January 2020 Release Notes

I did not write much in the second half of 2019. It was mostly a lack of interest coupled with a lack of interest. I have been writing a lot more since December though, I do not know the reason for this turnaround, but I am not complaining. I had an idea for a new series of blog posts, this being the first of many (hopefully). The title was inspired by Visual Studio Code’s Release Notes, which in my opinion, are the best I’ve seen yet. I’ll try and give an overview of my month, the things I did, the exciting ideas I discovered, etc. You get the idea.

If I were to look around for highlights in the past month, I’d say there weren’t many. I did start my sixth semester, I’m not a big fan of the courses, but there’s nothing I can do about that. The 10th edition of the Google Code-In contest ended successfully, and I had fun mentoring the kids. I deleted Spotify and made Google Podcasts my go-to listening service, and the last few days were marred by Kobe’s passing away.

New Features & Bug Fixes

There was a lot of learning this month, most of it was Mathematics and History. I decided that I would spend every month learning one new topic that was not directly related to what I do every day. Questions from the fields of medicine, history, pure mathematics, psychology, and there are so many more in my head. The idea was that even though I will not become a master of the craft, spending thirty-odd days on a topic is not shallow either.

This month, I spent my time getting introduced to Foundation Engineering, Applications of GIS, and Financial Statement Analysis as part of my coursework. On the side, I started learning Compiler Design and Abstract Algebra. And in the time I was free, I did a lot of reading about the two major totalitarian systems of the 20th century (the Third Reich and the Soviet Union).

Journalling became a significant part of my daily schedule over this month, and I liked the results so much that it has not taken me much convincing to make it a habit. I used to write a diary on and off when I was in my early teens, mostly influenced by all the autobiographies I used to read. They were all written in the first person, and I felt like that was a cool way to write things. Nowadays, I write almost every chance I get either into my leather-bound diary (that I got in 2013) or the Daily Notes section provided by Roam Research. Writing is the most demanding form of thinking, and when we write about everyday experiences and how they made us feel, we learn a lot more about the experience and ourselves. In a way, it is just our bargaining with the future as we are better prepared to handle similar situations in the future. Sometimes, when I do not have the time to write down everything, I record it on my phone and write it down later when I’m freer.

Google Code-In and TensorFlow DevSummit 2020

The 10th annual Google Code-In concluded last week, and it was very informative and educational. TensorFlow accepted me as a mentor for the pre-collegiate students, and my role was to guide the students as they navigated tasks and gunned for a great learning experience. The contest started in the first week of December, with the mentors required to create tasks for the contestants to solve. In the weeks leading up to the main event, we assigned ourselves to tasks. I was mostly in charge of research and code implementation. The contestants took to the challenges quite ably and quickly. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality and pace of the submissions. There were some bright minds among the lot, which made my job even more engaging. William and Rick took away the grand prize with some superb contributions to the open-source codebase and submissions. It would be unfair if I did not mention Ananya. I learnt so many things from Ananya and William, the most important of which was documentation style. As mentors, we had to nudge them initially towards explaining their code, writing more comments, and utilizing the fantastic tool that Jupyter Notebook is. But as the contest progressed, I was learning so many different ways to pad code with documentation to make it much more readable and tutorial-like. I will forever keep this with me and try my best to match their efforts the next time I have to write code myself.

There were some moments of warmth in the cold January mornings at Roorkee when I got my first ever TensorFlow DevSummit invite. The 2020 edition conducted in the second week of March at Sunnyvale, California, will be a highlight for all TensorFlow developers. It made all those freakishly long waits to get a pull request reviewed worth it. I looked at the invite more times than I would like to admit.

Hardcore History

On the trip back to my home on the 24th of November 2019, I downloaded a three-hour-long podcast to listen. The intro music filled with audio clips of speeches by Roosevelt, J. F. K, Reagan, and Hitler with the background filled with sounds of dropping bombs had me hooked. Once Dan Carlin started his narration, it was already the point of no return for me. I would listen to A Blueprint for Armageddon thrice over the next month and a half. I rediscovered my lost love for history and for the first time in years, started reading up on the World Wars. I was always a World History fan, and I’d drifted away since 2015, and this was all the motivation I needed to get back at it.

I have a quote from the podcast that I would like to share. I think that this captures the essence of The Great War in its raw form.

“See that little stream — we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk to it — a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again in this generation.”

“Why, they’ve only just quit over in Turkey,” said Abe. “And in Morocco —”

“That’s different. This western-front business couldn’t be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn’t. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren’t any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancée, and little cafés in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers.”

“General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in sixty- five.”

“No, he didn’t — he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle — there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night

Every time I read that, it makes more sense. World War 1 existed for reasons that no 21st-century brain can comprehend (and in ways that no 21st Century body can endure), and it was a phenomenal catalyst for so many advancements that we take for granted. I will not give out any more information here in the hope that the reader listens to Dan speaking and become a completely different person while doing so.

I also listened to Punic Nightmares and Ghosts of the Ostfront. I recommend these series after the initial Classic Hardcore History episodes. They are a treat to the brain and heart alike, and one will be left awestruck at the superhuman levels of suffering meted out by Ares.

Kobe Bryant

Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash in the early hours of Monday. There’s not much I can say and create more value than he already did for millions of kids like me. I’ll just put in my only diary entry for the 27th of January 2020:

Early in the morning in bed, I found out that Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter accident with his 13-year-old daughter. If I’m writing about it, it probably means something to me. So what did Kobe mean to me?

If you really want to be great at something, you have to truly care about it. If you want to great in a particular area, you have to obsess over it. A lot of people say they want to be great, but they are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness. They have other concerns, whether important or not, and they spread themselves out. That’s totally fine. After all, greatness is not for everybody.

Yeah, that’s what he meant to me. An affirmation that being obsessed about things you love is not weird, is not crazy, is not something you should change. Even if it came at the cost of people shunning you, even if it meant people wouldn’t like you. Because the goal is not for people to like you, it is to become great.

The name Kobe Bryant transcended his sport and inspired millions. How can one athlete unite millions around the world in mourning? Fans are sharing memories of how he inspired them as children, to love a sport, stay out of trouble, and work towards your dreams. Kobe had accomplished so much in his short life; it’s devastating to consider what he still had left in himself.

The most important thing you can try and do is inspire someone so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.

Even in death, he reminds me to outwork my potential, knowing that the moment I give up is the moment I let someone else win. To fully live and pursue my purpose as Kobe pursued his. That everytime I work towards something, my goals might not be accomplished, my dreams might not come true but something greater will.

Mamba Mentality Forever. VAMOS!!!

There were some links I found on the internet I wanted to share with everyone:

• Informative and funny Kobe clip
• The respect Kobe commanded
• Twitter thread with some legendary stories of the Mamba

We’re all the Mamba, let’s live each day with purpose.

Random Thoughts

I bought the book, Why we Sleep by Matthew Walker and started reading it. The book has a simple message (sleep at the same time for a decent amount of time that lets you spend the rest of the day in good spirits) but at the beginning of the month, I found this and now, I am not really sure about Matthew Walker. I suggest that everyone read non-fiction more judiciously and not to take authors at their words. I went ahead and explored the rest of the blog and I have to say that guzey.com is one of my all-time favourite blogs. Do check it out and I’m sure each one will take away a lot of knowledge.

After listening to this and this episode where Joe Rogan hosts David Goggins, I have to admit that I feel ashamed when I feel stitched everytime I run. I am planning to listen to the audiobook version of his bestselling “Can’t Hurt Me” and I can’t wait to listen to how his brain works. Another one of those 11/10 human beings that put their mind and body to the task and got to where they are.

I found a curated list of organisations working on climate change. Do share with the people who you think genuinely care to work towards change. There’s a place for everyone. Let’s stop protesting and wasting everyone’s time and instead do something for a change. Link: https://climatescape.org/

Special Mention 1: Building Tesla, and SpaceX – Elon & Kimbal Musk on the Third Row Tesla Podcast

Special Mention 2: Frederic Friedel on Vishy Anand

Song of the Month: Must Have Been Love by Roxette

Done. Next

What’s in store for February? As far as my feelers extend in time, I am guessing that there will be a whole lot of running and football as the weather gets warmer. I have a lot of academics to cover as my mid-terms start in the first week of March.

I am also cutting down on podcasts, mostly because I have not read any books in January and I would like to increase that count to at least 7 this month. I am going to try the audiobook experience with “Can’t Hurt Me” and see if it’s strong enough to make me a convert like many people I know.

I have also set aside three hours a week for chess training. I am working alone as usual and I’ll be covering endgames this month. Let’s see how long it takes before I get really good at them.

I can’t think of anything else at the moment. Thanks for reading, I hope you found something that was valuable. Feedback to improve is always welcome and if there are any topics you would like me to write about, please let me know.

Ciao.

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