The end of another year is upon us. I haven’t written in a while. The last semester has been hard. Academics got tougher. Moreover, I found myself knee deep in extra-curricular responsibilities throughout.
I have been out of touch with my regular habits such as gaming, reading, mass watching anime/serials, etc. My days mostly passed with some combination of the following:
- Programming (Fortran)
- Working on a website/video/poster/logo/t-shirt
- Playing table tennis
- Preparing for oncoming tests
- Online chatting and offline adda
Not exactly the ideal life of a physics student. But I ended up learning a lot in the last few months, e.g. lots of features of Adobe software such as After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, and basics of web designing. Some projects were really laborious, such as the website for Literary Club (link) and the teaser video for Inquivesta (link). Even though they look simple and aren’t made from scratch, they forced me to acquire some background knowledge.
FORTRAN is the best thing that happened this year. I was amazed by the freedom and speed it provides, and moreover, I finally fulfilled my goal of being familiar in 5 computer languages. The fruits are endless. While programming can be fun in its own right, I recently discovered that it isn’t hard to make some quick online money with it. After around three weeks’ work, I was able to buy myself a Nexus 7 (my first tab!).
And lastly, I went to IISER Pune this month, to play chess at the Inter IISER Sports Meet. I shall write about that in a separate blog post, I think, because there’s a lot to say.
Overall, it has been an average year with ups and downs. The plan for 2014 is to stay away from unnecessary responsibilities and focus more on academics.