pet dog).

After rejuvenating ourselves, we went to meet Yashu's cousin Mangala and her family.

31st Aug: Second day of Pycon but first day of actual conference @NIMHANS, Hosur. On 31st and 1st there were conferences while on 30th there were workshops.

visit http://pyconindia2013.doattend.com/

There are pycon in various countries. In India it happens at Bengaluru. Very well organised with proper mailing list. With one registration you can enjoy talks, free wifi, breakfast, lunch, snacks, goodies & t-shirts.  There were 3 auditoriums at NIMHANS with talks going in all 3 simultaneously as per schedule. view http://in.pycon.org/2013/

Schedule(talks in brief):

"Nanu Bengalurige Pycon attend maadalu bandiddini" was taught to me by one of my Pycon attendee. 

* Keynote talk by Kiran Jonnalagadda

Paradox:The more the less is the code, the more good is the code. Then what if no code at all?

Bootstrap developer : Twitter

Flask : everything in api and no need of doc and lightweight

Denied : the next generation python micro-web-framework

* First talk by Shrinivasan : zeromq in which client creates a socket and assumes there will be a server. Any order client first then server http://zero.mq

http://zguide.zeromq.org/py:all

* plivo : graph by Kunal Kerkar

carbon : daemon

whisper : db

kunal@plivo.com

* Chetan Giridhar-real time communicationautomated chat

* Panel discussion: Prabhu Ramachandran, FOSSEE, IIT Bombay one of the panel member:

Q.Should there be python for non-engineers?

Panel: Depends on the need

Example of spoken tutorial which is e-learning of FOSS.

It is always important to learn simple language like python.

If not then go and learn machine language.

Teachers are only teachers not learners & python cannot change their attitude.

That evening after conference, we went to Mantri Mall where we entertained ourselves at amoeba, scary house and finally dinner at Rajdhani (36 items thali) Hotel. On the way I saw Vidhana Soudha, Lalbagh botanical garden, Kalashetra, UB city, Chinnaswami stadium & golf area in Bengaluru. I heard songs like "Krishna Ni Begane Baro" which was playing in the car on the way.

I heard Kannada version of "Kadhi tu" Marathi song from the remaked kannada movie of Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai.

1st sept:

* ulrlib2 kenneth(heroku)

* Sudar Muthu @sudarmuthu (Rasberry pi) github.com/sudar

www.hardwarefun.com

1. Need voltage regulator

2. Combination of arduino and rasberry pi is best

3. Usage of LED in hardware is like "Hello World" program in software. 

4. Require to install python-dev

5. 3.3v max 1.7v resistance

6.Create file connect led to rpi and then run

sudo ./filename.py

Various projects with python and Rasberry pi(pi stands for python)

1. Brightness program

2. Button on off program

3. pycam : face recognition

Miscellaneous Facts discussed in PyCon:

* Difference between Raspi and Beaglebone

* What is Spider trap?

* Python + staf is used to run test case

* Use of Decorator tool-to know on which module to execute

* What is fabric module?

* What is foo bar?

For details you can watch videos on twitter.

There were also openspaces conferences. In openspaces there  were talks, seminars & contests.

That evening we went to Maiya's restaurant and shop. I bought appe midi and puliyodhara. We had Karnataki delicacy there.

2nd sept: Flight @10.20am back to Mumbai. In flight I met a GSB girl Sheetal Bhat, who works in Cleartrip. From a stranger to a good friend in one hour.

Bengaluru can be portrayed as a city with a beautiful weather. I am really missing Yashu, Mangala and everyone there. I really owe them for the care and affection they gave like my family in those three days.

Feel sick at the sight of such extortion

CryptoParty Mumbai

What is CryptoParty?
CryptoParty (Crypto-Party) is a grassroots global endeavour to introduce the basics of practical cryptography.A CryptoParty is a hands-on training program  where we introduce Internet users to the tools that help in protecting privacy in the online world. The training program will teach the ways in which communications and data can be encoded to prevent disclosure of their contents through eavesdropping or message interception, using codes (2), ciphers (3), and other methods, so that only certain people can see the real message.

It was my first CryptoParty. I was introduced to such a party by my buddy, Parin who had already attended it in Delhi this year. This week I read a mail on ilug-bom mailing list that they are organising in Mumbai at VJTI college on 7th Sept 10am-1pm.

I considered it a very good opportunity to meet and interact with open source enthusiasts and privacy concerned maniacs. I registered online for the party the day before. On 7th morning, the party was organised at CS lab of VJTI.
Disappointing part: 
1. Less participants as many people are unaware of such events. 
2. VJTI CS lab doesnt have Linux in all its machines.
3. There was no wifi availability for grand workshops nor there was freedom to use proxy network in the lab.
4. No proper organisation of the event although the event had good quality presentation. 

Gradually by 11am, there was atleast respectable number of participants for the party. 
The response from all the participants was great. I met a freelancer technology journalist Ms. Rohini with whom I could interact after the event too.
The volunteer who organised this event was Nikita Belavate from wikipedia-mum and Free Software Movement Maharashtra (FSMM).
The presentation was conducted by Surendran Sir surendran.info/.
Free Software Movement Maharashtra (FSMM) in association with Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) had organised the cryptoparty.
 
Agenda:
Introduction
Browsing Security

TOR
Browser security
Password Management

Email and IM Security

Web based email
Email clients (thunderbird)
Mail encryption
 
The contents in brief were as follows:
* Google: The Godfather who gives away your data to the advertisements. So next time if you get bugged by ads which already has your name on it, you know the culprit.

* Collusion is an addon by which you can visualize who's tracking you in real time.

* If you think you are safe and not getting tracked, take an example of my friend who was searching for a 4 slot toaster which actually comes in 2 slot in Amazon.com. He failed to get it.
Next week he got a mail from some other e-commerce site which recommended him few toasters.Do you still feel you are safe? Did'nt you experience such thing? Or you trying to be oblivious as the usage of such sites is inevitable? If its inevitable atleast you can prevent them from tracking you. Every individual is concerned about his/her privacy policy. You are booking a flight for a vacation on a site say makemytrip.com. Google, makemytrip, bank  etc. already know you are going on a vacation. When you are concerned about who encroaches your house then how can you allow someone encroach your profiles and access your data. No thing is 100% secure on internet but we atleast can do our best to be safer although can't be safest. Such encroachment is nothing but data mining.
Humor : Target corporation, a supermarket in US already knew a woman was pregnant before she declared. That supermarket tracked the products she purchased and calculated the months and date.
Did you know Twitter firehose sells tweets to advertisements?
Metadata is nothing but some sites can access your data after data by accessing just your email id.

* Best OS is TAILS https://tails.boum.org/.

* Best browser TOR.

* openpgp for encrypting your mails in thunderbird.

* Install add on https finder/everywhere for secured search.

* Use browser extension DoNotTrackMe.

* Use passwrd manager keypass.

* In chrome, if you save passwords, then in settings you will get list of passwords you have saved for sites and any one who will get access to your system can view the passwords. SO NEVER SAVE and use lastpass password manager.

* VPN : Another secured internet access.