La Salle Debain

Shailaja got new glasses. She needs to work on the frown though.

Best wishes to everyone in the Free Software community for the new year Vikari (VS 2064)

Diwali/new year this time was kind of anticlimatic compared to last year when we were actually in India. It is cold and gloomy in NJ, and fireworks are hard to come by. (Though I did manage to scrounge up some so not a total loss in that department.) And we arrived late at the mandir for Annakut Darshan today so they were out of thor which sucks. The presents front has been the usual maddeningly practical things. The kids of course got better stuff. Shailu, for instance, got Hungry Hungry Hippos and we've been having fun playing that.

So I shouldn't complain. Ma Lakshmi has blessed me tremendously over the past year and I just know this year will be even better.

See /etc/network/if-up.d/postfix for the shame, the ignominy. There oughtta be a law.

One of the common criticisms of the war in Iraq is that it was just an excuse to plunder that nations' oil. Of course that wasn't the reason however on Blog Action Day I urge environmentalists to think about why that might have actually been a better reason than the ones the politicians gave.

The world supply of oil will probably run out in my lifetime. While alternative sources of energy are being researched, they have yet to be viable on a large enough scale to keep the world economy running at its present rate of progress. For the time being we must depend on oil and it is of vital importance that this precious resource is managed carefully.

The problem is that it is not. Whereas civilized countries use energy for good purposes most of the oil is produced in countries which can only be described as evil. Take Saddams Iraq for instance; apologists claim it was one of the most advanced Arab nations, but that isn't setting a very high bar is it? Oil wealth was not used to better the lives of citizens but to prop up a savage and despotic regime. It is the poor and desperate deprived of the ability to take part in free markets who despoil the environment in a struggle to survive. Look at the other major oil producers and there too you will see a veritable rogues gallery. Some of these villains may be motivated by fundamentalism, some by socialism but the effect is the same. The common man in their countries does not get to enjoy the fruits of progress They are forced to muddle along with old, energy-inefficient, pollution-causing tech and their large numbers and vast geographical range undermine any modest environmental gains made by a few middle-class Westerners.

How could anyone who cares about the fate of our mother Earth stand by and watch her bounty being squandered by dictators? See rapidly dwindling resources wasted on jihad and revolution? The next time there is talk of war, be environmentally responsible and ask your representatives to make securing oil and spreading capitalism priorities. You owe it to your planet.

This week my son Nilagriva started preschool so on Sunday we had his
vidyarambha. As an added bonus it was Rishi Panchami.

As you can see from the picture, he has written four mantras in Sanskrit, the
letter &#0a85; in Gujarati, and his name in English hence the dazed look on his
face—a common Vyas reaction to formal education.

Know how to use FontForge? If so we need your help with two release critical bugs in ttf-indic-fonts, #427885 and #428023.

What has happened is that for the Latin ranges of some of these fonts, their designers have copied glyphs from proprietary fonts. They need to be replaced with glyphs from free fonts. If you can help, please let me know

Once again I am missing out on all the fun. But meanwhile in an alternate
timestream...