personal – Page 3 – Nigel Babu

Remembering Michael

Michael Bauer, a good friend and a colleague at Open Knowledge for nearly 2 years passed away a month ago. I’m still finding it hard to process that he’s passed away. He’d congratulated me on my run just the day before. And…

@nigelbabu well done btw! Now kick it tomorrow as welll!

— Michael Bauer (@mihi_tr) September 12, 2015

I met Michael for the first time in winter of 2013. It was my first summit after starting at Open Knowledge. Michael, Friedrich, Lucy, Tryggvi, I, and a few others were holed up in Rufus’ kitchen getting briefed on Openspending from Friedrich. Over the years, we’ve worked together to deliver trainings and we met each other at the Open Knowledge summits and events. I sat through one of Michael’s trainings last year in Tanzania on cleaning data. I learned quite a lot about cleaning up data from him that day. He got the entire room comfortable about learning new things. I could see their joy in understanding how to use the right tools.

Michael, during the training in Tanzania

After Michael left Open Knowledge, we kept in touch on #running on irc.freenode.net and Twitter. I’d just started running this year and he encouraged me to do longer distances. As I continue running, I’ll surely be thinking of Michael every day.

At the last summit we both attended in Cambridge, Michael had brought Pink sunglasses and he coaxed me into having this hilarious picture taken. I miss Michael’s infectious energy and silliness.

Good Bye Open Knowledge, Hello Scary World

I’ve been with Open Knowledge since October 2, 2012. It’s been 2 years and 8 months. Back then, I had just lost an opportunity to work at Mozilla with James Socol. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but Open Knowledge looked very attractive. Open Knowledge has connections to Mozilla and Canonical – The two open source communities I’ve worked with heavily. In the last few years, I’ve worked on crowdcrafting.org, openspending.org, and CKAN; conducted trainings in 2 countries; and visited London, Cambridge, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, and Berlin for work. It’s been a fantastic few years. And it’s time to move on.

From 22nd July, I will no longer be a full-time staff at Open Knowledge. I’ll be around as a freelancer to help transition my position and I’ll be available as a freelancer. I’m already setup to do business and I’m excited to do interesting work. I’m currently working with Miranj, Vidhi, and Guiding Tech!

If you want a short-term python developer/linux sysadmin or some custom CKAN development done, please get in touch with me.

The Modern Lab Reports

Yesterday morning, I went to the local lab to get a few follow-up blood tests..

Yesterday morning, I went to the local lab to get a few follow-up blood tests done. I was very amused at the system this particular chain of labs had. They had small franchisee collection centers. I paid the collection center and they sent my samples onwards to a central processing lab. When collecting my samples, they took my phone number, my name, and the referring doctor’s name in addition to the name of the tests I wanted.

In the evening, I got an SMS with my report ID and a password. I just had to visit their website and I could download a PDF report of my lab report. Truly, we’re living in the future!

Faridabad Cross Country Race and a 10K

My running life has been spectacular lately, though it’s paused right now for health reasons. I’ve had two great runs recently that are totally worth talking about. The first one was the Faridabad Cross Country…

My running life has been spectacular lately, though it’s on hold right now for health reasons. I’ve had two great runs that are totally worth talking about. The first one was the Faridabad Cross Country Race on March 22nd. Souvik convinced me to run this one and I signed up for the 5 miles race (8 km or so). Souvik picked me up from my place around 0415 and we reached the venue at 0500. We were the first people there apart from the organizers. Over the course of the next hour, people slowly started trickling in and it was becoming light as well. I had only restarted running that week so I wasn’t fully in control of my pace. As soon as the race started, I rushed off a bit too fast. I knew what I was doing wrong, but the conditioning to slow down wasn’t just there. I need to race more often and particularly practice running by feel. The route was very scenic, especially as the run was rising as we started our run. We’d been warned of a drop at the end of the course, but the warning didn’t really prepare me for the real thing.

It was impossible to run down and I struggled to run back up. I tried, but failed. My legs were too fatigued., I walked quite a bit on the way back and when I finally reached the finish point, the person who was the winner of the 10-mile race finished just ahead of me! Despite all this, at an average of 7:59 min/km, it was my best 5K+ pace. This is a route I’d like to go back on my own or with friends and run again. The route is very pretty and the climb is a nice challenge. If it weren’t so far away, I’d even think of doing hill repeats there.

On April 5, I did a 10K with Souvik and Bhavya. This run was during the end of Week 6 of C25K and Day 3 involves running continuously for 20 minutes. I wasn’t sure if I could do it, but I ran for 20 minutes without stopping and then alternated between running and walking. It was glorious. Bhavya is fairly fast and I nearly kept up with him for 20 full minutes after which I gave it a break and then alternated between running and walking. I read a few conversations on r/c25k about the 20-minute stretch of running and they were very encouraging. Everyone who had finished it pointed out that while it’s scary to think about, it’s not very scary to actually do. After having done that, I can confirm that it is true. I finished the entire run with a pace of 7:33 min/km, a new personal record! Speed isn’t one of my goals at the moment, but it’s nice to see that I can indeed do a pretty decent speed compared to what I used to do a year ago.

Sadly, I have to stop running for a bit. I had a repeat episode of seizure recently and my meds have been changed. Until that is all settled in, I’ve been advised to avoid running due to the risk of having a repeat seizure while my old meds are tapered off. Another 4 weeks and I’ll be back to running. It’s become something I look forward to every week.

Acrophobia – The Fear of Heights

Last month, I spent a week working with my colleague, Matt, in Bridgend. While there, he took me indoor climbing at the local leisure center. It’s the most…

Last month, I spent a week working with my colleague, Matt, in Bridgend. While there, he took me indoor climbing at the local leisure center. It’s the most fun I’ve had and the scariest thing I’ve done. When climbing, I’m hooked to an inertial reel. They’re great because I’m not dependent on a human paying attention to me the whole time. They are a bit scary, because the way to get down is to lean back and let go.

Before I did any actual climbing, I got extensive training on “letting go”. There’s something about falling backwards that scared me. I think it’s my instinct from riding a bike, I felt naked without a helmet. The instructor, Nathan, had me try it with me on the ground. Phew, that was scary stuff. After a bit, I got past the fear and let go. The ground is a soft mat, so there’s a low chance of injuring myself if I did hit my head. I tried it 3 times until I was sure I was okay to let go!

Once I mastered that, he had me climb a bit and try it again. After a few tries, I decided I had enough control of my fears and went all the way up. Oh, I couldn’t have been further from the truth. Nathan had to coach me to trust the reel and let go. After that attempt, I got a bit of confidence and tried out the different levels they had. I got the 1 nailed, then 2 and 2+. I didn’t get past the 3 though. My arms were completely fatigued and I kept slipping on the 3.

Now, I was past fear of letting go. I slipped a few times on the 3 and I was completely okay. Lesson learned, climbing isn’t about upper body strength, it’s more about technique. Just about when our time was finishing, I tried out the highest wall they had (30ft), without bothering with the grades. It was kinda special going up all that high and looking down 🙂

The smile doesn't show how exhausted I was at that point

Just before we finished, Nathan came up with an absolutely crazy thing to do. He suggested climbing to the top of the 20 ft wall, standing on the ledge, taking a few pictures, and jumping down from there. That sounded scary, but the adrenaline rush was tempting. Standing on the 20 ft ledge, I could see how high up I’d climbed. That’s when my mild acrophobia hit me. Going down meant turning back, holding on to the bar on the ceiling that’s also holding the reel, and letting go.

It’s one of those things. I knew exactly how it would go once I let go, but I couldn’t get myself to do it. After some deep breaths and pep talk from Nathan, I did let go. The adrenaline rush was great!

If I get the time, I’m going to be hunting down places to do indoor climbing in Delhi and give it a shot. After all, how hard can it be? 😉