The Poker Diaries

 To start with, this is like my 6th post in September. Well actually it is 6th post in less than 6 days...lol. The reason behind that is my Optimus Prime is down, and I have an office laptop for a week, so utilizing it to the fullest, and quenching all my apetite for blogging! My last post was kinda milestone for me, I had done major changes in my blog layout and widgets, so that post was to maximise space utilization in the new layout. I put in around 2.5 times the pics I normally do, however I am very happy with the end result.

 So life is awesome as it is. \m/ Today is Sunday, today and tomorrow is week off. I slept pretty late last night, around 04:30AM, as yesterday's post was pretty big, informative and required to put in some time, but hell I am passionate about blogging, and many of my master pieces in this blog have come after 2AM....lol

 Getting to poker, I was pretty sure I had blogged about it before. So I did a quick search in the blog using the search widget on the blog. This is what I found, the blog is from 1st Jan, 2011. I read it and went down the memory lane. It was the time in Infosys Pune DC. #ItFeltGood , and that is the reaosn why I write. I was new to poker than, learning and progressing, the title of the blog post is pretty slick: Today? Four of a kind , well that is something you would expect from me, won't you! I am not very humble I know, and that is something you would expect from me too!! :)

 My wonderful sister had gifted me a steel case, James Bond style poker set as my birthday gift when I was in US. I used to play a lot of poker in US, and she sensed it and got me this. I am really thankful to her for all that she has done for me, and the support and advice she has given me, every now and then...Thanks Bhaku...Love You..

 Let's talk more of poker, I bought the poker set here last month. Started playing with my good amigoz Anshul a couple of times. Today was a bad day for me, I was short of sleep, and not thinking straight. I thought I had a full house, but I actually just had a set of 2 pairs. Another reason is I was playing 5 card poker with Mohitbaba yesterday, and I play Hold - em poker with Anshul, so mindset was a bit different there too. I suffered a heavy loss, I managed to survive somehow, and had something after 3 hours of poker. 

 I learnt a lot about human nature today. I learnt that it is something important to loose in life. Winning is important, but something losing teaches you a lot more. You rethink where you are in life, what are your priorities. I had pending work of iron man since 3 weeks, only after loosing today I competed it. I also have to study, I also need to control my spendings. I need to take care of my health, need to work out and have proper sleep. All this and more would not have come, if I had not lost today, so am grateful for what happened :) 

Nexus 5 - Ultimate Gaming Collection!

 I have been a gamer since childhood. By gamer I mean an avid gamer, not a pro gamer. I loved and still love playing games. It all started with Brian Lara Cricket on my cousin's computer. It was long back, they had a black and white monitor, and the computer was used only for playing that game. After that I got a computer and used to play Quake 3, and many other small flash games. I also had a sega gaming console before, playing Contra and other games, we all have done that.

 I was however lucky enough to own a PS2, and I played a lot on it. Mostly NFS series, and sports like Cricket, FIFA, F1 and Lawn Tennis. I had and still do have many car and bike racing DVDs of my PS2. After that I got a Nintendo Wii from US, that was good for work out, however controls are not as smooth as you would expect, it is still a pre-mature technology. And then...Nexus 5 came in ma life!!

 My last blog related to gaming on Nexus 5 was on May 1. A lot has changed since. Believe it or not, I have 26 games on my Nexus 5 currently, compared to the 9 which I had then. To start with I installed a lot of word games, I am a voracious writer, and words are my poison. I have got Wordament, Snap Attack, 5 Clues, 4 Pics 1 Word, Word Search and Vocabul Jumble to play with. This is something good, you learn along with having fun. Another terrific games I got is Quiz Up, this is amazing. You can play quiz agianst anyone in the world, as well as your friends on over 500 topics. My favorite topics are Computer Science, and Cricket. I can proudly say I have beaten the best in Computer Science from Italy and Poland, and many others which I am proud of!

  Let's get to big games now. I got CSR Racing, which is an ultimate drag racing game. Similar to NFS series, you fight up against a gang, and beat the boss in the end. There are 5 gangs. You can upgrade you car, and compete in lotta other races too, to earn money for car upgrade. The music is scintillating, and game play is terrific too1

Then I got WWE SuperCard,I remember playing this in childhood, where you would have all cards with details of each wrestler like rank, chest, biceps, fights fought, figths won, etc, and you would have to win all the cards to win the game, this is just like that and really cool and addictive. I played from midnight to 4AM the day I installed it, and I am still undefeated with 36 wins!! :P

 Another big game I got is FIFA 14, having played FIFA a lot on PS2, this is not new for me. Only the AI has improved a lot, and new game modes, however this is over 1 GB game so you would need space on your mobile. Real Cricket 14 is another big game I have installed today itself, I am going to check it out, but based on screen shots, and reviews it does look promising. Stick Cricket Partnerships and Tennis 3D are still there from before. I got 3D bowling too now, I tried Pool, but I am not into it much.

 I have got a bunch of aircraft combat and simulator games. The best one is Rise Of Glory, it has really good dog fights and lot of missions. You start with a classic World War 1 wooden plane, controls are pretty simple and there is not much to complain about.  iFighter 1945 is a 2D but highly impressive game , really nice what they have managed to do with 2D only effects. Fly Plane - Flight teaches you how to fly a commercial jet, pretty neat, you get a feeling on how much reponsibility is there in the hands of the pilot, the landing is the toughest part I found. Space Agency is also still there from before, but I have stopped playing it, will retain it though!

 Spider Man Unlimited is the last notable game I would like to write of. It is one of the best game I have on my cell currently. Amazing graphics, gameplay and story line. So loaded with all these games in a 16GB model, along with a lot of apps, I guess I am using my cell phone pretty well and to the fullest.

TCP EXPLAINED

We all use the internet to do a lot of things. We use it to send email, to do social networking, to do online shopping and for various other purposes. However did you ever think or wonder how the internet works? What all goes behind the scenes and what infrastructure is involved in fulfilling all the requests you make on the internet; and enabling all the activities you perform online!

The internet architecture is a set of layered architecture. You act as a client, and your machine acts as a client system who is requesting services from various websites. The websites have various servers which cater to your requests. There are several logical layers which are involved at both client end and the server end through which your request passes. Imagine it similar to two buildings, you are on 10th floor of a building and you want to go to 10th floor of another building. You would go all the way to the ground floor, then walk or drive to the destination building, and then again go all the way to the 10th floor of the destination building.

There are various set of rules or what is technically called as protocols involved at each layer, which help in fulfilling your requests. One of such protocols is the TCP Protocol. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the core protocols of the Internet protocol suite (IP), and is so common that the entire suite is often called TCP/IP.  TCP provides reliable, ordered and error-checked delivery of a stream of digital information between two programs running on computers connected to a local area network, intranet or the public Internet. It resides at the transport layer, which is one of the layers of the internet stack. Web browsers use TCP when they connect to servers on the World Wide Web, and it is used to deliver email and transfer files from one location to another.

Transmission control protocol (TCP) is a network communication protocol designed to send data packets over the Internet. TCP is a transport layer protocol and is used to create a connection between remote computers by transporting and ensuring the delivery of messages over supporting networks and the Internet.

TCP makes it easier for computer programs to communicate with each other, typically over a computer network. When a program wants to send a lot of data, TCP is in charge of dividing the data, sending it through the network, and putting it back together correctly on a different computer. In the process, IP chooses which wires and "intersections" get used to send all the data pieces in the fastest way. It does this using packets.

If there are a lot of people using the network, it can get overloaded. Also sometimes weather, power outages, and other problems can make communication hard. Routers on the Internet use something called load balancing to try to fix some of these problems. But still, information can be delivered out of order, get lost, or even duplicated. TCP is designed to notice all of these problems and try to fix them. This can take a while, which is why the Internet sometimes seems slow. Once the TCP receiver has finally reassembled a perfect copy of the data originally transmitted, it passes that data to the computer program that asked for it. In this way, the program does not have to know about the network, and TCP does not have to know about the program's data.

We can relate what the TCP protocol does to the scenario when we order food from a restaurant. We request some food form the restaurant, the cook at the kitchen prepares the food, and the delivery boy delivers the food to our home. We again open the parcel, and enjoy the meal. The food is packed at the sourced and unpacked at the destination. Food is similar to the data which is passed over the internet from source to the destination. The delivery boy is similar to the transport layer, who ensures that the food is delivered in exact same conditions to the end point.

Hope the above explanations and examples were clear and you got a fair idea about the TCP protocol of the internet. 

 *I had submitted this essay as part of the Coursera IHTS course of University of Michigan. I am publishing this now as grades are declared. Please do not copy for any future sessions of this course. 

My Internet History

I remember it precisely. The year was 2001; I had just finished my 10th grade board exams, never used internet before. I went to a local cyber café for the first time, and asked them to help me setup an email id. Rediff.com was pretty popular at that time in India. I signed up, my name is Kartik Vyas, I tried for an id like kartikvyas@rediffmail.com, it was already taken, and this is a pretty common combination. I tried some more combinations, didn’t work, finally I ended up  with myhearwiillgoonkartik@rediffmail.com...it sounds pretty funny now, but I was pretty new to the internet then.

As far as technology is concerned, we had dialup internet at that time, when I first got internet at home. In the cyber café I am not sure, may be they might have had cable connection, but still it was not broadband, I am pretty sure! I used to go a lot to the cyber café, Yahoo Messenger was a big craze then, going in to public chat rooms, and then trying to start up a conversation with strangers. I think the last I remember; I had around 120 strangers in my Yahoo friends list! J

Another thing I used to do a lot was search for wallpapers of cars, and cinema celebrities, and email everyone, I was one hell of a spammer then! I used to also send e-cards to friends and relatives. I was also using email to be in touch with my long distance relatives. There was no social networking back then, no WhatsApp or Facebook.

Also I had my first desktop computer at home in 2003 before I started undergrad studies, I think it had a floppy drive, which is not seen these days! I don’t remember the configuration exactly but I guess it was Pentium 4 maybe and 256MB of RAM. Comparatively I have a DELL mini monster laptop now, it has 8GB RAM, 750GB hard disk, 1 GB inbuilt video graphics, and second gen Core i5, I got this back in 2011, and it was my second laptop.

I started my undergrad studies in Computer Engineering, and I can definitely say the initial stint with the internet had a big influence on my decision, I had curiosity to know how things work, and I wanted to learn it all. During engineering I learnt programming, I learnt RDBMS, and many other courses, I used to use internet voraciously to do research related to my courses. In my university we used to have well equipped labs, but it was only for study purpose, only faculty had internet access, and they had broadband connection.

Social networking started for me around 2006, I started using Orkut, and I remember it was exciting and a bit addictive too. In 2008 I got an invite from a friend to use facebook, compared to orkut I found facebook interface of 2008, a bit less user friendly, but then slowly facebook started gaining ground and we all know the rest!

After I graduated I got a job in a big MNC, I worked for 3 major clients. Everything was online, we were working for big clients and dealing with a lot of sensitive data, and had a lot of responsibility. There were 3 level access till I could reaches my cubicle! J

One thing I am proud of is a failed startup I had back in 2010. Cloud computing was a novelty then, I had done some research, and was planning to build a startup to provide cloud based solutions for business users. I had commodity and retail market in mind. I also had registered a domain, and designed my site from godaddy.com. It was not in India back then, and I had paid them in dollars, they had a ton of tools to work with. Everything was there, only I was still nascent and could not build a working product. Eventually I thought of trying again later when I am more prepared and more experienced.

I used to do a lot of research at that time, wrote papers about Cloud computing and SOA. The passion and curiosity I had when I started using internet in 2001, I still had it in 2010 and I still have it now. Although due to time constraints of a full time job, I cannot do much research but I try to do as much as possible, I read a few papers and saw some videos on BigData last year, I also completed a course on coursera itself of the same.

So, this is my own history of the internet! Hope you had liked it!

*I had submitted this essay as part of the Coursera IHTS course of University of Michigan. I am publishing this now as grades are declared. Please do not copy for any future sessions of this course. 

Internet in 2034

To think about the future of the Internet, let’s have a look at the past. To predict the future 20 years from now, let’s get an idea how much we have advanced in the last 20 years. So, how was the internet really in 1994? Well in the 90s the internet was becoming more and more popular; it was having a revolutionary impact on means of communication with advent of electronic mail, instant messaging, forums, blogs and social networking. All these things are still pretty much there, however they have now become a basic necessity in everyday personal and professional life. Something which was a fantast or a novelty 20 years back has now become an integrated part of our lives.

Another major difference in the last 20 years has been the number of devices connected to the internet. Currently we have over 20 billion devices connected to the internet, which is more than 3 times the population of the whole world. This is an extra-ordinary change, and it clearly showcases the impact Internet has had on our daily lives. Also, the fact that these devices talk to each other and are super smart, has brought in a revolution with regards to convergence.

So going by all the above, it is really difficult to predict how Internet would be 20 years from now, no one would have guessed 20 years back that we would be relying and using the internet so heavily today. However, here’s my 2 cents.

First thing I believe that might happen is division of networks. Currently we have only a WWW, which is common and everyone uses it. I believe slowly we would have multiple closely coupled and independent array of networks. For eg. We would have self driving cars, so there would be an independent network infrastructure dedicated just for that particular domain. This would have to happen because going by the numbers and the exponential increase we are having currently, it would be almost impossible to have one global network which would encompass everything.

Another major revolution I see is in the medical industry and its influence on wearable devices. We already have some wearable devices in the form of Google Glass, Smart Watches, we also have a Smart Band coming up. I believe in the future, the complete health of the human body would be monitored via a wearable device, it could be as simple as a watch or a wrist band, it would be connected to the health systems web and off course it would be smart enough to ensure I am in the peak of my health all the time.

We may also see shift in the basic architecture of how the internet is accessed and used. We already ran out of IPv4 addresses last year and we are now using IPv6 addresses to accommodate the staggering number of devices connected to the internet. We also see new and new concepts like Cloud Computing, Big Data Analytics, etc coming up. All this and more could easily change the fundamental architecture of the internet in the future.

I might as well start thinking of what we saw in fiction movies like Minority Report and Robot, and there is a fair chance that reality could be that in 20 years. Science, Technology and Internet are advancing and tremendous rate, I use a Nexus 5 smart phone, and I receive OS update and application updates very frequently. Also with regards to hardware, we have 3GB of RAM now available in smart phones, with octo core processors, something we could have never imagined, same goes with the internet, how and where it would lead us is difficult to predict!

*I had submitted this essay as part of the Coursera IHTS course of University of Michigan. I am publishing this now as grades are declared. Please do not copy for any future sessions of this course. 

Amdocs World Hackathon 2014

I remember in 2011 when I was doing my Masters from Purdue School of Science. I was the CS Rep for IEEE, and there was IEEE international 48 Hackathon which was going to happen. I had to be part of the organizing team, and I also wanted to take part in the event. I sent email to my class distro. No one replied. I approached a couple of guys, but even they turned me down. I was a bit disappointed then.Come 2014, and life has come a full circle. God provided me another chance with the Amdocs International Hackathon 2014. This time I did manage to build a full strength team and submit my entry. It was a 24 hour Hackathon.

The date was 16^th September and the time 8:30AM. I reached the center and the instructions overview session was going on. It lasted around half an hour. After that me and my friend took a stroll in the garden to do some brainstorming. The theme of the Hackathon was ‘Internet of Things’, so we wanted to be out of office as it would enable us to see more things  and think of possible novel ideas.

We went to the office after that and had meeting with the team and finalized the concept and the product we wanted to build. We also finalized the business flows we will implement. There is a saying, if you have 12 hour to cut a tree, use 10 hours to sharpen your axe! All plans ready, we made arrangements for laptops to be used, and at 3PM we were fully ready, and started working!

The team we had, we are all good friends, and there was going to be lot of fun for sure. The primary aim was to enjoy and have a good time, along with completing the product. We coded all night, and we did have a working product with 3 business flows working as expected without bugs. It was more than enough. We had built a smart internet of things system on the cloud in 24 hours. We had also added decision making skills to it using AI. We were very tired, but the happiness and satisfaction took over more!

It was a great experience for all 5 of us: Atul Tripathi (Atul ji, Behtareen, Dhurandhar, ATITT), Saurabh Hote (Jaykant Shikre, Hotteeeeee), Rahul Singh (Cheetah), Vinil Mehta (Vats) and myself Kartik Vyas.  Thank you guys for helping me in fulfilling my dream, your support was exceptional and this would not have been possible without you guys! I will definitely never forget those 24 hours of fun and coding!!