Looking Back at 2014
That 2014 was eventful would perhaps be an understatement. In 2014, the world witnessed a wide spectrum of events ranging from good to bad, stories of accomplishment and loss, and triumph of humanity and reaching its nadir. And there were some mysteries too!
Around the World
On one hand, ISRO’s Mangalyaan successfully entering the Martian orbit was an achievement not only for India, but the entire world. On the other hand, killing of more than 100 children in the Peshawar school attack marked perhaps one of the worst, tragic and cowardly acts of terrorism. The mysterious disappearance of Malaysian aircraft MH370 baffled the world and kept us glued to the news channels for a long time. The Ebola outbreak — said to be the largest epidemic in history — created panic. The passing away of Robin Williams left us sad and tearful. However, the news of Kailash Satyarthi from India and Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan jointly receiving the Nobel Peace Prize 2014 greatly rejoiced us!
On the Personal Front
Looking back, 2014 has been a year of a few, small but worthy personal accomplishments. After having played with a variety of free web hosting sites over the years, I finally decided to buy my own domain name, barunsaha.me. A little tweaking of the Bootstrap templates and using GitHub, I had my very own website up and running!
This also has been the year of diving into Android. After attending a course on Android at Coursera, I reckoned it was time to get my hands dirty. To start with, I developed Software Engineering Lite, an (unofficial) Android port of the Software Engineering Virtual Lab.
I believe in giving back to the people and community those have helped you towards your accomplishments. To this end, I launched the ONE Knowledge Base, a Django-powered website to help the users of the ONE simulator search the email archives.
This year I received my Master of Science (by Research) degree from Indian Institute of Technology. It was a proud moment to receive the degree from our director during the convocation! Moreover, I was happy that my parents were able to attend the convocation program.
Perhaps no conversation is complete nowadays without mentioning Facebook. After resisting calls from my friends to join Facebook for years, I finally gave in to the temptation. Around the summer of 2014, I created a profile. And soon confirmed my fears that this could be an addiction! But we can talk more about Facebook later.
Conclusion
With a few days remaining, the count-down to the next year has already begun. As another year comes to an end, let us not forget the contributions and sacrifices — both seen and unseen — of every one of them that make our lives better. Let us hope that the dawn of a new year brings in more hopes and joy into our lives. Let us not only make progress as an individual, but move forward together as the human race! And hope that I can devote some more time to this blog :smile:
Wish you all a Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a Happy New Year!