Update

It has been quite sometime since I've written an article with that title. Anyway, I've been really busy for the past few weeks (like I was ever really free :)). One might wonder that I have been doing a hell lot of activities but the truth is that I've been doing just two activities most of the time - 1. Sleeping and 2. Coding. Yeah something seems to have gone wrong with me. I've been sleeping for about 9 hours every day during the past couple of weeks. Until recently, there were regular power cuts in the morning in our office (8.00-11.30) and I got used to going to office in the afternoon. I hope I'm back to my regular timing soon. And here are some updates in the past one month. I thought of having a separate post for each of them but due to the time constraint and the information loss with the passing of time :p, I've decided to have them all in this post. So here they go:

Last Official Meet of Spinaxys (18 July, 2008)

It has been almost two years since I along with my batchmate (Poorna Shashank) and his schoolmate (Suman Karthik) started this venture (http://www.spinaxys.com). But things didn't go as we had planned. There were hurdles faced. We could overcome some and we couldn't overcome some. Finally every attempt has its limit. And we reached that limit.

Overall, it was a different experience. I got to do a whole lot of things including setting up systems, looking into company financials and training employees in addition to my primary skillset. We also designed two products - Kabooru (a project information repository) and Blusens (an application for marketing via Bluetooth). But we lacked in one major area - networking. The end result being we could not get to make any sales. With the deadline we had set for ourselves almost being extended by half-a-year, we decided it was time to explore other opportunities and then probably after a couple of years get back and take another shot at entrepreneurship. As already mentioned in one of my previous posts, I have joined Synovel, a startup in the collaboration domain.

And what about the last official meet? That was a movie (The Dark Knight) we three saw in IMAX. While I found some parts of the story difficult to follow, I love the way they projected the Joker character and the change of character of Harvy Dent. There was a bit of violence in the movie. But the story was really good.

First Formal Interview (19 July, 2008)

Oh yeah, this is something I will remember. I conducted my first formal interview (as interviewer) this day. The interview went for about 3.5 hours - 3 hours technical and half-an-hour HR. We were looking for a person who was good in python and most of the questions were based on that. A day before that I had spent quite sometime on preparing the questions. That proved useful. For first time / inexperienced interviewers, I suggest you visit Interviewer's Guide. It has got a few useful tips for interviewers.

Vist to the Tirumala Temple (28 July, 2008)

I think I was the only Hindu in Andhra Pradesh left who had almost reached 26 years of age and had not visited the Tirumala temple :). And at last, I got to visit it this day. My friend Vamsi had come from U.S. and his family is currently residing in Tirupati (Tirumala is located at the foothills of Tirumala). Anyway, my main purpose of visiting the temple was not for the "darshanam" (for those of you who are unaware, I am an agnostic) but because I wanted to climb the 3500+ steps on the way to the temple. We were a group of five (my friend, his parents, his (sweet :)) sister Veena and myself). We purchased the tickets in the morning and started our ascent at about 12.00. It took us about 5 hours to reach Tirumala. We had initially planned to stay back in the night but due to some unexpected circumstances, that did not work out. After waiting in the queue for about 3 hours, I got to see the Idol of the deity. I don't have anything much to say about the idol but definitely the temple is worth a visit for all its grandeur. The temple with its gold coated walls shining at night was a real treat for the eyes. Now even I can proudly say that I have been to the Temple of Seven Hills :p.

Ordered Heroes Season 1 DVDs Disc 1 and Disc 2 (10 August, 2008)

There probably never was any T.V. series which I so desperately wanted to watch. "Heroes" is simply awesome!!! I got to know of it when my cousin Varun was staying at my home and used to watch every episode of it without fail. By the time, I had started watching, it was already into its second season. And I watched most of the second season. Ever since then I have been looking for any legal ways (note to my users, I prefer to avoid piracy, so no warez sites and no torrents) in which I can watch Season 1. While NBC.com seems to be hosting the full vidoes, unfortunately it is not available to people outside U.S. (they probably use the IP to figure out the country of the originating request). But recently while reviewing Indian online DVD Rental sites, I came across two providers who have all the Heroes Season 1 discs for rent - 1. Moviemart and 2. Seventymm. Seventymm has really bad reviews on the internet and so I decided to go ahead and rent movies from Moviemart. It will cost me about 600 rupees for watching all the 24 episodes (7 DVDs). But as I am really desperate to watch it and just can't convince myself to use pirated stuff, I really don't mind spending a few bucks to satisfy my desire :p.

My next couple of months are most likely to be occupied with work, Heroes Season 1, attending a few parties (I prefer to call it social obligations :p) and the design of the website for Lok Satta which I had volunteered (The site has been redesigned by someone else already) . But I shall try to keep posting regularly anything interesting which I come across.