Life – Page 15 – Karan Parikh

The beginning

I was reading an essay by Paul Graham the other day and one line in it stood out to me –

Few people know so early or so certainly what they want to work on.

This got me thinking about what got me interested in programming and computer science when I was growing up.

As I kid I was always interested in computers and I remember reading Digit cover to cover each month. My first foray into programming was when my mother enrolled me in a class to learn basic C and C++. I rebelled initially, before even attending a single session of the class – “I don’t want to learn programming! That’s not cool at all.” I decided to attend at least one session though as I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. And I’m so glad I did that.

I think the phrase “love at first sight” accurately describes what I felt upon looking at my first program (a simple “Hello, World!” in C if my memory serves me right). The feeling was incredible and I knew almost right away that I had found my calling in life.

Thanks mom.

What I’m Currently Listening To: Spoon

go Resolutions(“Karan Parikh”, 2015)

Writing a post about what my goals and resolutions for 2014 was a great idea. I think being public and open about what I wanted to achieve was added incentive to actually completing those goals. In the same vein here are my resolutions for 2015 –

Start volunteering: It was sometime in November or December of last year that I felt the need to give back to society in some way. While I didn’t act on this desire last year I hope to do so in 2015. I’m still in the process of figuring out exactly what I want to do, but off the top of my head volunteering at a homeless shelter and animal shelter are two ideas that I would like to act upon.

Be less shy: I don’t think of myself as a shy person but I do feel I can be more open about my thoughts and how I feel. There have been instances in the past where I’ve held myself back and I regret doing so. In 2015 I hope to snap whatever weak threads are holding me back.

Learn a new programming language: 2014 was the year I finally picked up Go. I’m still in the process of understanding the ins and outs of the language and actually writing something useful in it. But this hasn’t deterred me from deciding to learn something new in 2015. Current contenders are Rust and Erlang.

Read 12 books: Reading one book per month is very doable. Goodreads, which I started using last year and absolutely love, should help me in achieving (and tracking) this goal.

Read 24 research papers: I think my goal last year of three research papers a month was a bit lofty. I hope by dialing the number down by one I can achieve this goal. I’d also like to diversify the topics a bit – in the past I’ve focused mainly on distributed systems but this year I’d love to read some papers on machine learning and data structures as well.

Write 24 blog posts.

Do one muscle up: I’m quite satisfied with how my fitness improved over the course of 2014 and I hope to continue that trend this year. I was able to progress from assisted pull ups to non-assisted pull ups to weighted pull ups over the course of a year (Yes, my elbow does hurt from patting myself on the back there. Thanks for asking). What I wasn’t able to achieve though was a muscle up. I really hope 2015 is the year that I can do at least one of these.

Here’s to a fantastic 2015. Happy new year everyone!

What I’m currently listening to: Damien Rice

Notes of nostalgia

Last night I went to concert at the Warfield in San Francisco, CA featuring Red Fang, In Flames, and Opeth. It was fantastic, and each band put on stellar performances.

What was really interesting for me was how much the concert reminded me of my childhood. In Flames and Opeth were some of the first metal bands I listened to growing up. Even though my music tastes have diversified quite a bit, these bands started a love affair with the genre that is still going strong today.

I still remember listening to Harvest and Bleak by Opeth and being blown away by the two things – how absolutely beautiful their music was, and how different these songs were from each other yet from the same band. I was also flabbergasted that some of the songs were over 7 minutes long. “How do you keep the listener engaged that long?” I wondered. It only took one listen of these songs for me to understand the power of their music.

It didn’t take long for Opeth to become one of my favorite bands, a title they still retain.