Today, there was a discussion about the topics for the Free Software workshop in the #mes-fsf IRC channel at freenode.net. Shyam, Priyan, Shehin, Vibin Das, Sachin and Krishnaraj were present there. We decided to conduct the workshop on 11th December, Tuesday and planned for a meeting on 3rd December, Monday to have a final discussion about the topics. Currently, there are 13 members to present the topics and about 10 topics, out of which most are related to electronics side. Anyway, with the workshop, we hope we will have a voice to ask for a GNU lab at MES.

Anivar installed a Drupal version for SMC in his server space. It can be accessed by http://smc.movingrepublic.org/. But, there were a few problems with displaying Malayalam(I think its due to the database formats). Anivar said he could fix it by tomorrow. It might also provide a platform for localisation of Drupal to Malayalam.

Yesterday noon, I went to Kuttippuram from college to send the DD for the renewal of my domain www.bizzard.info for one year. I was tensed to see the post office closed and enquired about it nearby. But, no one knew the reason. I wandered there to find a courier service but didn’t found any. At last, one shop keeper told me that the post office was shifted to a building in the back side of the old one. I found it out and was relieved as the DD will reach Cochin in time.

The rain yesterday evening , was one of the heaviest rain I have seen. It started by about 4.45PM and ended by 7.30PM. The roads were all covered with water and I had to wait for half an hour in a shop in the road side for the rain to calm down a bit. While running to home, I couldn’t even see the road as it was all covered with water. And because of the rain, one more day without electricity.

Today noon, a few of us including Shyam, Priyan, Mahesh gathered together near college auditorium for a small discussion about what all we can do related to Debian and how to make common people use free softwares. A few new interesting students also joined us. We decided to collect questions for FAQ and Linux games, so that children and youngsters can be attracted more towards Debian.

In my quest for free hosting services with MySQL and PHP support, I came across two today. Though they are not at all comparable with Profusehost, which I use now; it will be good for those who won’t like ads placed on their pages. These two provides 200MB storage space and 5GB bandwidth per month. They supports FTP too. They are byethost13 and AwardSpace. On the other hand, Profusehost provides 2GB storage space, 100GB bandwidth per month, C-Panel, Fatanstico, FTP, SMTP, POP supports and many more. Also, the Profuse community provides good support too. The free hosting has two options; one with ads on all pages and the other, post for host which needs to do 30 posts a month in Profuse community.

Also, I installed Joomla for the SMC site. I tried to make a few changes but there were few problems related to displaying Malayalam.