Peek into a year of book reading

I restarted my habit of reading books last year after a gap of over an year. However, I was too lazy to write the book reviews. I hope to restart that as well soon. For now, here is the list of books I read last year and a few unfinished ones.

Here are some of the books I finished reading –

The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)

And the Mountains Echoed

Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth

Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything

Few unfinished ones are Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, Conceptual Blockbusting: A guide to Better Ideas. It was my third attempt to finish Fooled by Randomness but could only read 70% of it…definitely hope to finish it in my next attempt and then start reading The Black Swan by the same author.

Currently, I am half way through Merchants of Doubt and hope to finish it soon. Watch out for more updates and reviews.

Call to IIT Delhi alumni

Prof. H.M.Gupta of Electrical Department, IIT Delhi is in the process of forming a society for Information & Communication Technology on the lines of IEEE. He is looking for students who had previously worked with him in IITD. So, people who had some interaction previously with Prof. H.M.Gupta and would be interested to join the group, please do so by subscribing to the google group created for this purpose. You can find the subscribe box at the bottom of the sidebar of my main page on the right hand side. Basically Prof. H.M.Gupta is looking for more industry interaction and the group would include the current students of IITD, alumni, other senior members, etc.

More details can be obtained by subscribing to the group.

Google Groups
HMGPROJECTICT
Visit this group

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

A friend of mine told me about this book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. The book has just 3 parts ( around 39 pages) and its all about a seagull jonathan livingston who is different from the other gulls. He loves to fly not just to find food but to learn what all he can do in the air. Its about not following the same daily routine as the other gulls would do but to do something that he wants to. In his efforts to learn flying he was outcasted from the community. But still he would continue doing the same and then one fine day he finds himself in another world. Here he learns many new things and ultimately he comes back to the flock that had outcasted him. He comes back only to teach the other gulls that also wanted to learn flying. I am not going to talk about everything in detail….but I would definitely recommend that everyone has to read it.

The book basically tells us that everybody can do everything provided we don’t give up hope and trust ourselves. Its about not just doing what everyone else does ( I would call it a herd mentality), but rather do something that we really want to. We should listen to ourselves more often..and that said I don’t mean we have to be selfish….. what I mean is to do what our inner mind wants us to do but not just to satisfy our selfish needs. One more thing that this book tries to tell us is that there is nothing like attaining perfection… there is always so much to learn in this world.

Study related stuff

Anyone who need some help regarding any study material related to computer networks, network simulator (Ns-2), Ecos, Embedded Systems can contact me

I would be delighted to make the material available to you free of cost

As of now I have put some material related to FPGA’s, Wireless mesh networks, etc in the anonymous ftp account
Feel free to ask any other free softwares, comics, e-books, etc