A quick look into the change log revealed

PHP 4 support is deprecated.  Features new to 2.0.0 may not be support PHP 4, and all legacy features will no longer support PHP 4 as of 2.1.0.

This is what I was waiting for. What it means, as pointed by Phil Sturgeon and Elliot Haughin, is that CI 2.0 will not run on PHP 4, but more importantly, it can now take full advantages of PHP 5.

One other thing that I liked is

Added ability to set "Package" paths - specific paths where the Loader and Config classes should try to look first for a requested file.  This allows distribution of sub-applications with their own libraries, models, config files, etc. in a single "package" directory.  

Which means that now we can create common area where we can keep helpers, views and libraries that needs to be shared between two applications.

While there are many more updates these two got me excited.

For now let’s wait for them to release, meanwhile you can sign up for Bitbucket and follow the updates for CodeIgniter Project.

I am happy to say that in my 3rd attempt to be a blogger I have finally succeded.

Thank you every one for commenting and reading which kept my interest alive.

What is the most interesting is,  we were discussing how to get students invlove in open source, while techstart.in group was formed to give students mentoring.

Anyways,  I thought I will just put action points from that mailing list as a blog post so that few more people could find it.

Here is what Navin and other’s believe should be done by students to connect with  Pune startup faternity.

To stay plugged in to the Pune startup ecosystem, I suggest the following:

1. Subscribe to the PuneStartups (POCC) mailing list:
http://groups.google.com/group/punestartups
2. If you are a student, or interested in students, subscribe to the
POCC mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/pocc-students
3. Stay in touch with Pune tech community events and other information
via PuneTech: http://punetech.com/subscribe
4. Join twitter. I’ve found that twitter is a great place to get
information about Pune Startups. On twitter follow @punetech

As startups always look for passion and skill in people they hire, so being active on one of the forums mentioned below can increase you chance of getting hired and also to interact and find mentors in local community.

Please choose according to your interest

1. Join PHPCamp mailing list http://groups.google.com/group/phpcamp
2. Join Drupal India Community mailing list at http://groups.drupal.org/india
3. Join Joomla User Group Pune mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/jugpune
4. Join Barcamp pune mailing list at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/barcamp-pune
5. If mailing list is to much for you, then follow some of the most active pune techies and tech events on twitter.

Again, I am biased towards PHP and PHP Community, so I have very limited knowledge of other tech events and their mailing list, So if any one of you are active on any other mailing list that is useful for students than please leave a comment I will update the post.

Update

Here are few more groups for you

1. Join Null group at http://null.co.in/, they talk only about cyber security and hacking.
2. Join Flex users mailing list at  http://groups.google.co.in/group/pune-flex-users
3. Join Pune Linux User group at http://www.plug.org.in/mailman/listinfo/plug-mail
4. For Techie Girls out their, Join LinuxChix  http://mailman.linuxchix.org/mailman/listinfo/indichix
5. Join Ruby users mailing list at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/puneruby/
6. Join Pune Java User Group http://groups.google.com/group/Pune-Java

So many options, and still students ask where to look?

Recently Concluded was IdeaCamp 2, you can read about it on Bhavya’s blog post.

Upcoming events that I know of

1. WATBlog Wednesday Pune on 21st January,
2. Drupal Camp Pune, it is going to happen on 31st January,
3. On 13th – 14 Feb( yes !!!) we are having Gnunify’09.  and
4. Joomla Day India, for the first time in India, we will have a day dedicated to Joomla. This will happen on 25th April.  Announcement about it should happen in a day or two.

Too know about more tech events that are happening or happen in Pune, keep checking Pune Tech Events Calendar.

For last few week I have been doing lot of things and learned a lot, stay tuned..  till then

Have fun

We were able to prototype the ‘India I Care’ orkut app for IOFC. It will be soon released for everyone to use. We build this app with active contribution from Shardule, Rohan, Parag and our speaker Shishir.

Priyank and Aman has already covered the event in detail, also check what another speaker Arpana has to say about it.

Photos of the event :

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/thecancerus/OpensocialDeveloperGarage08

From Opensocial Developer garage’08

I would like to thank everyone who made this event possible.

Have fun.

Fireunit will make JavaScript logging very easy, and we will not have to use alert boxes any more.

You can download the extension at http://fireunit.org/

So here is the list of events with their twitter accounts

1. Barcamp Pune @barcamppune
2. PHPCamp @phpcamp
3. ClubHack @clubhack
4. JoomlaDay Pune @jugpune
5. OpenSocial Developer Garage @devgarage
6. Gnunify @gnunify (tip by @abhisheknagar)
7. Pune Flex User Group @punefug (added on 28th Feb 2009)

Off course there are more events happening in Pune, but these five seven have a Twitter account that I know off.

If you want to keep an eye on other events without twitter accounts, then you should follow, following twitter accounts which live tweets tech events most of the time.

1. PuneTech.com @punetech
2. Pune Tech Live @punetechlive
3. Dhananjay Nene @dnene_liveblog

If I am missing any event with twitter account from this list or any one who live tweet the tech events then leave a comment with their twitter ID, along with yours so that we know.

1. Navin Kabra @ngkabra
2. Dhananjay Nene @dnene
3. Rohit Srivastwa @rohit11
4. Rohan Dighe @irohan
5. Priyank Kapadia @whereispriyank
6. Shardul Mohite @shardulmohite

Apart from them you may also want to follow me ( @thecancerus ) as well

I know this list is incomplete as I have a very narrow technology vision, so if you follow someone who plays an active role in Pune and is not on the list then leave a comment along with your own twitter id.

PS: if you have no idea about importance of twitter, then you should check out ‘Why you should be on Twitter – and how best to use it’ by Navin.

This time the theme of the event is ‘Back To Basics’ initially it was supposed to mean that focus of this event would be teach basics of technology to youngsters, but with time, its meaning changed to represent ‘No Frills Camp’.

Yes, you heard me right BCP5 is going to be a Freecamp aka ‘No Frills Camp’, which means if the only reason you used to attend the barcamp’s was t-shirts then you better don’t come, you will be disappointed. Their will also be no free snacks, and lunch will cost you around 60 Rs.

What it also means is that if you have passion for technology then you will find people who share your passion and no freeloaders. For once, at least, Barcamp is only about technologies and not freebies. And as Tarun rightly said Freedom To Be will be the mantra or this one.

Now, what are you waiting for, if you have still not registered then head over to http://barcamppune.org/ and register yourself.

See you all on 29th @ SICSR, do drop by to say hello.

I am for sure used these excuses during early days of my career, before I realized my mistake.

So what are the excuses I am talking about?

Well, here they are

1. My company is not good.  yeah sure, is my response to this. I really don’t understand this excuse, after all how a company is related to the program I write.
2. My project is not good. This basically means that what  I am doing, is not what I want to do. Sometimes in professional life it is possible to get stuck in projects that we don’t like, but I have always believed that even a boring project can be made challenging and all exciting by simply setting some higher standards for  yourself in the project.
3. My clients are not good. This one I understand and relate to, but looking back I can say, I have learned maximum while I was working with these not so good clients. Their near impossible demands(at that time) helped me stretch my ability, which might not been possible with if I had only worked for good clients.
4. My Seniors are not good. When someone say this to me, I always ask them why should they. After all sooner or later you will be competing for their positions.
5. My Team mates are not good. They never are, accept this fact and consider your self very lucky if you get good team mates. Again the reason is quite simple, only one among your team can become next team leader. I am sure you want to be that person, but so does other members of your team. Now you tell me, will you help your team mate in his quest to become next team leader? understand what I am trying to say.

Now to answer the inevitable question that these people ask after giving these excuses

What To Do?

You have two choices.

One, leave the company and join the one where every thing is perfect. If you follow this route you will soon realize that you are switching companies every few months.

Or second options is, stop giving excuses and start doing something to improve the situation. Let’s see the excuses one by one and see what can be done.

My company is not good, well so what. Who cares about company, what we should really care about the work that we do.  Just make sure the work you do is best and everyone know about it.

My project is not good, well then go ahead, set higher standards for your self in the project. Let’s say project involves writing lot’s of html files, why not build an engine to do the stuff automatically. If you need to do something on regular basis then, may be you should do it in less time then you did it last time, and spent extra time you got doing some personal project, or contributing to open source projects.

My clients are not good, and that is good(!!!) as I mentioned earlier. From my experience developers call only those clients bad  who demands, quick response or to build something difficult or more time consuming. While one first look they do look bad, but if you do what they are asking for and build those complex app’s you will get the experience that would be priceless later on.

My seniors are not good and my team mates are not good, both these excuses are almost similar and they basically mean that seniors/team mates are not helping you to solve a problem or they are dumb. I have always believed that projects that I am part of is my project, and I will do whatever it takes to make sure it see the light of day.

So it does not matter if seniors are not helpful or team mates do not do good/quality work. You should keep your standards high, and you should help your team mates to increase their knowledge and quality. Which will ensure that quality on project increases and so does chance of project’s success, which will eventually increase your chances of becoming a team leader.

What I am trying to say is that, if you are good then you should be able to deliver your project successfully despite all the problems in the world, otherwise why would any one need you?

I am done, now you can have your say in the comments below.

PS: Image you see above is created by my colleague Dhanesh.