New shortcut costs me

This is how I was feeling yesterday >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Wondering why? Because I missed my train; thanks to the auto-driver’s newly found so called short cut route, takes over an hour to travel 16kms with more than 6 traffic signals to get me boiling angry.
Another auto-driver brings me back in 28 minutes flat via normal route.
Well, this is like paying to miss the train. Especially when travel rates of auto are soaring high in Chennai.
Plus I couldn’t cancel my ticket; not even partial refund (It was booked under tatkaal scheme).

I cannot take a train today; I don’t want to miss my first KDE Games Developer meeting. The next best deal I got was on tuesday-April 8. Thanks to Srihari and also his girlfriend for the lift.

I wanted to reach home on Sunday morning and finish building KDE4; feeling sad now.
That would have enabled me experience some PyKDE extensions before the meeting; now I guess I’ll have to just sit shut up during the meet.

Hoping for things to turn out well.

KDragons

My email to kde-games-devel about `KDragons` game has earned some good responses. Thanks to them, my nervousness level has come down.
I ended up adding the idea to techbase ideas page, which was probably not the right thing to do and so removed it.

Just finished this simple sketch of a probable screen for KDragons.
Sorry for the bad quality image; used a VGA Cellphone cam.
Here is the Enlarged image

I should try mailing this to KDE Games mailing list for some suggestions.

Aaron’s email said “there’s no problem with hosting PyKDE/Qt apps in kde’s svn. it’s actually a
stated goal for the KDE4 timeframe to host non-C++ apps.” has given me some relief.
Thanks Aaron.

Will keep updating my blog on my GSoC progress. Expecting to apply for KDragons using Google’s Webapp by tomorrow.
Till then I am found having fun at #gsoc, #kde-devel, #kdegames, #kde-soc, #python, #pygame and #mukt.in at irc.freenode.net

Ciao for now

GSoC student application starts today :)

So here it is, March 24, the students’ applications open today. Other important dates listed here.

Students wanting to participate in GSoC can see Official List of Mentoring organisations or Categorized list of mentoring organisations and Mentoring organisations by Language.

I was wondering if I should try my luck at GSoC this year. Bad that this occurred to me just 4 days ago, so lot of studying time is lost already.
Another hick-up is I’ve moved to a new place and BSNL has not provided my internet connection yet. I called them up so many times; no avail.

Yesterday, I had to work from an internet cafe, I couldn’t convince the admin that it is safe to connect my linux laptop to his network, so at last I had to convince him for xchat (30 minutes to convince him that xchat isn’t a virus and he can safely install that on his windows box.)

I mailed a small game idea of mine to kde-games-devel mailing list; impatiently waiting for reply.
Another interesting idea is Elements under OLPC where I am also interested in writing small python/pygame based games.
Chris Hager (probable mentor) is about to propose a detailed project list in about another 8hrs; will be interesting to watch tickets page of Elements.

Applications should be open around 19:00 UTC, thats around 00:30 March 25th in India. So waiting with fingers crossed.