|
Sunil
Beta Baskar |
|
| lives in the pale blue dot | created this with GNUemacs |
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Life
| I was
born in
the year 1980
in a small town named 'Erode'
(pronounced ee-road)
in the state of TamilNadu in India. I was born to my Dad (who's a
General
Physician) who sometimes works like a la Sherlock Holmes and my mom
who's
probably installed my engineering [and any organized] thought process.
I was
born at the CSI(Church of South India) Hospital where my Dad was
working for a
couple of years. I remember very little of my birthplace and the house
in which
we had lived. It occurs to me only as Dejavu, as I have visited this
city only
thrice later. I am named Sunil, thanks to my Sis who chose it. She
steps in
time to time and helps me get better balanced with life. We are
separated in
time by three and ten years, making it a wondrous relationship! I share
the
same age gap to my niece (well almost). I lived and studied all the years in the town named 'Thanjavur'. This town, once (and only once) a grand capital for the Second Chola Empire is now a small town buzzing with activity and flanked by educational institutions all around the place. It has all the right elements of a big town and a small city put together making it a wonderful place to live in. It hosts one of the largest temples in the south of India, popularly known as the 'Bragadeeshwara Temple'. Surprisingly, the last ruling dynasty of this town-city was Maratha (a connection to the city of Pune which I chose to live in next). |
School
| I did
all my
schooling at "Don Bosco Mat. Hr. Sec. School" (dear school
of our
hearts) in Thanjavur. Recorded to be the first ever educational
institution
started by the Salesian brothers in India, this has been one of the
best places
of my lifetime. I'd give up anything to be back in school. The first
Salesian
institution in the town is now named "St.Antony's" and is now run by
the
Brothers of St.Gabriel. Don Bosco, from where I did all my schooling
from my
1st standard until my 12th (Higher Secondary Certificate), was built in
the mid
1980s. The first Principal I remember is Fr. Packiaraj Royan, who
granted me
admission to the first standard. Ever since that, school has always
been very
close to my life. I learnt computers and computing thanks to my then Computer Science Instructor at school "Gerald Joseph". (Too bad I'm not in touch with him while I tap this page in.) He offered me all the freedom I needed to learn and hack at machinery in school. I was soon helping him out with administering the computer lab and also got my parents to buy me a PC at home (in my 8th standard). After my first brush with computers, I've always been hacking and meddling with computers, and that learning process has been a never-ending dream. My proud hack jobs are a "Logo interpreter" for kids, a Quickbasic UI (a la ncurses), networking and educational applications based on Quickbasic, 3D accelerated toy games, mathematical computing libraries and a whole host of other toys. During my 11th and 12th standards, I joined the local NIIT centre, (as I did not have access to *nix machines otherwise) and learnt a lot in the process. Soon, I even had a lab time ticketing system written for the centre and lots of goodies to go with it. I met one of my first workaholic friends "Derrick Samuel Matthews" who lived on his work and set an example that I later chose to emulate. I returned back to NIIT during my grad days to manage "QUEST", a club that intended to breed quizzers and increase tech activity among everyone who was involved with the NIIT centre. This was one of my strongest leadership experiences ever! I must thank Rajan, the then Managing Director for being a wonderful mentor and a treasure trove of management practices. |
Work
| During
my first
year in college, I took to troubleshooting PCs of
friends and
acquaintances all around town. Finally together with a friend of mine,
"Badhrinath", we decided to start a troubleshooting firm. "Badhrinath"
has
always been the best partner I meld with bringing out the best in both
of us,
and coordinating each other with a swish of magic that I always envied.
We started out with
an initial survey of companies owning PCs in Thanjavur, went ahead with
planning our quarterly overlays and finally got down to starting it! It
was a
strong learning experience, understanding registration, tax norms and a
lot of
legal procedure involved in incorporating companies in India. We
started
getting compensated with an inverse-time model (much like some law
firms in the
US). This learning experience was a huge jumpstart to my career and my
understanding of computers and people in tandem. We called our firm
"Reboot"
(not after the exceedingly successful animated show of the same name),
but just
after the process you would follow to restart your machine in case of
trouble. We had some world-class support for printing pamphlets from
Rueben who
ran a local printing firm that delivered more, and delivered
ahead-of-time. I also learnt basic Computer Graphics stuff, image, photo editing and the likes from a born genius named "Chitti Babu". He still runs a firm that designs ad hoardings, wedding invitations and the like. He never fails to impress people with the speed at which he improvises, imagines and delivers. I've learnt a lot about basic design techniques from him, some that I have put to use to add to the simplicity of this website. I discovered GNU/Linux with Slackware while I was doing my undergrad. We tried creating our own Linux distribution and had great fun. Learnt of this cool team at Codito (then Morelinux) who were interested in the initiative and created old unstable alpha versions of the distribution. The distribution didn't quite catch on, but I decided to hack and play around with linux more. I used SuSE Linux 9.x on my laptop and Debian (unstable/Sid) on my desktop. I also had a DWL650+ WiFi access card which uses a TI chipset. Visit acx100@sourceforge for entertainment. I have now moved to kubuntu (on all my PCs and Laptops) and am seriously thinking of running one PC of mine with FreeBSD [release 6.3]. With Codito, I started out on Embedded Linux and had a really cool run with OpenRTLinux for an ARM platform. I've been working with Embedded Linux ever since, and've always found lots of excitement hacking around. I enjoy working with the folk at Codito who make it an awesome learning experience! Codito was my first exposure to a team of people who strived to be way above average. They made any average person feel too small and disappear. They created a work culture where people were encouraged to think big, think deep and essentially out-think everyone who had thought about the same idea earlier. I have seen one of India's (I should write world here) best idea incubators, managed by the free-est hand I've ever seen. Briefly, for a period of a year, I left Codito to join another startup in Singapore named Innvo which had been started out by a couple of people my age - Abhaya, Srijon, Rajiv and led by the ominously experienced Guruprakash. They got funding and the backing of Chay Kwang Soon (founder of Creative Labs) and worked some magic sitting in a city that had little appreciation for truly technical work. We worked together for a year, going ahead and setting up an off-shore development center in the process. This too added immensely to my learning experience about companies! I came back to Codito, a year later, this time not to just be an idea-maker like the majority of the team, but to put together competitive, fast and easy-to-use management practices that made them very professional in the market place. We worked on the management practices making sure that the strengths of hi-tech idea incubation was only enhanced, if it was in any way affected by the new management techniques we infused. Patanjali has been one of the best CEOs I've ever known of, never losing energy (I wonder how he does that) and always full of spirit and enthusiasm. Coditons (as they refer to themselves) form most of my circle of friends, as we share the same wavelength of thought, intellectual interests and geekdom. With the new management practices in place, we've also managed to hire our kind of people with great consistency (and in our own words - the sense of humor only gets worse at codito). They later after restructuring are now part of Celunite. These days, I hack on code selectively, spending more time on the management side of things. Trying to understand strategic moves rather than being a trigger happy tachyon. I am always willing to look out at other teams that differentiate themselves from the rest of the world and want to do their share of going out and taking on the future! I then decided to leave Codito and find my destiny elsewhere. It has been a year and three months and I haven't punched the air for something great happening. Fate has been kinder to those who code, for they win or lose, their code runs or crashes and they have tangible targets to hit. I also had some trouble that could be best set right by being at home. During this period, I freelanced from Thanjavur - the Temple City. I helped people out on Agile Project Management practices, building business models around the open source community, merging open and closed intellectual property, consulting on setting up development centres, buying computing and storage equipment for existing development centres and the like. It helped me in a way staying closer to my parents and being in a stronger symbiotic relationship than working from elsewhere. I did visit the people who avail my services frequently as we haven't yet completely switched to the w-i-r-e-d world. Finally, when things at home were in synchrony, I decided to move on; The place I have chosen to move to is D-Link R&D, Bangalore. I like a lot of attributes about the team including the people, the style of management and the way the premises are maintained. I have opted not to choose too small or too big a name to associate myself with. I hope to spend a lot more time here than I have done so previously in startups that were much smaller in size and had fewer long-term goals compared to such an organised setup. More of this decision was influenced by my desire to be close in a Product oriented company where the scale and nature of work differs from Services oriented companies I have associated myself with earlier. This organization (in Bangalore) has transitioned from the hands of Capt. J V Avadhanulu, a visionary and a leader to Mr. Aravindan, an excellent Engineering expert and finally to the hands of Mr. Natarajan Sankaranarayanan, a bridge between Business Development and Technology in the years I have been with D-Link R&D, Bangalore. That said, I am always interested in new opportunities involving team leadership and product development. If there is an interesting and sufficiently challenging opportunity, I will still ensure that my obligations in my current position are not compromised. |
Interests
| I used to spend
most of
the time working. Sometimes I just download some new
piece of code just for the heck of trying it out or end up decorating
my cool KDE
desktop. I derive much
of my workaholic habits from Codito, which
only worsened when I joined Innvo. If you find me not working sometime,
then
you're sure I'm having a coffee (it runs in my veins, and I couldn't
possibly
do without it!) Right now, I've tried to establish a routine; something where I wanted to create some free space for myself. It isn't easy to do this, being in a free workplace (free as in freedom) where everyone autonomously choses to operate on their own rhythms and styles. I used to get to office before 9:30 (give or take fifteen minutes) and return home by 19:30 (give or take half an hour [leaving office at about half past six].) With the move to the new workplace, I reach office by 7:30hrs (give or take five minutes) and return home by 17:30hrs (give or take five minutes) after we have shifted to the new facility at Electronic City Phase II. I constructed most of this website during a month of a sabbatical after which I hoped to keep it maintained regularly. I enjoy reading books and watching movies. I've also tried my hand at Pencil sketching. I like listening to Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Mozart and Movie OSTs (John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Danny Elfman, Ennio Moricone and a few others.) I love watching Formula 1, more a fan of Michael Schumacher than Ferrari, following him from his 1994 Benetton run. I watch him no matter whether he's winning or losing. I do like a host of other drivers from the F1 arena, but he still remains my favorite. After his retirement, Kimi Raikkonen, the iceman from Finland is my hero to watch at the races. I like his cool customer attitude outside the car, and the grit with which he takes up racing. On TV, My favorites have been Star Trek (TOS, TNG and Enterprise) and The X-Files. I'd really love the day we(humanity) make First Contact. I believe that'd take us many steps closer to understanding our wonderful universe. I also love writing essays, commentaries and articles on other fields of interest including Roman History, Star Trek Fanfiction, Neurochemistry, Management, Anthropology, apart from some articles based on my core competencies. I try and keep sync with my personal tech blog and seldom update my Slashdot journal these days. Free/Open Source Software remains my key interest. I do meet people who have been introduced to me through e-mail conversations and share the same passion for "free" (freedom) software. If you are interested in reading more detail, you could also check my linked-in profile. |
Acknowledgement(s): I borrowed the idea for this page (at least the headings) from Amit Shah's website. He's the first chap out of Codito, who painstakingly maintains and updates his website.
DISCLAIMER: This website has nothing to do with the Greek Alphabet 'Beta' or Sony's Beta video cassette format. I have avoided e-mail addresses of people for their/your privacy.
| Created on Wednesday, 20th July 2004 | (c) Copyright 2004-2009 Sunil Beta Baskar |