Proofread Page Extension( Mediawiki )Install Hitch

Although the extension page on Mediawiki lists pretty much everything that you need to have in order to install the Proofread Page extension, I ran into tiny bits of problem with my local install. So, it would be a nice to document the trivial errors.

1. If you visit a page and you don't find an option to edit it, then login as root.
2. If you don't see thumbnails appearing when you are browsing through djvu files, you would also see the error 'ppmtojpeg: EOF / read error reading magic number'. NO need to panic. Just add $wgMaxShellMemory = 302400 to your LocalSettings.php.

Happy coding!

Opening Blog for GSoC 2013

HI!

    I am too euphoric right now to tell you that I got selected for Google Summer of Code 2013.
I shall be working on 'Refactoring of Proofread Page Extension' which is a Wikimedia project.
The best part is that I met some really wonderful people during the application process.

    I must thank Thibaut Horel, Thomas, Sumana Harihareswara and Quim Gil ( obviously all of them are Wikimedians ) for their support and guidance. If not for SDSLabs, I might not have been in the list of selected candidates. I can't mention everyone here so 'Thanks a lot SDSLabs! \m/'. This would have been much more difficult if I didn't have a friend like Shubhechyya.

Imp: Richa Jain, Abhishek Das also got selected for GSoC. So don't miss an opportunity to ask them for a chapo.

PS: I was a bit euphoric because of the news and made the mistake of writing 3013 instead of 2013. So, please excuse my mistake.

Rants Against Religion

Its been  a long time since I visited my blog! The last time an issue was so important to me that I wrote about it somewhere, it was concerned with the issue of objectification and degradation of women( http://qr.ae/Tq7UR ). For a change, this time I am not dealing directly with feminism. This time it is religion.

Religious books are not a new entity. A book cannot do much wrong if people have brains. I might sound arrogant but people today are dumb. Why do you need a book to tell you that it is not okay to hit your wife or why it is improper to be cruel? If the only thing that stops you from going on a killing spree is a goddamned book that tells you about heaven and hell, then you have a serious morality issues.

What a religious book tells you:
1. There is a guy( God ) who is invisible to everyone and omnipotent. He was bored so he created the universe.
2. Then Adam or some other guy( like Manu in Hindu mythology ) was created and he alone or with his consort was responsible for creating the human race.
3. Then another guy came along because humans became big time sinners. eg. Jesus came once but Hindu Gods keep taking avatars.
4. You have to follow these rituals, you have to fast during this duration or on particular days, you have to pray everyday or the guy will get angry and send you to hell.
5. So this is a set of values which should basically be common sense but only I can decide what is right and what is not and you all are too dumb to realise humanity.
6. Know what I am not awesome so I will just create a few differences and discrimination. So, you guys become Shudras, you guys become Brahmins blah, blah.. Kill the infidels.
7. I am not a woman and I fall for women too easily so I will dictate how a woman's body should be proportioned so that she looks good to me. Oops, another problem, I don't want women to be equal to men so I will ask them to cover up every last nanometer of their body. Yeah, tresses seduce me, so cover that up.
8. You must believe that I will help you. I know I am invisible but manipulative.
9. Kiss my feet.

Most people will find this offensive but this is what the religious books really are. The sad thing is even though they were written centuries ago people believe lies to be still relevant and follow it to their graves.

No book should ever assume that its readers are dumb and cannot decide for themselves. Of course, people are ignorant about certain things till they read a book. No book or person should decide for someone else until the person is not equipped to think. This is exactly what these books do.

When you read these books you tend to give up your belief in science and go looking for this mysterious guy. Yes, all religions have fundamentalists and moderates but the moderates did not stop the fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are a nice example of what happens when you read religious books blindly and too often.
Some people are religious and nice but most of the religious people are not what a human should be. They are blinded by religion and reason is their enemy. Why? Because God likes it this way.

Religion is a thousand minds gripped by the same idea.
- Author unknown to me.

Stepping Into the Mediawiki Community

Does this really need an introduction? I don't think so. After all, Wikipedia saved our day in high school and continues to help us out of situations when we forget a few terms. Some of us help in improving the articles available on Wikipedia, while some of us don't care to do so.

       It is actually very beautiful to see a community whose aim is "free knowledge for all" when everyone is busy with copyrights. No, I am not totally against copyrights( a topic for another post ). I tried entering the Mediawiki developer community in November 2012. It feels good to enter a community of developers who are ever-ready to help each other and newbies.

     I would like to thank Mark Holmquist( http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:MHolmquist ) for being the initial contact point with the huge community of developers. It can get confusing for a newbie to understand how things work in the bigger picture. He, definitely is one of the most patient programmers I have met till date. You enter the community and realise "Woah! This is huge!". People do not give much thought to the behind the action scenes. I have come to believe that behind the scenes work is usually more interesting.

     I can continue talking about the awesome people I come across everyday in the Mediawiki community but I am really short of time because of the approaching exams. I still can't help mentioning Sumana Harihareswara( http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Sharihareswara_(WMF) ) because anytime you need help she is there to clear your queries.

     If someone wants to improve the quality of one's own code, he/she must enter the beautiful and smart world of FLOSS. I must stop now so that I can go back to my academics or I might end up helpless for the approaching exams. Good luck.

Can't Control Randomness Anymore...

"A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets". -Gloria Stuart
We have a tendency to lose friends as we grow up. We start keeping a lot of secrets. It starts to dawn upon us that growing up does not necessarily mean that you are free and relaxed just because you no longer have to do compulsory home work just because you dread punishment your teacher might give. Some of us feel sorry for growing up. Some of us feel that it was bound to happen and react to adulthood as if it was just sulfuric acid reacting with potassium permanganate to give magnesium pentoxide.
 
   Personally I feel overwhelmed by the number of emotions and thoughts I realize each day. As a school girl I loved science, had strong opinions about various social issues but never imagined myself debating technical issues or protesting against Microsoft's plans of disbanding Linux based operating systems. I thought I was meant for handling social issues and curing people. Every time some one asked me "What do you think you would be doing at the age of 20?" I would imagine myself at AIIMS ( the only medical college I knew back then ) and reading about the human organ system voraciously. Sadly because of several issues, mainly lack of confidence, I did not end up where I would be in peace. I always wanted to know the intricacies of the nervous and circulatory systems. India lacks neurologists and I wanted to reduce the deficit, even if it was just one person. I hate to people suffer just because they do not get the kind of neurological care they need. (I know it looks out of context, so I would call that an RTFact).

    I came to Roorkee and got introduced to feminism and realized the sleeping feminist I always carried. "When sleeping women wake up, mountains move."-Anonymous. All my words which I had considered to be rude or against society slowly started making sense. Why shouldn't they? After all, they are fighting for a section that has been oppressed for more than a millennium  I have come to realize that feminism is the best ideology any person can choose because feminism is no longer just about females. Its about everyone. You can't call yourself a feminist if you discriminate against homosexuals or choose to believe that people with dark skin are ugly and need to be pitied and consoled. Feminism sensitizes you towards everyone in your society. If you believe that you could help the victims by appealing to the moral sense of oppressors then you can try doing that but a lot of feminists do not believe in it. The only reason is that we have tried and tested it and we did not get our freedom by doing so. We got our freedom by revolting against the existing social order. We chose to defy social norms. We did not take up arms to demolish the existing patriarchal society.

    Although I never imagined myself to be involved with tiny quarks, now I cannot imagine myself without quantum physics. Life would suddenly be so boring for me. Physics gives you consolation and sympathy which no one can provide. It gives you love, desire, addiction, fascination and an escape. It can sneak anywhere. People might have never expected the nuances of quantum physics to sneak into bits and bytes of computer memory. The best thing about physics is that it lets your imagination loose but constraints you using its laws. You cannot defy them. You love to follow them. I still imagine an alternate universe that split at the point when I decided that I wasn't good enough for medical sciences. I know that in some other universe I am the girl I always wanted to be. A girl using the AIIMS library as her second home, a girl well versed with the various areas of the human brain. And in that universe I am  the chosen one. 

Afraid In My Own Country

Incredible India! used the phrase "dilwaalon ki dilli" to promote tourism in Delhi. Let me tell you why the phrase is totally false and a lie. Do I need to recount the horror of the Delhi gang rape here? No, you must have read it somewhere else. It is interesting to see how one incident changes the thoughts and feelings of a woman towards her own country, her own society, her own people and the opposite sex.
    The earliest memories of newspaper reports on rape are from class 6-7. I did not really understand how it affected women. Now when I recount the incidents I cannot help but wish to be anything but a Homo sapiens. I do not wish to be a part of a species which is so damned and immoral. You expect to be safe on a crowded road, don't you? An assault on dignity . Two women were sexually assaulted at the Gateway of India by around 70-80 men. Others watched in silence. They were having their daily quota of porn and probably saving some bandwidth. Flip through the incidents and you will realize rape is not a spontaneous crime but the culprits have planned it in their head for quite some time. 
   
   Coming to how the recent Delhi incident changed my thoughts into something I had never imagined in myself. Now I am wary of every male stranger. I am afraid even of the traffic commotion. I feel myself dwindling. My views and fears might seem paranoid but they are true for a lot of women. You know what happens when a woman is raped? She loses herself. Her family might disown her. This  society blames her for stepping out of her home. She is blamed for having a dream, for giving wings to her dreams. Her dreams and wings are set on fire. She is basically blamed for being biologically different than males. You find the last sentence offensive? If yes, well, leave this post right now because you cannot tolerate the harsher truth coming your way. People talk a about a woman's body in an utterly derogatory manner and how many of you tried to stop them? In a train/bus the conductor and passengers deliberately touch a woman's body inappropriately. How many of you tried to stop them? 

     How does someone's rape effect other women? She is scared. She is losing her faith. She is losing her calm. She is becoming angry. She is becoming weaker. Her family is putting more restrictions on her. The society is blaming women for being whores. Coming back from a tuition makes you whore? Having a boyfriend makes you a whore? Chasing your dreams makes you a slut? Does a desire to progress, a desire for knowledge,a desire to succeed means that you are ASKING for rape? The society seems to think so. The anger against the Delhi gang rape will soon fizzle out like carbon dioxide from a shaken up bottle of coke because the politicians know that people cannot go on and on for months in this cold.

    I am no longer just angry as I was when I wrote this post: Why girls need to be superwomen?. I am disappointed, sad and scared for myself. I am not happy for having these feelings of disappointment and fear because they were never a part of my identity as a female. As a person I did fear certain things and overcame them. Nobody is perfect. As a woman, did I fear the society? No. I had faith in it. I thought the society would stand up to evil. But it did not. I kept my faith but all of a sudden the faith came down like a card tower. It had weakened over time.

    I don't like my country's capital anymore. Yes, it might be the epitome of opportunities for Indians and an example of India's accomplishments, but for me its a representation of a lot of things I hate. One of them, insecurity. Insecure in my own land, among people who were once my own. They are no longer my own. I can't be one of them. I don't want to be one of them. I am not telling you that everyone there is bad. There are some wonderful people there, but they no longer define Delhi. The people are no longer the ones with hearts.

   Would I disown this country? I might. This is not the country portrayed in its national anthem and national song. This is not the country I am ready to die for. This is not the country worthy of the Indian Army, whose men are ready to lay down their lives for it. I might go to another country to fulfill my dreams of knowledge. This is not because the other countries are safe or are totally unbiased against women. But I will have one consolation, that they are not my people. I was not brought up there. This grand old country has lost its charm for honesty and respect for women.

    Please don't plead for the innocence of most Indians. Innocent is the wrong word for Indians. This is not the country our freedom fighters died fighting for. They had a dream. We have failed them. But I will bring the dream back. And you, yes, you should pledge to change this country to fulfill the dream.

    Bon voyage!

The Greatest Indian Hypocrisy...

Born and brought up in cities where Durga Puja is one of the most important festivals ( mainly because of the Bengali community), there is a special place in my heart for the festival. Let me briefly introduce you to this festival. Like every other festival, Durga Puja is related to a mythological event. A demon Mahishasura was creating a lot of trouble and Goddess Durga was invoked to kill him which she successfully did. Her victory is celebrated during the ten days of festivities.

     In India, Goddess Durga is considered to be the Goddess of Power. This fact disappoints me. The very people who treat women like scum worship a goddess fervently. She is considered to be the epitome of knowledge, beauty and strength. But why this hypocrisy? It does no good to worship her and abuse her creed. How can a society host so much of dimwit and evil its people?

    Why does the society tell me to dress myself in such a way that I don't look too beautiful or attractive when hundreds and thousands of verses have been written in the praise of Durga's breathtaking beauty, the magnificence of her eyes, the power and calm in her smile, the illuminating glow of cheeks and the beauty of her hair?

    Why does the society tell me that females are not fit enough to manage equations, formulas and scientific laws when whole chapters have been written praising Her knowledge of the universe, the past, present and future? Why does the society believe that my knowledge of science and arts is taking my manners away when Gods and humans admired and praised Her superior knowledge of the laws of the universe?

    The society tells me to be soft spoken, to accept any atrocities that have been committed on me or which might be committed on me, to remain dormant to the evil plaguing the society, to remain silent when some people are plundering my country, to remain a mere spectator when my people are being killed and tortured?    But this society accepts the verses describing how She took various forms to purge the society of its evils. It praises the bravery, valor and grace with which She fights.

    Every time I see Her magnificent idols I just hope that I could love everyone the way she did. I wish that  the society learns to accept that every female has the capability to become at least a fraction of the perfect female that She is. I hope that women realize the incredible power they carry to fight any atrocities and make this world a better place. Meanwhile, I strive to gain as much knowledge as I can. I continue to say things the society believes I shouldn't. In my little ways I continue to fight the demons of the society while I fight the devil inside me that asks me to rest and forget the atrocities. I cannot sleep peacefully when the world is in peril.

   Some people are right in quoting:
" I am not worried that the world will end in 2012 but what will happen if it continues without changing".

May the force be with you in making this world a better place.