student - Swaroop CH

Swaroop CH

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student

A collection of 17 posts

What I learned in gamification class

For 2-3 weeks after Prof. Kevin Werbach’s Gamification course ended, I literally felt my weekends were dull without listening to him! And I’m not the only course attendee who felt that way. The best part about the course for me was how engaging and interesting the topics were

Review of Cal Newport’s So Good book

Last weekend, I read Cal Newport’s latest book – “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” and was very happy that I read it – it was just the sort of book that helps a person who is a few years into his/her career and is beginning to question many

Learning Gamification by attending a MOOC

I remember when @Ravi_Mohan kept talking about MOOCs and how excited he is by it, I didn’t pay attention to it at the time. A few weeks ago, I watched Daphne Koller’s TED talk and was blown away. I ended up signing up for one of the

Self Improvement

Freewriting – Review of the Accidental Genius book

Semi-regularly, I’ve been doing something I called “Paper Therapy.” The idea was simple: “Write on paper till your brain has nothing left in it.” This stupidly simple idea has often been miraculous in helping me clear my mind and think of ideas or options that I was unable to

Self Improvement

Talk on Productivity at Barcamp Bangalore 10

At Barcamp Bangalore 10 on Saturday, I talked about GTD, Pomodoro and Productivity: NOTE: If you have trouble viewing the web version, there is also a PDF version of my slides. I was nervous when preparing for this talk because it is not a concrete topic, it’s something abstract

Passionate Programmer book review

Every once in a while I get an email like this: Sir, I am a beginner to python and programming. I started with the C++ and found it hard so one day via google I found your perfect tutorial “A byte of Python”. I read the whole tutorial in one

PESIT Alumni Newsletter Guest Editorial

I was recently asked to write memoirs of my college life for a guest editorial for my alma mater’s alumni newsletter, and I jotted down a few thoughts while reminiscing the past. Long-time readers may not find these stories new. For the others, I have hyperlinked the related old

To get somewhere, you already have to be there

The irony in this world is that “To get somewhere, you already have to be there.” From an individual perspective: * If you want to make money, you need to already have money. * To get a job, you need to be one-year experienced and not a fresher. * If you’re experienced

To Masters or not?

39 people have asked me “The case for master degrees. Should or Shouldn’t ?” This article is for those 39 people. Well, the correct answer almost always is “It depends.” But let me give a few points to think about. Obviously, I’m answering from the perspective of CompSci students.

Self Improvement

Why I do Time Tracking

The Idea A couple of months ago, I was going through a “productivity drought.” I used to repeatedly bounce between tasks. I couldn’t concentrate enough. Work was suffering. I thought to myself “Just how bad is the situation? Can I quantify it?” Then I started using a very old

Where to find startup jobs in India?

If you want to find out what jobs are available in startups in India, then there are myriad resources to check: * VentureWoods * Pluggd.in ‘coffee’ forum * Pluggd.in ecosystem section * Hello Intern * Sutra Jobs * Indian Jobs board at ‘Joel On Software’ * Barcamp Mumbai Startup Jobs section * NEN Startup Jobs section

Self Improvement

How Fresh Graduates Can Grow

As a small experiment, I had put up a skribit sidebar where anybody can suggest what I can write about. Little did I know that it would actually be used seriously. Someone posted the topic “On how fresh graduates can learn independently and grow. Instead of waiting for the Company

Announcing my free book on Vim

Today is the first day of foss.in/2008, and on this occasion, I’m happy to announce the first public release of my Creative-Commons licensed book on the Vim 7 editor. This book is meant for both beginners and advanced users. For beginners, it walks you through the first

A principled life according to Steve Pavlina

Ever since college days where I got hooked onto the Internet, I have been an avid reader of self-improvement websites and books. I used to prowl for content, before the advent of lifehacking and productivity websites. I eventually stumbled upon good websites like 43Folders.com, and my friend Pradeep cajoled

Self Improvement

Career Advice

There have been many times where I’ve been asked for “career advice”, especially after a talk. I usually suggest them to ‘build a repertoire of things you have done, things you are capable of, things you like to do’. But I’ve never really been sure of this advice

Why students and open source?

Two days before the BMS College Information Science Department Fest called “Genesis 2007”, I received an email from a couple of students asking me to talk about “introduction to open source”. Apparently, they were frantically looking for a speaker. Since I’m not the right person for this, I agreed