2014 : My Year in Review

My name in Japanese

2014 has been a year filled with lot of excitement and thrill. In the last 365 days, I have done quite a few things for the first time.

Leaving India

• I moved away from Bangalore for the first time in my life. Officially, I have lived away from 560085 for more than three months. 
• Resigned(?) from my first full-time job. I enjoyed the last two years with the few good friends I made at TI.

Studying at Thunderbird

Incoming Class of 2014 - Thunderbird

• I have been enrolled in the MBA program at Thunderbird. So far it has been a exciting ride for me. The curriculum has more of concepts and less of calculations, the classes are conducted through case-studies not just lectures, and finally, I do most of my coursework in teams. The most appealing aspect in school is working with people from different parts of the world - no, I haven't learnt any abuses from other languages yet.  
• Started driving on the right hand side of the road. Unconsciously, I did steer towards the left hand side of the road, but, was immediately corrected by my brother.

Hiked Mountains

• Kumara Parvatha - This was my first trek. I enjoyed scaling the three boulders, which was a total surprise for me, making bonfire in the cold and whistles which were used to communicate within our group. 
• Roopkund trek in the Himalayas - This was my first Himalayan trek. The best part of the trek was the trek team which was fun to be with. Eating Ghee rice - Dal for a week and nail-biting cold was quite uncomfortable but all was forgotten amidst the scenic beauty of the Himalayas. I feel, more than the final destination - Roopkund lake - the trail is more enjoyable. 

  

  Roopkund in the background

• Camelback Mountain - Snowed capped Himalayas to the rocky trek in urban Phoenix. The best part of Camelback mountain is that you can finish the hike within three hours, so you can start your day with it or end your evening on the peak. The peak offers a good view of the city landscape too. 

  

  View from the top of Camelback mountain

• Brown's peak - The road to the trail is more difficult than the trail itself. The enjoyable part of this trek is the rock climbing. You also have to be aware of the cactus on few rocks. On the trail you get a beautiful view of the lake beside the mountain.

Visited new places

Havelock Island

• Andaman & Nicobar Islands - My first organised trip with MakeMyTrip. The islands seem to be isolated with the huge population of rest of India. The tourist places are pretty much unexploited. This trip was a nice break from the over-populous tourist places in India. It has one of the most beautiful beaches in Asia. After this trip's experience, I prefer MMT for future family trips.  
• Dubai - Money can buy the Sheikhs anything. They have built a magnificent city in a desert. Dining in the Burj-al-Arab, the one-minute elevator ride in Burj Khalifa and roaming the different themed areas at the  Ibin-Batuta Mall are a highlight of this trip. 



Oak Creek Trail in Fall colors

• Sedona - A few red rocks pulls so many tourists that an entire city has been built. The 3 hour Oak Creek trail was aesthetic for the fall colours. 
• Philadelphia - I was in this historic city for a couple of days only. I managed to watch the screening of a theater recording in a public park and roamed near the Ben Franklin bridge in the dead of the night. I didn't try the Philly steaks - one for the future.

Misc

• I completed a 10k in an hour. 

  

  Completed TCS 10k Bangalore

• I bought my first laptop, for my graduate coursework which means I can now play new games than just Most Wanted and Rise of Nations. 
• Finished Limbo - beautiful but short game, started Civilization V and Portal 2, and addicted to Dota 2. 
• Experienced Black Friday and Halloween 

I am really happy with what I have accomplished in the last one year. It was indeed a happy and prosperous 2014. I hope next year will bring much more joy.

Happy New Year!

2048 : Completed

After more than a week of trying, I successfully completed 2048! This is one of the games which I tracked the rise through its showcasing on hacker news and got forked multiple times to add interesting angles to this simple gamepuzzle. To learn more about the game and it's fork, go here.

I scored 20440 points at 2048, a game where you join numbers to score high! #2048game http://t.co/PEfgnRzEwA Done and dusted :D
— Jayadeep T P (@jayadeeptp) March 17, 2014

Screenshots below:
Well the moment I realised I was almost there :)

 And the end...

Then, I got greedy, I kept going!

The reception of this game has amazed me. It was a "inspired" version of an already famous iOS game. But, that didn't stop programmers from forking the project multiple times and simplifying it to an extent that one person made it possible to play it on command line!

Edit: Pushed myself to double my high score and also reach 4096!

Intruding Privacy

The last few days have been difficult for the Obama administration to control the outrage against allegations, which have now been accepted by the administration, against the NSA 'spying' on foreign nationals (or Americans, unintentionally). Firstly, there was a leaked, of course, document stating that Verizon has been court ordered to provide broad details of any telephonic communication done on their network. Next Washington Post comes along with a few leaked, of course, slides and data about a NSA program called PRISM. PRISM essentially collects data from the big internet companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple etc and helps the NSA create a report on foreign nationals and some american nationals, unintentionally of-course.

These revelations have bought utmost outrage against the Government and the NSA. I don't think they deserve it.

Let's say they are onto one's internet trail. They have captured the email transactions, social network activities (which are mostly public already) and bank transfers. I am pretty sure the people at NSA have a better alternative than to read the millions, if not billions, of email sent daily. Nor do they worry about your bank details. They have access to a Fed Bank. They don't care about peanuts in your bank accounts. 

What these programs have to do with the public? They are not meant for the majority of us. They are safety precautions to help NSA (and other abbreviated Govt. organisations) to keep tabs on the law offenders. It is better to be safe than sorry. These are the same people who would have, in some way, helped catch the Boston terrorists in just days. And, such programs cannot be made public. With national security at risk, these are not to be disclosed.

Whenever I read an article on the same lines, I remind myself of one of my favorite quotes :

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place --- Eric Schmidt

I read the news of Obama defending these arguments of intruding privacy. He terms it as "modest encroachments on privacy". I don't really think they are modest but this shows what they are capable of. But he is right when he says "There are trade-offs invovled".

I would be surprised and happy if we had such programs in India too. Then I would atleast stop uploading all my photos on Dropbox, Google+. Anyways, they will have a copy. And with college students hacking around CBSE ICSE websites, I should be able to access my photos uploads right?

Book Read: The Secret Wishlist

I usually don't buy fiction books by Indian authors. I am not biased, I just go by the popular name. I borrow books from friends who recommend it. But I  did something new on one March afternoon; I bought The Secret Wishlist by Preethi Shenoy. {And, I feel sad it took me more than a month to publish this post.}
I did read the summary on back cover. I must accept that it made me curious. A girl falls in love at sixteen, but, she is married off in pakka Indian arranged marriage style. After few years she meets her true love and this leads to mental crisis. As John F Kennedy said

"When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters. One represents danger, the other opportunity." - John F. Kennedy

And the author uses this opportunity to tell us the story of Diksha
First few pages were really interesting. I liked the way the author kept moving between the past and the present. But soon the real intentions of the characters are revealed and the story goes in a slow(boring) pace to have a hasty climax.

Pros:

• Different story. I had never ventured into books centered on extra martial affairs and sorts.
• The book also is lesson on work-life balance. 3 people who work their ass off and end up in contrasting situations.

Cons:

• I didn't really need a dictionary while reading the book. So, it doesn't help you improve your vocab much. 
• After the first few chapters, everything is predictable and I begged the book ended sooner. 
• I hated the story, what the characters chose to do. In the end it is the author's story but the protagonist makes ridiculous choices and the worst part is she even defends those choices every time.

The concept of extra-martial affair though touched and indulged by the protagonist, the author doesn't really highlight it. Instead, she claims all the actions taken are in the name of freedom, an entity everyone claims but no one has it.

After I read the book, I felt I had wasted my time and started cribbing why I had not finished the other novel from Jeffrey Archer - Not a Penny Less, Not a Penny More(By the way, I have finished the book now, and it is fablous, you should read that instead). I don't recommend this book to anyone.

Life of Pi : Book>>Movie

If you haven't watched Life of Pi already then you are missing a 'beautiful' movie. So, go watch it if you can.
I saw the trailer of the movie 'Life of Pi' sometime in August(2012). I felt it was really thrilling and scary. A indian kid, a lone survivor of the Tsimtsum, survives the hardships of the seas along with a Royal Bengal Tiger(RBT). It is very eye-catchy. The big RBT does not eat a boy in the whole of their journey; a journey on a life boat! The only time I remember reading about the strength of the Royal Bengal Tiger was in HC Verma (Physics Text) - one strike coming from the Bengal Tiger's paw is equivalent to 50 kilo newton of force. This was huge and I could not believe a four-legged animal could generate such amount of force in a fraction of a second.

Once I saw the trailer and came to know that the movie was based on a book, I became more enthusiastic to read the book. Thankfully, my sister had buoght the book in the summer. Once I was finished with Kane and Abel, I decided to read Life of Pi. I wanted to finish it before I watch the movie;before 23rd November, the release date of the movie. I did finish the book in time.
The experience of reading the book was quite different to my previous books. This was my first non-fiction book. Initially, the author builds up the childhood of the boy(pi). Though I felt boring about this in the beginning I soon could relate it to the later events in Pi's ordeal. This was THE book which explained every detail of the environment. I was just mesmerized how could Pi even remember such fine details from childhood. 

Pros: In-detail explanation of Pi's journey across the Pacific; not just a sea-survival story!
Cons: Story becomes very slow sometimes. The naration is not well paced. This is might be due to the fact that Pi, had to remember and re-narrate the entire story.

Now that I had finished the book, I was 'ready' to watch the movie and then declare "The book was better than the movie. Hands down". Knowing how well the book was, I didn't have much expectations from the silver screen. Moreover, few of my friends already had mentioned me that the movie was a bore. I saw the movie with a expectation of knowing how would Hollywood make an Indian boy survive the sea on a life boat. I was astonished. I could not just believe that such beautiful creatures existed in the oceans. I had read about it, but, my imagination was not enough. I never thought the oceans to be so beautiful. All I saw was more beautiful scenery and of course, a Royal Bengal Tiger and how Pi survived the sea with the tiger. 

I realised, even though most of them says "The book was better" why they always go to make a movie out of a book. The book sows an idea and the reader has to build upon it, upto to his imagination's limit. If a person never knows how a Tiger will snarl, he can never really understand what happens when the author says a tiger snarled. On the other hand, movie breaks that barrier and tries to expand the limit of human imagination. It will show how a Tiger will snarl and how a boy fought for his life in the middle of the Pacific ocean. 

The movie tried most of the important things from the book (and a little more extra) but ofcourse you cannot depict the entire book in 120 minutes. I have not seen a more beautiful movie than 'Life of Pi' but if you are looking for a thrilling action and adventure, you will be disappointed. If you haven't watched Life of Pi already then you are missing a 'beautiful' movie. So, go watch it if you can.

Enjoyable experience: Kane and Abel

I usually don't read novels. But, off late due to my extended tour of Bangalore, thanks to the Bangalore traffic, I have made a habit to carry a book along with me. This way I make good use of the time rather than stare out of the window and hope my bus doesn't hit any of the two-wheelers beside. 

One such book I started reading was Kane and Abel by Jeffery Archer. The book was recommended by a couple of my friends. 

In short, the story is about two people, Kane and Abel, who are born and raised in contrasting environments but end up crossing each other's path. The common thing about both of them is: they are born on the same day and they are both very smart. They excel in all their endeavors but always come back to the little unnecessary feud they started. The book also shows how feuds are meaningless and don't serve any purpose than bringing all the parties involved down.
Pros:
The story is fast paced. The book covers the entire lifetime of the two people, hence, the story moves rather fast. The story also tries top include all the famous institutions at the time when the story takes place. This made the book even more interesting for me. In a way, the story of Kane is like a Hollywood movie, rich elegant and based on logic and knowledge, while, Abel's story is like a Bollywood story where luck overrides logic and the hero triumphs amidst adversary. The book made me to look up for few words on the dictionary. This is one of the reasons I read books- improve my vocabulary.
Cons:
The author doesn't really develop the environment; he just proceeds with the story. This is unlike few other authors like Dan Brown and John Grisham, who describe the situation as well as the environment which makes the story more enjoyable. The climax is very bad. The characters are built up so elegantly and they are killed so fast even before you realize it. I don't mind reading hundred more pages of the book if the story has the same grasping effect.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to enjoy a wonderful story. It's worth the time.

Horoscopes

I might be an engineer graduate(will officially graduate this weekend) but I have some faith in things like horoscopes. So, I have a feeling to prove this horoscope is actually true. Every day, every horoscope I read is different in different sources. Probabilistically, one of those should match my daily experience and so to prove that horoscopes work and someone can predict your future. But the only catch being, we don't know which horoscope is our correct future. You have a million mobile apps, Facebook apps, Newspapers, Magazines and what not!
I realised that it is quite useless to read all those horoscopes because I would spend more time to shape my life to match one of those horoscopes, rather than do the things in the way I would have done. So, I came up with this brilliant idea that I would read the horoscopes at the end of the day. One of the horoscopes would definitely match my day's experience and I would feel very happy that I am leading my life according to the movement of stars. I told you it was a brilliant idea.
Today, I ended up reading the following horoscope in a mobile app which closely fits my day. However, the only problem is that today's horoscope tells me what to do tomorrow. I am in a big dilemma, whether to go on with the horoscope or go with the flow of life and take the chances to scare the Gods.

Cancer Aug 29 2012
Once again, Moonchild, you are faced with having to forgive someone. You sometimes have trouble with this concept, and so you probably need to be reminded that forgiveness is more for you than it is for those who have offended you. But the bigger problem with your current dilemma is that the one you need to forgive probably doesn't even think he/she needs to be forgiven. It's hard to be gracious when someone who has hurt you doesn't even acknowledge being the cause of the injury. But you have great power right now - the power to just let it go without analyzing it. Just let it go.
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