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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Feburary Fury

Sometimes life comes to us with all guns blazing and we have no choice but to keep up with it. This was one of those times. February this time was quite special for me. No, I am not talking about 14th Feb. 14th was all normal for me. But other than that, nothing else was.
It all started with the final year Project presentation. Making an application (using Django and Android) to control different electronic equipments in a house using bluetooth or the internet. It went smooth. But then came the Final fest of my engineering life. Though i would have kept my distance keeping in mind the busy schedule ahead, the college asked every club to come up with events. Being vice-president of Linux club, it was unfeasible for me to do so. So, we (the club members) thought, WTH, lets do it and proposed an online and an on-the-spot competition. The online competition was immensely successful after taxing on a few nights sleep (thanks to Python and Django). The on-the-spot one also did fairly well considering the fact that all the events had a clashing schedule.
The very next day of the end of fest came the biggie. GATE 2012. Having performed quite well last year, this year added an extra pressure. GATE being a national exam test students on all the subjects they have read during last 4 years of their engineering covering all the basic fundamentals. 6 semesters with 5 main subjects makes 30 subjects at least. It got neglected amidst the everything above hence the hopes weren’t high enough. But still I enjoyed appearing in the only exam which tests the logical abilities instead of my capacity to mug up and reproduce in a beautiful handwriting.
The evening ended with a refreshing Wikimedia monthly meet which gave me an opportunity to meet the active contributors from Delhi.

The next in line were the college internal exams. It was time to and arrange for notes and mug up the exact same lines to clear the exams. This ordeal took a whole week to end.

Now was the time for NIITAT. A national level IT aptitude test conducted every year to test the students for their aptitude and their industry readiness. All it required for me to do was go to the center on the lazy sunday afternoon and give the 2 hour test. As expected, it went pretty smooth.

Since it was a long time since we had lectures(firstly there was Fest and then the Minor Exams) it was time to go back to my actual project and finish off the assignments given in college only to realize that another week has gone by.

This brought me to the final exam left in line for this month on the last sunday of the month. Serving the nation and community is what i want to do with my full capacity. Air-Force gives me such an opportunity. Getting into army means competing with the best of the nation. The morning started off with a message from NIIT informing me that i stand among top 1000 among 63,000 who appeared for the NIITAT exam i gave last week. The day was chaotic. Even though i had googled my way to the Air-Force center for exam, i was a little surprised when i found out that i have reached the wrong center. Took another 1 hour of drive just to be in time for exam. It was fun to meet some of my buddies there who incidentally had the same center as mine. It was evening and last sunday and hence time for a long drive on my bike around the city in the cool soothing wind.

Its the end of February with 1 extra day that I get once every 4 years. Which reminds me that March is going to be a lot more Fun. Looking forward to participate in upcoming Tech Fests in other colleges of Delhi. Time to sharpen my skills and get down to coding. Tchao!

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Geek Meetup -14th Jan

Geek Meetups are organized Delhi(almost once every month) to bring all the Geeks and Open source enthusiasts to bring everyone together and Hack. Usually the participants are those who wouldn't mind spending a lazy Sunday afternoon hacking and coding and talking about latest trends.

But in the recent times due to some unavoidable circumstances, the meetings got cancelled. It had been approximately six months since the last meet and 363 days since the last time it had been hosted at Amity. There was an urgent need for one now. Considering the fact that this is the last year and we(Students of Amity, as our semesters get over really early) would have busy months ahead, we decided to take the responsibility of organizing the meet in our campus this month. As the day when i would become a "Alumni" is getting closer, it makes me a little Nostalgic about the things that have been so close to me in the past. Me being the Vice-president of our tech club ALIAS (Amity Linux Assistance Sapience) was getting a little uneasy about the thoughts of the future of the club. We have students that are enthusiastic about Open source and like to learn more about it, but they haven't really got much of chance to interact with the real wizards. Hence this meet not only gave us the opportunity to bring the g33ks together, it also allowed us to introduce them to our juniors who would take various posts in ALiAS and take on the legacy forward. It was then that a thought occurred to me. Why not let the future leaders have a real experience of organizing an event. And so they did!

The meeting turned out to be the one with a good participation. Now only the old contributers, but also the freshers(who joined the college this year) took part in the event. This allowed the new comers to interact with the community which in turn enhanced their enthusiasm and exposed them to a whole new world. I am sure that the open source culture that had been initiated during my tenure will continue to flourish in the campus long after I am gone.
http://lug-iitd.org/Geek_meetup_-_14_Jan_2012