When I woke up today, something felt different about Bangalore. I knew it was Monday, but for me it has always been just another day. There was an air of calmness, an oasis of serenity, the smell of earth. I had a little breakfast and got ready for the office. And then I received a call from my sister. We talked about the usual stuffs, the life, the family, the friends, the school and all this made me a bit nostalgic. On the way, a song from Dirty Picture (never watched it though!) was playing on the radio. I changed it to something more soothing - by then I was lost in the thoughts. I remembered how far I have come from everything. I thought about the family, the friends, the lost love, where everyone else is, what everyone else is doing - in the grand scheme of all things it made me feel timid. For a moment, everything looked pointless. Life appeared to be so cruel and different from anyone else. But then it struck me. I realized that this is the life. It's tough, it's h

I traveled a lot in 2012. More than I had traveled any year before in my life. Some were planned, some completely unexpected. I enjoyed going everywhere. This year also taught me to pack bags in an hour and to head anywhere at the whim of my mind. After all, I had never looked for a settled life! At the end of the year, all my resources were depleted too :) Just a quick glance of rough itinerary in 2012: January: Home -> Roorkee March: Roorkee- > Goa -> Roorkee April: Roorkee-> Delhi ->Roorkee May: Roorkee -> Delhi -> Roorkee -> Home June: Home -> Roorkee July: Roorkee-> Delhi -> Kochi -> Delhi -> Roorkee August: Roorkee -> Dehradun -> Roorkee -> Delhi -> Roorkee September: Roorkee -> Delhi -> Roorkee -> Delhi -> Roorkee October: Roorkee -> Delhi -> Bangalore -> Delhi -> Roorkee -> Delhi -> Bangalore November: Bangalore -> Delhi -> Japan -> Delhi -> Bangalore -> Delhi -&g

2012 was a really crazy, incongruous and amazing year for me. I learnt, I suffered, I broke down, I accomplished, I took big decisions, I tried to move on with my life. There was not even a single day, a single Sunday, a single weekend, which was insipid and pointless. Everyday something was happening, something was setting course for next turn of events. Everyday I was making decision, asking my intuition, planning for the days ahead. I made mistakes of course. In January I along with Sachin and Gurbinder converted the dorm room into workplace. We were working on MyCareerStack and were really crazy back then. And we still are! In February, I met Rasmus Lerdorf - creator of PHP. That was one very enlightening talk. In March I went to Goa. You don't need to describe the breathtaking beauty you witness and the awesome experience you have on your first visit to Goa. We roamed around on our bikes in almost every part of Goa for 5 days. In April, I transforme

One fine morning - on way to our office, with winter approaching, morning breeze getting cooler and the usual pleasant weather in Bangalore, I was having random discussion with my friend about work, life and things in general. The usual stuffs! But then he said immaculately,  which stuck in for few minutes - You can do a startup, you can't tell a girl? I will first talk about the former here - how all it happened :) Back in 2011,  I had just returned from intern and I thought this was a good time to start working on a project of own which really interests me and in which I can learn new stuffs. My experience with Amazon was not very good, and I was somewhat dissatisfied with how people in big organization work. It's not much better in Google India either. I knew right then that I would most probably join a good startup with small team and the way I have been working in IMG with a closely knit group made this decision easier. After completing the GSoC project in August 20

It has been over a month since I wrote this draft. But somehow I forgot about it in the daily activities of a kindled life where waking at 8 am doesn't hurt much! But before you start reading, I must say I do miss college sometimes. Almost everyone does. Sep 27, 2012 Last few weeks have been bit idylic for me. Things have seemed to start falling into place. And as I turn my gaze from the black terminal filled with characters to the right side of my table where I put a table-calendar, I am surprised to see September 10th on it. But it’s almost the end of this month and I haven’t noticed. Days have passed in a breeze. And my college life is almost over! Yeah. As much as I am excited, I am getting nostalgic. As much as I am ready to move on, I know I will long for this place. As much as I want to do what I love to do, the college days will always be redolent for me. Whatever and wherever I will be, I will always be grateful to these four odd years of college life. I have curs

Originally posted on Quora ( Link ). Question:  How good is Epic Systems for starting a career as Software Engineer? Answer: It's awesome. It's so good that it will blow your mind!  Literally . Join Epic in whatever way possible. You should, in fact,  beg  them to hire you. Now, you write online tests, you appear in rigorous interviews and somehow you manage to be at your best in all of them. Then after you get selected among your friends who didn't get selected (you are already feeling proud about that!) and you start dreaming of your long wished  American Dream  which is soon going to be fulfilled, you fly off to join Epic Systems. A few days have passed living your  American Dream . You have got a good cubicle in office from where you can hear the birds chirping, see the leaves rustling in the wind and watch the azure cloudless sky on a bright spring day. And it hits you. You realize that you don't need anything else. You think your life is really  E

Question:  How do you make a website fast?  That loads faster, responds faster, and that makes the user feel like the application is fast and responsive. Especially one with lots of dynamically generated content and rich interactions. Answer To make a website fast, one has to follow good practices in the frontend and ensure simultaneously that the backend is fast and robust and doesn't take much time to prepare your html document and send back when an Http request comes to the server. Let's talk first about the frontend. The following rules are directly taken from the book High Performance Web Sites . Rule 1 - Make Fewer HTTP Requests Rule 2 - Use a Content Delivery Network Rule 3 - Add an Expires Header Rule 4 - Gzip Components Rule 5 - Put Stylesheets at the Top Rule 6 - Put Scripts at the Bottom Rule 7 - Avoid CSS Expressions Rule 8 - Make JavaScript and CSS External Rule 9 - Reduce DNS Lookups Rule 10 - Minify JavaScript Rule 11 - Avoid Redirects Rule 12 -