As part of reducing focus that I carried out last year offline, I had listed through all the hobbies that I wanted to dabble in. They are, in no particular order:
cartographer
astronomer
ham (amateur radio)
robotics
collecting stamps
collecting coins
travelling – hiking
bicycling
amateur weather station
setting up a decimeter radio telescope
amateur rocketeer
writing a novel
contributing code to open source projects
blogging
playing the violin
religious philosophy
political sciences
data sciences
geographic information systems
minimalism
writing Malayalam
learning Sanskrit
I have found in each case, that I have dabbled in it to some extent without going through with it completely and it seems like a nice list from which to begin working my way through. I still have the rest of my life to go through that list.
While participating in Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 in India, I had come across a feature called the Yakkara Desam Fort in Palakkad District. I came across this feature while compiling the list of monuments from the list provided by the Archaeological Survey of India. The Fort found mention in the list for Kerala as N-KL-6. Search as I might, I could not find mention of this monument anywhere else. Even Wikipedia did not have an article on the said Fort.
While searching for a place to go around in Kerala, I stumbled on the website of the Town Planning Department, Kerala. Here, I was able to see the fort mentioned again in a document notifying protected monuments in Kerala within town limits. It also contained a link to the drawing of the Fort which can only imply that it is the Yakarra Desam as there is no other fort in the list. So, I guess that my search for what is the Yakarra Desam fort has ended with conclusive documentary evidence. Case closed?
Matt Mullenweg shared this article by Jon Udell on the ossification in Wikipedia. Being a part of the Wikimedian community from 2010 to about 2014, I have seen this crystalize on Wikipedia and in the world in general.
Things are a lot worse offline amongst the community – on phone calls, emails and mailing lists. This led to me curtailing offline contributions and contributing edits when I feel like it. Not the best outcome for a community that is trying to retain its members.
I know of at least two of my friends in the Wikimedia world (@busydot and @psubhashish) who attended this summit. But, I share this post more for some of the keen insights into the recent protest movements and their political transformations (look at the India Against Corruption movement and it’s political avatar, the Aam Aadmi Party) and their use of social media for their narrative.
The year 2014 was a year for review, taking stock and then boldly going where many have gone before. I would never have guessed at the beginning of the year of the scale of changes that swept through my life in this year.
I got married.
I reduced the vast areas of interest to geography, space and digital sciences besides having a professional interest in banking and financial services. I pruned out my various memberships to reflect this change in my professional affiliations and hobbies. I continue that process in 2015.
I went on my first international trip to Malaysia.
Our first trip to together after Marriage was our first trip abroad to Malaysia. We flew from Kochi to Kuala Lumpur, thence to Langkawi and then back to Kochi from December 10 to 16. We had a wonderful time.
Getting ready to leave…
With the Christmas tree in the lobby of the Hotel Grand Seasons in Kuala Lumpur
Outside the Petronas Tower, tourist stop in Kuala Lumpur
Although I had seen weddings of cousins and friends this was still new to me. Our weddings are short and sweet with the whole process getting over in under 2 minutes if you timed it. But, this small tradition marks the beginning of a life long relationship between two people, two families and two family trees.
Our marriage was held at the Sree Pavithra Auditorium in Alathur at 11:30 AM on Sunday, 7th December, 2014.
Last Saturday I was at Nehru Planetarium, Mumbai’s Sky Theatre listening to a talk by ISRO’s Dr Seetha. She was working with the Mars Orbiter Mission and from my understanding on the Mars Colour Camera project. She is also a principal investigator on the Astrosat Project.
Image: Dr. Seetha giving her talk at Nehru Planetarium, Mumbai. Image Credit: Pradeep Mohandas, released under a CC-BY license.
Nehru Planetarium director Arvind Paranjpaye introduced Dr. Seetha who comes from a background in astronomy and who was working on the instrumentation of telescopes at the Kavalur Observatory. She moved to ISRO once it began the Planetary Sciences Division at PRL, Ahmedabad. She was among a group of scientists who moved from astronomy to space division within ISRO, a fact that was thus far unbeknownst to me.
She spoke of some of the challenges faced by the ISRO team whilst putting together the Mars mission – the usual facts about the need for the longer coast phase for the PSLV, the need for additional ocean based terminals provided for by the Shipping Corporation of India, the re-starting of engines and of-course the Mars Orbiter insertion. She spoke of how the once in 26 month opening comes for a mission to Mars works and also answered specific questions on spacecraft instrumentation redundancy and radiation and thermal shielding. There were a few request for apps. She said the spacecraft may have enough fuel now to do a 1 year mission even though though it was designed for a 6 month mission thanks to the inserted orbit. She asked the audience to follow the mission via Facebook and Twitter for more exciting picture releases and perhaps even a few science results from the other instruments.
I hope ISRO does send more of its scientists to talk to the public in gigs such as this. She said she understood that there was public was restless about the speed at which the pics were getting released via Facebook and Twitter but said that the speed was slow down a bit as the scientists get down to the science. In a private conversation with her, I got a chance to thank her for the better quality of pics that were now being made available. She said that better technology enabled this.
Parallel Spirals 
