Ashis is one of the nice people I have met at Timbaktu. He is young, has been working for only a couple of years after BE and MBA. He studied at BITS Pilani where he took part in NSS work and got interested in development work there. So he went to IRMA (Institute of Rural Management, Anand) for an MBA and currently works on a project called Timbaktu Organic. They try to organize farmers to farm organically and then market the produce.
Ashis recently wrote a good article for the BITA alumni paper about his (and his wife's) journey. Its an excellent read. I got his okay to link to it on this blog.
Here is the article
Here is an article about Ramon Aybar who is mentioned in the above
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Monday, October 30, 2006
Lets hear it for my sis!!
Sajini
I want to acknowledge my sister's (Sajini) unstinting enthusiasm for my writing and blogging efforts. Since the time she discovered my previous blog (at despoki.net), she has always been thoroughly appreciative of my writing and consistently encouraged me to write more. She reads the blogs fanatically and she was pretty much the only one (as far as I can see) who took some interest in my revenue generation efforts. And she just sent me a check so that I could meet the target I had set for myself for earning some money through the blog. That way I can stop worrying about blog traffic or ad-clicks. So thanks for all the interest and support, sis !
While I'm doing thanks, let me also acknowledge the other regular blog readers and commenters who have made the blog more interesting and given me a reason to continue blogging. Thanks Arvind, Sidharth and Sukesh (aka Anonymous). Your interest makes the blog go ! And if there's someone else who reads the blog on a regular basis (atleast once a week), I'd love to know who you are.
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Another blog milestone: I'm 4 short of 200 posts (including both the blogs). So its close to an average of 1 post a day since April since I started the sabbatical, although I actually started blogging earlier.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Head on over there !
I've been seeing that traffic on the other blog is only a tenth of the traffic on this one (such as it is). Why ?!!!! Head on over there, lots of cool stuff there !
Friday, October 27, 2006
Skype (a little more)
Today I talked to one person in Australia and then one person in the US using Skype. Worked fine though the person in Australia had some trouble hearing me, so I guess I need to get a mike after all.
Skype rocks !
Skype rocks !
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Skype
Its quite embarrasing for a putative techie like me to be caught discovering Skype in October 2006 but here goes.
After some earlier half-hearted attempts dating back to 2002, I downloaded Skype again recently and it works like a dream. The biodiesel group that I am talking to uses it so they asked me to get on it too, so I did. Its simple and elegant, and so far (I've only had one conversation yet !) I've been able to get away without using a mike or headphones and still get good clarity. Skype positions itself as a way of making phone calls using your computer, though they're basically a more targeted Yahoo Msgr with Voice which I talked about earlier. Still its pretty cool. I came back from our Nemeli trip (yeah, we're back, I'll blog about the trip later) and came online to check mail and bingo! somebody notices that I'm online and Skypes me and we have a conversation. Powerful (and empowering).
That's all for now (ie very early Thu morning) folks.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
To Nemeli!
Okay, sudden trip.
Both of Priya's parents have got Chikungunya, the current scourge of rural south India. So we thought we would make a quick trip down to their village (Nemeli, border of TN and Andhra) and bring Priya's mom atleast back here with us, so she can get some rest and care.
More when we come back. You can google Chikungunya for more information, I also talked about it in a previous post about Thippatheega kashayam. I am a stupid fellow, I should have gotten some of that medicine with me on one of my many trips to Timbaktu
Both of Priya's parents have got Chikungunya, the current scourge of rural south India. So we thought we would make a quick trip down to their village (Nemeli, border of TN and Andhra) and bring Priya's mom atleast back here with us, so she can get some rest and care.
More when we come back. You can google Chikungunya for more information, I also talked about it in a previous post about Thippatheega kashayam. I am a stupid fellow, I should have gotten some of that medicine with me on one of my many trips to Timbaktu
Saturday, October 21, 2006
RSS, Syndication, ATOM and all that
I finally spent some time, and got the basics of this working. FYI in case you are interested.
Lots of sites nowadays allow you to do 'RSS' or 'Atom' syndication. What this means is that you can have a program on your computer that will keep checking when new content comes onto those sites and let you know. Using the program on your computer you can therefore from one central place, check a lot of different websites for their latest content. (If you're such a web junkie as to need such a tool, probably your first priority should be to wean yourself off the net in the first place, but we digress).
So here's a simple and relatively lightweight 'reader' (that's the program that sits on your comp. and monitors websites):
Feedreader , http://www.feedreader.com/
And you can syndicate my blog by entering the following URL into feedreader:
http://despoki.blogspot.com/atom.xml
I left out a lot of details, but feel free to mail if you want to seriously do this.
Lots of sites nowadays allow you to do 'RSS' or 'Atom' syndication. What this means is that you can have a program on your computer that will keep checking when new content comes onto those sites and let you know. Using the program on your computer you can therefore from one central place, check a lot of different websites for their latest content. (If you're such a web junkie as to need such a tool, probably your first priority should be to wean yourself off the net in the first place, but we digress).
So here's a simple and relatively lightweight 'reader' (that's the program that sits on your comp. and monitors websites):
Feedreader , http://www.feedreader.com/
And you can syndicate my blog by entering the following URL into feedreader:
http://despoki.blogspot.com/atom.xml
I left out a lot of details, but feel free to mail if you want to seriously do this.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Taking stock
A 'taking stock' post has been long overdue.
I've been going through a small down period.
Regarding what I've been doing at Timbaktu, there are things that I am happy about and other things less so. I have enjoyed doing stuff there a lot, I have learnt a lot, and I have met and interacted and become friends with some really cool people. What I've done for them has not been that great but its certainly helped them and they have been very appreciative. Its fulfilled the long hankering I've had to work with an NGO. However I've not engaged deeply enough with them, since I don't stay there or work full-time. I've told them that I would like to finish the 'engagement' in December. Right now there is a big messy project that I've taken to update their website and another pending small project to do a small Access database for them that has been causing me inordinate problems (if somebody knows Access well, and wants to help out with this one -- very welcome).
There were times when doing NGO work seriously full-time seemed like a very attractive option. But that option has really not come together to be a serious possibility at this point.
The chief purpose of the trip to Hyderabad was to talk to somebody about a work opportunity that came up unexpectedly in... biodiesel. There's lots and lots of stuff that I could talk about biodiesel, its something that I've been following for a while now. However I'll leave it for now with just a website that gives an excellent introduction to the topic: www.treeoilsindia.com. The opportunity has lots of positive and negative things about it and its weighing on my mind quite heavily.
Besides that, there is a small opportunity (more about it later) to give some training sessions for graduating students at an engineering college (what the real world is like kind of thing), which is something that is close to my heart. If I was really keen I could perhaps expand that into a job, or find something else along those lines.
Other than that -- lots of things have been going through my mind but without much direction and resolution. 6-odd months off from work is a long time and twinges of guilt for not doing a 'real' job are becoming more frequent. Also some kind of dissastifaction with the kind of opportunities that are coming up as they are not the 'perfect' opportunity. That I think is something that can be dealt with -- if I do commit to something and go with it, managing the shortcomings is more doable, then when one is in an uncommitted state. Especially when I'm in Bangalore, I tend to slip into a 'lassitude' state.
There are some long pending things that I'm glad to be resolving. The driver's license was a big deal, and right now, I'm in the process getting some stuff done regarding the flat that we bought (a 'khata transfer') that also has been long pending. When I went to Hyd, I did some stuff regarding the lost registration for my car, but that is proving to be a harder nut to crack.
The blog(s) has also reached a level of staticity. Partly because of the above broodings, I haven't been blogging that much. Blog traffic has also levelled off, and ad clicks is down to zero :-). So some ambivalence on that front too.
So that's where things are at. Comments are very welcome.
I've been going through a small down period.
Regarding what I've been doing at Timbaktu, there are things that I am happy about and other things less so. I have enjoyed doing stuff there a lot, I have learnt a lot, and I have met and interacted and become friends with some really cool people. What I've done for them has not been that great but its certainly helped them and they have been very appreciative. Its fulfilled the long hankering I've had to work with an NGO. However I've not engaged deeply enough with them, since I don't stay there or work full-time. I've told them that I would like to finish the 'engagement' in December. Right now there is a big messy project that I've taken to update their website and another pending small project to do a small Access database for them that has been causing me inordinate problems (if somebody knows Access well, and wants to help out with this one -- very welcome).
There were times when doing NGO work seriously full-time seemed like a very attractive option. But that option has really not come together to be a serious possibility at this point.
The chief purpose of the trip to Hyderabad was to talk to somebody about a work opportunity that came up unexpectedly in... biodiesel. There's lots and lots of stuff that I could talk about biodiesel, its something that I've been following for a while now. However I'll leave it for now with just a website that gives an excellent introduction to the topic: www.treeoilsindia.com. The opportunity has lots of positive and negative things about it and its weighing on my mind quite heavily.
Besides that, there is a small opportunity (more about it later) to give some training sessions for graduating students at an engineering college (what the real world is like kind of thing), which is something that is close to my heart. If I was really keen I could perhaps expand that into a job, or find something else along those lines.
Other than that -- lots of things have been going through my mind but without much direction and resolution. 6-odd months off from work is a long time and twinges of guilt for not doing a 'real' job are becoming more frequent. Also some kind of dissastifaction with the kind of opportunities that are coming up as they are not the 'perfect' opportunity. That I think is something that can be dealt with -- if I do commit to something and go with it, managing the shortcomings is more doable, then when one is in an uncommitted state. Especially when I'm in Bangalore, I tend to slip into a 'lassitude' state.
There are some long pending things that I'm glad to be resolving. The driver's license was a big deal, and right now, I'm in the process getting some stuff done regarding the flat that we bought (a 'khata transfer') that also has been long pending. When I went to Hyd, I did some stuff regarding the lost registration for my car, but that is proving to be a harder nut to crack.
The blog(s) has also reached a level of staticity. Partly because of the above broodings, I haven't been blogging that much. Blog traffic has also levelled off, and ad clicks is down to zero :-). So some ambivalence on that front too.
So that's where things are at. Comments are very welcome.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Timbaktu Annual Report
The Timbaktu Annual Report for 05-06 which I spent a lot of time on, is available at their website now (www.timbaktu.org). Look under the What's New section. The photos are not of good clarity, we hope to fix that. Its worth a read, though its long and wordy. Comments welcome.
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