Vinayak Hegde

With winter approaching fast we are also into conference season.

ACM Compute 2010 – 22nd & 23rd Jan, 2010.

ACM Bangalore chapter is organising ACM Compute 2010 which is into it’s third year now. This year the broad theme is Cloud computing and Information retrieval, management and analytics. The aim of this conference is to bring together researchers, practitioners, technology market movers, and thought leaders, with a view to advance the state of the art, and the state of the practice in applied research. This year we are planning to do something special – details soon The Call of papers (CFP) is out for sometime now and the last date for submissions is Oct 1 2009. You can also submit a proposal for a half-day or day long tutorial. Last year we had a bunch of good tutorials and also the symposium on Cloud Computing co-located with ACM Compute 2009 which was a great success.

Disclaimer: I am on the program committee of ACM Bangalore and am the secretary of the ACM Bangalore chapter.

Pycon India 2009 – 26th & 27th Sep 2009

Also this weekend (26th and 27th September 2009) India’s first Pycon India 2009 is being held in Bangalore. There is an interesting list of talks lined up. So do register if you are interested in attending.

Foss.in – December 1-5, 2009.

Foss.in shifts to a new venue this year NIMHANS convention centre. This year promises to be interesting as the venue is available for longer durations. Also there are going to be hacker evening/nights where tinkerers can meetup and talk about a whole range of stuff not restricted to just FOSS. My educated guess is something on the lines of CCC in Germany. Definitely something to look forward to. Plus I think there will be atleast one evening where we will have music . So join the mailing list if you are interested in presenting/attending as more details should emerge soon.

I and a bunch of friends decided to go on a day trip to Lepakshi at the last minute. Lepakshi is a temple town, north of Bangalore just across the border in Andhra Pradesh at a distance of about 120 kms. You can reach it by going via Doddaballapur – Gauribidanur – Hindupur route or take the NH7 towards Anantapur and then take the internal road from the Kodikonda checkpost at the Andhra border. We took the latter route. We left early at about 7.30am and stopped at Kamat’s Hotel on the way for breakfast. All along the way as we approached Chikkaballapur we saw vineyards growing grapes.

The diversion from the Kodikonda checkpost (on the left if you are coming from Bangalore) towards Lepaksi is unmarked and so hard to find. The road is narrow and just better than a dust road. Lepaski is about 10 kms down this road. Most people are familiar with the word ‘Lepakshi’ as it is the name of the handicrafts division of Andhra Pradesh Government. For example you can find Lepakshi Handicrafts stores allover Hyderabad and other major cities of Andhra Pradesh.

The Virabhadraswamy Temple complex in Lepaksi with it’s principal shrine dedicated to Shiva is of the Vijaynagar times and style. It’s contruction in 1538 AD is attributed to Virupanna – A noble man and merchant prince of the times. The Natyamandapa (Dancehall) supported on 70 pillars is the centre of attraction – the central group having life size forms of dancing shiva, brahma, nandi, tumbhara, rambha and other gods and other celestial playing on the drum, veena and other instruments in accompaniment. The Virabhadraswamy temple ceiling is covered is with murals which depict various scenes from the scriptures. I have made a composite from 8 images of a mural which can be seen here. A little farther down the road from the temple you can see a large Nandi Bull carved from a single monolithic rock. You can see the complete photoset on Flickr.