Random Thoughts

 I think it all began with MIT Open Course(MIT OCW). MIT  had made the class materials available online for free. With this simple initiative, thousands of students benefited across the world, however there was one drawback with MIT OCW , the class room experience was missing. There was no interaction with the professors and the education was rather of incomplete- it did not replicate the class room experience-peer sharing and learning was missing.  Last year Stanford started a new experiment and offered three courses online-      Machine Learning ,  Introduction to Artificial Intelligence  and  Introduction to Databases . Lecture videos were posted by the professors and students had to submit assignments and take quizzes. People who completed the minimum requirement were awarded a "Pass" certificate. Thousands of people participated in this experiment and thus began the new era of education. Coinci...

As the new batches join various B School campuses, I think it is apt time to share some gyan about the various clubs, committees and fests. Most of this gyan is based on my experiences and the experiences of my friends in various other campuses. During the first few weeks the students in the new batch are wooed by the seniors from various clubs and committees. Let me give you a sneek peak into what the different clubs and committees have in store and how useful they are on your CV and for overall personal learning and development. Placement Committee Let’s face it guys. Most of the students join B School for placements. Placement Committee is one of the most coveted committee on the B School campuses. Those who get in this committee not only have great visibility about the various opportunities but also hone skills such as managing expectations, negotiation and networking. The potential recruiter insight that you get as a placement committee member helps you make better career cho...

At least  6-7 people had recommended me to watch The Warrior , however I procrastinated for more than 4 months. Today finally I got the chance to watch the movie. And yes now I understand why so many people had recommended it. The Warrior is an awesome movie. It delves on the intricacies of human relationship. Although the context of the movie is "fighting", the real fight is that of human emotions and it embodies the spirit of never say die. Recommend that you watch this movie, if you haven't watched it already. Thanks to the movie, I came across the "About Today" song performed by The National band. Just love this song, nice and soothing music and good lyrics.

If you are in Kolkata and want to get in shape without doing any weights, then I would recommend that you check out Soumen's workout . It been a week since I joined it and I have already started seeing the effect within a week. Hopefully by end of three months I would be back in shape again.

After more than two months, thanks to the lack of money, I ordered a couple of books again. This week am planning to read the 1984 and A Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Both these books have been on my reading list but somehow I could not get hold of these books. I am hoping that with these two books, I will be back again into the reading business.

Its almost a month of living in the city of joy, Kolkata,now. The city has a great heritage and culture. The food is good and familiar and you can see good faces around. Park street is the life line of the night life of the city. But places such as Salt Lake and New Town, although good are really far off. Life is more or less like Bangalore. Weekdays- office, weekends- Malls. Let me share some of the common myths and realities associated with this place. Myth- Kolkata is really a cheap place. Reality- Not really. If you are working in IT and don't want to stay too far from the office then am sorry to say Kolkata is not that cheap. The area in and around Salt Lake is definitely as costly as Bangalore and Hyderabad. Myth- Transport is easy and good Reality- Not really. Esp. not many Volvo buses. Given the soaring temperatures, its very difficult to make a long commute in the WBSTC buses. Calcutta is like a US city when it comes to transport. If you have a car of your own, th...

With more than 3000 page views, this blog has reached a mark where I can publish the analytics which i find really interesting. Surprisingly the number of page views from US is more than that from India and the third largest page views come from Russia!! Windows leads the OS based analytics, followed by Mac, Linux and other Mobile OS such as  Android etc. The page views exhibit a similar distribution as is the actual market share of the OS market In browsers Chrome leads the way followed by Firefox and Internet explorer.