Pre-Last-Exam-Post-Exam Excitement

Saturday. What a wonderful day. Writing a new post after more than a fortnight. So, let me not start by the summary of how my last week was.

Some days are just extra-ordinary. Today is a party day in my hostel, a day when people take a break from the usual exam pressure and chill out doing whatever they love to do and whatever they had to ban themselves from since exams started. Many plan on watching movies, catch up on their regular serials, go around to other rooms to socialize, and the rest sleep. And here I am, doing what I love doing, updating you guys with my over exciting life. :P

I am so excited that I am confused to the point that I do not know what to type next. And the following are the possible reasons:

1. I have my last exam day after tomorrow, after which I am travelling to the most beautiful place in the sweet little world of mine, to my sister, home. :)

2. I have a month filled with lots of excitement waiting for me. A journey that will probably change my life. And I am very passionately looking forward to it.

 Sometimes when you think too much about the future, you just get too carried away and lose your concentration on the present day, which is happening to me right now, and which most probably is happening to  many people here.  But irrespective of what or how much you think, it's not going to change anything until you act. You think you want something, you believe you want something, you realise you need something, you share your need for the need with someone, you do everything you can to get what you want ---> you feel like you have achieved everything in the world, you feel happy.

It takes just a few seconds for the world's greatest idea to occur to a human brain. What really makes the difference is how the brain of that human reacts to it and how he takes it forward to the world. There are yet innumerable undiscovered elements of technology that people have to explore. And this opportunity is given to the present batch of engineers and scientists, who are curious and excited to implement their own ideas for improving the life of the millions of people across the world. And this is the biggest reason for my super excitedness, as I belong to this set of engineers.
Can't wait to change the world. :)

Yes, I am ambitious. And yes, I am a little too much of a dreamer. But hey, dreams are the beginning of every wonderful journey. So, dream. It's free.
And work, it gives you freedom. And run, it adds to your lovely life a couple of extra years. ;)

Merry time = Exam time?

It is that time of the year again when engineering kids get their textbooks out of the cobwebs and start underlining every line they read. Yes, the end semester exams are here (a week away). With the goal of passing in all the subjects,  these kids drill themselves for a week with increasing order of intensity, hoping to achieve their goals. Some get away with this, while many unfortunate others re-book their tickets to give the supplementary exams, that happen shortly after the semester exams. This is the usual drill that every student, oh let me re-phrase that, every Engineering student, goes through. 

It is a misconception in a large fraction of the society that engineering = being jobless for four years and taking home a degree. We, as students, understand the torment on the kids' mental and physical health, (in my college, it includes spiritual also). So people, Stop giving those "m-e-h" looks when someone tells you they are doing engineering. Instead, you shoud say, "Brave, proud of you". 
Anyway, I'm not against the torture that we go through, it is needed. We try, we fail, we learn, we try again, we fail again, we learn more, but, it's  not an infinite loop. At the end, we come out as experienced and successful scholars who change the world and make it a better place to live in for the rest of the population. 

Alright I deviated a bit in the last paragraph :P Let me come back to the topic. 
Exam days have been the most amazing days of my life. Stop giving those looks, I'm serious. We get the world's most creative ideas while studying for examinations. My friends and I make a huge to-do list that we always plan to implement after exams. We sing, we dance, we eat (a lot), we crack lame jokes, we roam around for no reason, and, when we are bored, we study. Yes that's how it is. And the feeling after an exam is priceless, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So, exam time doesn't suck that much, enjoy it, it's only for a few days. ;) Good luck to all the future engineers! 

Gearing up for GSoC : #Tknow

Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers students stipends for spending their summer writing code for open source projects that benefits humanity. There are GSoC meetings happening around the different time zones, where the experienced guys introduce the idea of open source and a bit about GSoC to the newbies. 

The tech{know}logy club (which is the coolest club of my college) also conducted a GSoC meet up on 9th November, 13. The crowd turn up was around 60, majorly from computer science and IT. The organisors were Sarup, Romil, Aravind(Dult), Archit, Manjush, Madhusudhan and some others.
It was organised really well. They created an IRC channel and mailing list for the meet where students could ask anything and get their queries cleared. Also, lots of google goodies were distributed to keep the spirit high. :)
A nice description about GSoC was given by Sarup. Being a GSoCer himself, he has had a lot of experience and hence, he had the audience listening to everything that he had to say.  There were a lot of people in the house who were completely new to open source, so a brief introduction was given about open source programming. Many curious and excited students shared what skills they had and asked about what they could start working with. Archit and Arvind cleared some other usual misconceptions that people have about hacking and open source. And Manjush was busy handling the mailing list and channel and the Git requests.

Throughout the meet, people were logged into the IRC channel, posting comments and queries. The last discussion was about Git and Github. Students installed Git on their laptops and created their own Github accounts after which they were guided through the usage of Git. This is how everyone got a hang of what open source actually is. Romil was walking around everywhere(mainly the girls :P) clearing all the doubts about the whole installation and usage process. Sarup gave a list of all the sites that could be useful for learning more and contributing to open source. 

After this event, I went around asking people for their feedback. People loved it and I'm sure that they found it as useful as I did. Although the meet up was a success, not many girls turned up. I don't understand why most of the open source contributers come from the male population. Women must stand up for such events. From now, this would be something I will work on improving. Apart from that, I think things went on pretty smooth. :) And that was the last activity of the Tknow club for the semester! 
Follow us on https://twitter.com/WeAreTknow

Coming soon: Change of the millenium

While we grew up in the 90's with superheroes superman, batman, spiderman and powerpuff girls, the kids of this decade love the current tech-dream superhero: Ironman. Ironman has become so popular everywhere that kids want ironman costumes for their birthdays. However, to us, the techies, it is a whole different dream that we want to achieve. This movie literally takes us to the future of mankind, ruled by talking robots and flying screens. But the question that we must ask ourselves is, is this ever going to happen? Well, it really is upto us. If I step into this field on the right path, I am sure I would give my life to make the best of everything. I would have my own Jarvis and I would be living in a penthouse talking to my hundreds of robots. That is everyone's fantasy.

To begin with, people around the world are working on some very cool things like face recognition, gesture recognition, speech recognition etc that form the basis of complex robotic structures. The screens that are shown in ironman are just a step away as that can easily be achieved by creative coding. Technology is improving so fast that it is becoming difficult to keep track of even most of the new software realeases. To keep up, you just have to be in the present, keep your ears and eyes open, and work. 

I think robotics is the next big thing. Presently, from our country,  not many colleges promote it (sadly my college being one among them). Students who are really interested in this field should work together and create the unimaginable. 

The future as I see it: I wake up with an alarm telling me to wake up. A screen tells and shows me the temperature and weather outside, and shows me my workout schedule for the day. I run on my treadmill with virtual environment (something that I will work on), my version of Jarvis would give me the schedule for the day and keep me company all the time. No more heavy laptops. Just a screen that seems to pop up from nowhere as soon as you give a voice command. All this with gadgets like the google glass and the driverless car. The driverless car is just the most amazing innovation, not having to stress yourself in raging traffic(especially in my country). I think the google glass needs to be worked on a little bit more. But anyway, this is how my future is going to be, pretty confident about it. 

How do you see your future? Take a minute, and Think about it.      

Its OK to be CRAZY

Have you ever thought of a world without the soulful tunes of a guitar? Or the art of expressing oneself through dance? It would be a rather saddening life, not worth its beautiful pile of problems.

Every now and then even the busiest people feel the need to loosen up and let go. I must say, even though I am not the busiest person around, I find it difficult to continue my day in the same pace all the time. I have my highs and lows, in fact, all of us do. We just react in different ways. Some decide to ignore how they feel and force themselves with their busy schedules, while some just cannot find a convincing enough answer to why they should not listen to their heart and care about how they are feeling.

In my opinion, no matter what a person chooses to do with his day, he should be happy and satisfied. It depends on the person and his control over his actions and thoughts. For example, I am not the kind of person who would think twice before having a night out with my friends, regardless of what I have the next day (unless it is an end-sem exam, in which case my friends wouldn't either). My policy: I am the master of my life. Unless it is beyond legal boundaries, I will do what I want and however I want it and nobody can change or influence that. Ofcourse you make mistakes on the way and then learn from them but that's how it is supposed to be. Life sucks if you live by the advices and warnings that you hear, your life should be defined by yourself. So make it a little entertaining, a little crazy :) and do everything that you WANT to do. No regrets. Life (as a human) happens just once.     

Life after Fedora happened to me.

Like most of the kids, I have grown up with windows as my operating system. I didn't even know there were other systems available until I got to college! Yes, I have had a very non-techie life. Even though my dad is the best computer science teacher I have ever come across, I had no idea what all this is actually about, never cared to ask him. First year of college passed by and I was done with an introductory course in C. The beginning to this new world of programming was not very pleasant, as one would expect. As second year started, I came across C++ and Java. C++ taught me some cool things. Athough I can't say it is better than Java, it is an awesome language for creative coding, something which I am really interested in. Ofcourse I have my  inspirations. Sarup Banskota, currently in 3rd yr CSE, is a designer, and has been a GSoC student. He is truly an inspiration to me because he always does whatever he actually finds interesting. And he loves what he does. The spirit and energy to do something big, that is what makes the difference. He is part of the fedora team now. That is one of the ways I came to know about fedora. I had heard about it before, but never had the courage to get rid of windows and install linux. Gradually I got more and more interested and my desire to switch to a linux-based OS grew everyday. Finally one day I decided that I will ditch the cool looking windows 8 and switch to fedora. Even though most people think Ubuntu is the best linux OS, I favored Fedora(partly because of Sarup). In the starting few days, I had some problems installing new software, using the terminal, getting introduced to repositories and the most imporatant thing, to open source. But like I had heard about fedora, I started falling in love with it. Now whenever I am not with my laptop, or in class, I just keep thinking about the stuff that I would do on my laptop after I get back to the room. Let me tell you, this feeling is awesome :) because you actually are so motivated to learn new cool stuff everyday! Proud to be a fedora-lover. \m/ (Can't wait for the alpha fedora-20!)

Rain Rain Please Don't Go Away

What a beautiful Sunday. Just like they describe it in novels, a lazy morning(for normal ppl, for me, includes gym & washing clothes), a pleasant sunny afternoon and a breezy cool evening. I had a rather fulfilling day I should say. I got my dongle back to work on my laptop, successfully downloaded some software that I wanted and searched on the net for summer internships that I can apply for. Truly is a lot of work that I did, leaves me feeling happy. Tomorrow will be a long and busy day. Hoping for the best.

Missing out on my Favorite Festival

Hi everyone. I wish all of you guys a very happy Diwali. Sadly I couldn't go home this time to celebrate it. So here I am, sitting in my room all day munching on some crap and breaking my head with the digital book(not even my book I guess). Once in a while I look out of the window, hear the crackers, and wonder what it would be like to be a bird and fly around the rockets glowing and sparkling in the sky, free from everything, free from the insane world. Feel peaceful for a moment, again disturbed by the digital book on my lap. Usually I do not do something unless I feel like doing it, but with the end sem nearing, I think I should start listening to my head a little more than my heart. This is my first post on my blog. I wanted to have my own blog so since I was bored, finally created one :) Look out for more!