2012 - The Year that was for me

Let me summarize what 2012 was for me :) 


  1. I began the year by building Auto/Taxi Complaint Android App for Mumbai on my dear sister's insistence. 
  2. Ported the two Auto Complaints Apps for Bangalore and Mumbai on Windows Phone. Microsoft gave me a brand new Nokia Lumia 800. My mom now uses it proudly. Somehow she still prefers Android though. 
  3. Had an awesome Team Outing at Goa. It was great time with the most awesome I have ever worked with. Doing all the water sports and just being in the water was such an immersing experience. The fort was nice too. But I was really disgusted by the openness with which people approached me for all kinds of drugs. For me it was a very disgusting experience. But then, that's what makes Goa, Goa!! Probably.

  4. Was part of the planners group for Barcamp Bangalore 11. Made the Barcamp Bangalore App for the event and open sourced it as well at https://github.com/the100rabh/Barcamp-Bangalore-Android-App. Also gave a talk on "Making you UI look good on Android". Slides for that are at http://www.slideshare.net/the100rabh/making-your-ui-look-good-on-android
  5. Had a real fun time taking part in all the different internal events at Intuit which was both exciting and tiring at the same time. Had some nice time with colleagues there. Being part of hackdays, technical presentations and VC pitches, all made it a very memorable time
  6. Lady Luck showed a little bit of light on me and I managed to win a cycle at Earth Day Contest at Intuit. It was fun to have that. I manage to cycle to work every week trying to beat my office cab to office (Which I often do, thanks to Bangalore traffic :)
  7. Then came the time for Barcamp Bangalore 12. This time I must say I had opportunity of working with best planners group with Daaku, Viral, Mixdev, Aman, Ninad and Sathya contributing immensely to making Barcamp Bangalore what it is. Right from the electronic scheduling done by Aman and Ninad, redesign of Android app by Aman(Can’t forget that Aman and Sathya filed over 50 bugs for my first cut ), Sathya taking charge of social media, Viral taking care of finances, Mixdev for comig up with the idea of Tecklash and Daaku managing everything else. It was really fun to be around with these guys. My talk on "Lean Startup Principles from an Engineer's perspective" went pretty well. Slides for the same are at http://www.slideshare.net/the100rabh/lean-startup-principles-an-engineers-perspective
  8. There was this time of the year for Yahoo Open Hackday. Like previous years I participated. I was initially teamed up with Dkris, Ninad and Aman for "I am Bored" app. But then I found idea of SoundBeam a lot more interesting and so jumped to join Mixdev and Viral to do it. After some struggle we did manage a one way communication. The code for it is live at https://bitbucket.org/the100rabh/soundbeam. But the surprise came next day morning when a few friends called to congratulate me on winning Hacker's Choice Award. Well actually it was Aman, Ninad and Dkris who had won that for "I am Bored". I had told the reported on the morning when we started about our idea and yes Times of India just assumes and makes up stuff. I have now experienced it first-hand. 
  9. Finally I visited Calcutta during Durga Pujo. It was fun being there after 12 long years of missing it. The city remains same, the spirit remains same and so does the food. Saw the most amazing pandals, lights and animated lights. Cant help but love the city even though Ms Mamata Bannerjee's 10 day holiday doesn’t inspire me to move back there again. I am a Bangalorean now :)

  10. This year saw my first idea to published by Intuit. It was about Method and System to alert user if he is inaudible to other participants in a virtual conference call. Hit the link to read more. I hope someone picks it up and actually implements it. It would really be useful to me at least.
  11. Then time came for my wedding anniversary in December. My wife had planned everything, knowing I was neck deep in work and would never plan anything :) So it was Mysore trip and we went to places where we either of us had not visited, so it was Mysore Zoo and Palace. We spent a real long time at both these places, which is how we like to visit places. Though the Mysore palace is miniscule compared to the palaces in Rajasthan, it was not that bad. The zoo, of course, was the finest of all. I loved the fact they have aviaries where birds are free to roam about and fly as well. Even other animals have plenty of space to move around. 

  12. Last but not the least was something which I was planning to do for a long time. I finally completed a course on Coursera on Python. I had been coding in python for sometime now without actually knowing the nuances of Python. I did code a couple of simple apps on Google App Engine and even implemented Google Cloud Messaging backend for BCB App without actually having learnt Python as such. Mainly because its a fairly simple and Google was always there to help :) I would surely say I now some things about Python, though there is still a lot to be done. If I am not doing something on Android, probably my next personal project will be Python based :)

Comments

Puja Minni said…
Sounds like a great year to me! Hope 2013 is an even better one!
December 31, 2012 1:21 PM
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