Mobile blogging

I don't write blog from my computer anymore. I have not been using blogspot Web interface for last two months. That's an interesting shift. It was quite predictable I guess. People like me who blog just for personal purpose don't have much thing to research. Blog in that case works more like personal tracker. It is no wonder the device that accompanies me most of my time would definitely have the upper hand when writing just for personal stuff.

I thing personal blogging would be one of those things that gonna be totally mobile in next few years. I guess social networking is another one. I just have one inconvenience which is typing. I hate mobile keyboard. I bought SwiftKey, but it didn't help much. Sometimes it becomes irritating. I guess there is plenty of room in this area. I guess there are lot of people who feel like me. That's why we see so many keyboard prototype surfacing on the Internet.

One interesting thing that gonna be very mobile is searching. When I say searching I don't mean researching. We do tons of quick search in our daily life for quick info. I guess mobile gonna take care of that from now on.

I see enormous potential on mobile devices for content consumption. But there is hardly any content creation. My biggest grievance is we cannot create content using Mobile devices except picture and video. That's why we see so many pictures and videos surfacing on the Internet now-a-days. I guess we are still lacking proper input method for these kind of devices. That's make me feel like these devices may not be in the market for long time. I do enjoy my devices though.

First draft

I just finished the first draft of my dissertation. I am feeling good. I have to revise it at least twice within next 15 days. I think writing the dissertation is a test of patience. Starting with an empty word file and watching it becoming bigger and bigger. I am thinking of adding one little thing today. I am going to send it to my advisor today no matter what. I have to prepare tons of materials for the course this week as well. I think I won't have much time this week. So I got to finish everything as quick as possible.

The clock is ticking real fast. I am going to defend my dissertation on April 17th, approximately one month from now. Thus I got to finish everything real fast. Life is pressing!

Norman weather

We got an excellent glimpse of summer today. The temperature is in high end of seventies. This is the start of spring break. Campus is close next week. This is my last spring break. I have never been in any place during spring break. Well, I guess this year I cannot go either. I have to finish my dissertation. I am almost on the verge of my dissertation. Everything is done. I am finishing my writing. Writing is not difficult but it requires lot of energy for writing. Writing an entire dissertation within a month is not fun at all. Anyway, I am hoping I would be able to finish everything on time.

Well I was suppose to talk about weather, not dissertation. We got a great day today. I think Norman is really nice during the end of spring and early fall. The gentle breeze during the end of the spring feels like tuned with life of Norman. Norman is not busy, people have plenty of time; no rush, everything seems relax like the breeze. It is the tornado season as well. Tornados are surely coming very soon.

I have seen most weather active days in my life in Norman. It was equally interesting part of my life. I met my life partner here. In that sense I will carry some memory of Norman for my entire life. This chapter of my life is going to end pretty soon. I guess this part of my life was pretty much well explained by Norman weather. Typically calm and quite, slow and steady with occasional tornados. Was it active like Norman weather? I guess yes, sometimes. Looking outside of my window I feel like Norman was not that boring after all. Norman reminds me my grandfather's house. Slow and steady life. I would definitely miss the tranquility of Norman. After all Norman is how met america for the first time.

Microsoft, Inc

People like me who grew up in late nineties, Microsoft is the boss. When we start our undergrad in computer science, Microsoft was on the top of the world. I remember, in my first semester in BUET one of alumni came to BUET. He gave a talk about Microsoft. He used to work for Microsoft. We kind of saw him as a legend. Then I have heard a lot about our legendary alumnus who work for Microsoft. Growing up at that time, I have natural fascination about Microsoft. Microsoft is a great company to work for, I think.

I went to Redmond last week for Microsoft interview. I think their environment is great. The scenic from their Bellevue office was second to none. I loved it. I think the team that I was interviewed with was superb. I still feel the warm of the name Microsoft. Well, I got the offer today. This is one of my dream comes true moment. I could say that this is one of those moment I have been waiting for last thirteen years. The name Microsoft has lot of weight in it. I guess for our generation, we grew up dreaming to work for Microsoft someday.

Flights!

I hate flights. Hanging around at the Dallas airport at 6:00 am in the morning is no fun. I guess we should seriously think about the long distance travel. The way we do it right now is just tiresome and hectic. I heard that some people travel 5 days a week. I don't understand how they become productive after travel. I feel like I am gonna die after 30 min flights from Dallas to Oklahoma city. I am not sure why flying is so popular in US. If I have option I choose 1 day of driving instead of 1 hours of flight. Flight is just such a horrific thing for me.

In my view, everything is bad about flight. The seats are not comfortable. You have to sit almost in other peoples lap. The leg room is so small to fit even feet, for even my standard. There is just no incentive to fly. I guess this industry lost interest and so nobody cares about flight anymore. If you think about a flight, you pretty much have the same thing you did have 10 years ago. Now I am not saying the planes have to change but the amenities inside a flight could have changed. Aircrafts are using same old fashion overhead screen to show me even more stupid stuff. It is just all craps.

Finally the price! Which is always a mystery to me. I have no idea how they are selected and what they mean. I have not seen any single change in last five years. Now, I understand everything is not as fast as tech industry. But I did not even see the tech inside the aircraft is changing at all. It feels like life inside aircrafts are frozen in time. Good luck everyone, I have a feeling that it gonna be this way for long time.

Blogger!

Munna Bhai was the man who introduced the word to me back is 2006. He used to say he is a blogger. He used to write technical blogs quite a lot. Mostly about .NET. I guess his blog was fine. But I was attracted to the idea for a very different reason. It felt like it could be a portal for me. My own portal into the vast ocean of internet. So I start writing my own blog. Well, I never claimed I am a blogger though. But it struck into my mind yesterday. Lipa was saying, you know what, blogger is a profession in Bangladesh now. She was saying you have a good prospect in Bangladesh now. If you can say you are a blogger since 2006. Ah blogger! I feel sorry for myself that I write blog.

Mostly, I kept apart from politics since I graduated from BUET. Until now, I was glad that I did that. But I feel like I was wrong. It was way better then, than now. It is always easy to fix now, before it get even worse. Those who think politics is for nasty politicians, for sure someday they would have to clean the wound left by the nasty politicians. Sometimes, I feel like running away from our political debt was not that great idea.

February, 2013

It is the second month of the year. This month was mostly unproductive. I spend most of my time looking for jobs, mail corresponding and stuff like that. Good thing is I got some positive feedbacks. I hope I can concentrate on my dissertation now. I have to finish my dissertation by April, since May third is the last date I can defend. I am hoping I would be able to do so before that. Let see how it goes.

I got a great deal of experiences I can say. I have seen all kinds of interviews. I attract quite a lot of wrong guys. I had an interview with a company where I applied hoping they are going to some cool stuff with cloud. Later I realized it is just a CRM software management. Then I was interviewed by people who are looking for UI guys. Technically I have zero experience with UI. UI is something I never thrilled to work at. Anyway experience matter, bitter or sweater :)

I feel like I should thank countless recruiters who helped me in the process. What matter most in job hunting is persuasiveness and networking. I guess they are pretty handy regardless the task at hand. Now that we have spring around the corner, it's time for a new beginning. I am trying to make myself ready for the next phase of my life.

Google play store

I stole Lipa's Nexus 7 today. I reset the device and erase all of her contents and login using my id. That's when the surprise came on. Google play installed all of my apps that I use in my phone. That was a pure surprise. It did not do the same thing with my phone though. I changed my phone last, I still had to install of apps. So I guess it is either new version of android or a feature of pure android.

It was really a cool feature. If changing device is now become really simple. I wish Google would do the same for app data as well. Specially, some apps required tons of data. I really hate to configure them again.

BTW' Swiftkey mobile version on Nexus 7 sucks. The default android keyboard is way better. And overall nexus 7 is way better for blogging compared to smartphone. Technically I guess blogging is the only potential use I have now for this nexus 7. It is really fun blogging with nexus 7.

Looking for job?

Looking for job itself is a tough job. Sending resume to thousands places and then wait for the call. Sounds like fishing :) well in many respect it is fishing. Your job is to pick an appropriate one for you. You have to do everything right for the right fish. At least it is told that one simple miss step can slide you down at the ground level again. I think those who are good at fishing should do a real good job at finding the right job.

I have a feeling that the job market is not that bad now. At least I saw plenty of openings in every company's website. But the game is just not right for fresh graduates. I still have not cracked the job searching problem. I guess I need little more time to understand the problem better.

Some people call it number game, at the beginning I thought so. But I have a feeling now that I was wrong. If it is simply a number game then flooding with your resume would be sufficient to secure one job. But that did not work for me. I don't thing flooding is the right strategy.

Spending hours for one job sounds like promising. But there is no guarantee that it gonna work end of the day. You need to spend your time for the right position. Which is by definition is a hard searching problem. Let say you spend 5 hours a day to look for jobs. If you spend 2 hours for one position you can apply for at best two positions per day. In order apply for 10 companies you have spend an entire week. And at the end of the day you may not heard anything from any of them.

Networking is a really good strategy. I think networking works better than aforementioned twos. Networking helps a lot to get the interview call. Of course you are on your own after that. In my case I have real trauma about phone interview. Somehow phone interviews don't work for me. I have a feeling I never gonna pass any phone interview. I don't get nervous, it just doesn't work for me. Here, in America employer's first screening is always via phone that limits my probability to extremely tiny. If one thing I am never short of is hope, let's hope for the best :)

Multitasking is evil?

I was reading an article on therumpus.net yesterday. It was about some things about mediocre. One interesting section caught my attention is multitasking. The author was trying to established a point that multitasking is evil. We should avoid it. I remember I have seen similar idea in other popular best selling books. What is so evil about multitasking that turns these people against multitasking.

The first and most common thing in these articles is statistics. They provide such and such statistics to justify how our brain fail to perform its regular operation while multi tasking. Okay buy that. Now what? So our brain cannot perform multitasks. Well, I have a problem with the statistics and experimentation as well. Surely, our brain can multi task, you don't pause your breath to see what you have in front of your eyes. What is missing? I think most of these statistics is flawed because when we measure these statistics we essentially ignore the bias of instrument we are using for the experiments. Sure, you cannot text while drive but that does not mean you cannot do anything!

Well, if that is true we can design a whole variety of things those are multitasking friendly. Or can we make multitasking friendly instruments? I think it could be whole different area of product design philosophy. The author of that article cannot play chase while talking on phone and so he asked us to avoid multitasking. But suggestions would be change the design of the phone so that our author can play chess while talking without interfering one another. Is such a design possible?