Review: The Grey

Last weekend I got the chance to see “The Grey”. The movie was good and if you like adventure stuff then you should go and check this out. The movie is about the oil workers working in the oil fields of Alaska and how their lives went upside down when their plane crashed in the punishing and ruthless wilderness of Alaska. Liam Neeson has done a perfect job in leading the the gang and putting a decent fight against the pack of wolves. The direction looks awesome and cinematography is breath taking.

“The Grey” is not your normal action/adventure movie, this movie is kind of different as it is a mix of adventure, some action and lots of decent acting performances by most of the actors. Joe Carnahan, the director of the movie had made sure that this movie should end up being on one of the years best and I am sure it will make it to the top movie list of this year. 

Khan Academy, Codecademy, Codeyear and now "Udacity"

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Well these words are pretty strong and allow me to explain them considering the openness of the online education. One small step taken by Sal Khan last year to launch Khan Academy has now inspired more people to teach millions of students online and that too for free. What Sal is doing is great and some smart people have borrowed the idea of Sal Khan and this idea is now helping in the democratization of the online education. 

Couple of weeks back I have explained how two students of Columbia University has launched Codecadmy to teach people coding and ignite the interest in individuals about programming and computer science. Well both Codecademy & Codeyear were a major hit and so far and more than 370,000 people have registered for the weekly online programming lessons which teaches Javascript. So far Codeyear has offered lessons on weekly basis. I feel proud in saying that I have completed all the lessons for all the 3 weeks along with additional assignments and projects. 

Based on the free online education in programming and coding there is more intresting news which I would like to share. Professor Sebastian Thrun (Professor of Computer Science and director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University) has resigned from Stanford to start his own online teaching venture which goes by the name of Udacity. Last fall Sebastian Thrun (who is also a Google research fellow working on driverless cars) along with Peter Norvig taught a free online course - "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI)" to an overwhelming 160,000 people. According to Sebastian Thrun this experience was so rewarding that he decided to quit teaching 200 people in the class to teach hundreds and thousands online. To know more about the AI class taught by Sebastian Thrun last fall go here.

Exciting part is that Udacity will offer its first two courses (CS101 Building a Search Engine & CS373 Programming a Robotic Car) online starting from 20th of Februrary and I should not repeat again that they are free. “CS101 – Building a Search Engine” does not have any prerequisites and if you are someone who have never done programming can opt for this one. “CS373 Programming a Robotic Car” however require a solid foundation in programming plus some knowledge of Probablity and Linear Algebra. The coding language for CS373 will be Python. I have registered for CS101 and I am pretty excited about that. CS101 is a 7 week course and you can see the syllabus per week once you register.

So if this excites you then please login to the site of Udacity and register. Learning to code is just great but learning from someone who is an expert in this field and is having a proven track record is something which we all can wish for. I would like to say thanks to the efforts of these people who are driving this noble project and would like to make the coding main stream.

Apple blasted quarterly earnings (record numbers)

Apple reported the highest quarterly revenue and earnings ever. This is Apple at its best since its operation. Quarterly revenue of $46.33 billion is record breaking numbers ever posted by Apple. Apple’s net profit for the quarter is $13.06 billion. In the last quarter which ended Dec 11^st 2011, Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones, 15.43 million iPads, 5.2 million Macs & 15.4 million iPods.

These results are just amazing and this is what Apple's CEO, Tim Cook said, "We're thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs". "Apple's momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline."

Amazing new products in the pipeline!!!! It seems that the iPad 3 and Apple TV are coming soon to an Apple store near you.

Good day to be an Apple investor.

Academy Awards nominations - 2012

Best Picture

• The Artist
• The Descendants
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
• The Help
• Hugo
• Midnight in Paris
• Moneyball
• The Tree of Life
• War Horse

Best Supporting Actor

• Kenneth Branagh, My Week with Marilyn
• Jonah Hill, Moneyball
• Nick Nolte, Warrior
• Christopher Plummer, Beginners
• Max Von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Best Supporting Actress

• Berenice Bejo, The Artist
• Jessica Chastain, The Help
• Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
• Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
• Octavia Spencer, The Help

Best Actress

• Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
• Viola Davis, The Help
• Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
• Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn

Best Actor

• Demian Bichir, A Better Life
• George Clooney, The Descendants
• Jean Dujardin, The Artist
• Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
• Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Best Director

• Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
• Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
• Alexander Payne, The Descendants
• Martin Scorsese, Hugo
• Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

Best Adapted Screenplay

• The Descendants, Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash
• Hugo, John Logan
• The Ides of March, George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon
• Moneyball, Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin. Story by Stan Chervin.
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Bridget O' Connor and Peter Straughan

Best Original Screenplay

• The Artist, Michael Hazanavicius
• Bridesmaids, Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig
• Margin Call, J.C. Chandor
• Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen
• A Separation, Asghar Farhadi

Best Animated Feature

• A Cat in Paris
• Chico & Rita
• Kung Fu Panda 2
• Puss in Boots
• Rango

Designed in California, Made In China

I am pretty sure if you are one of the Apple consumer you might have noticed the subject of this post. The subject of this post is what you will see on all of the Apple products. It took me no time when I bought my first Apple product in 2004, an iPod, and noticed that it says “Designed in California, Made In China” and I was somewhat amazed about the kind of globalization that was just starting to happen (atleast for me).

Well yesterday I came across this amazing article published by the New York Times and it was something which will elaborate more on the reasons why Apple and other tech companies are depending on China as far as the product manufacturing is concerned. Though it is about the cheap work force but this is not the only reason. There are many other factors that support the decision of the tech giants to send this kind of work to China and to some other Asian countries. I would suggest that if you have some spare time on your hand then check out this article. Though it is very hard to take a stand on such things but it might give us the insight for the events that might take place in the future.

Read it and check it out for yourself.

"Code Year" will help you learn coding

I usually start the new year by writing something interesting and fun to read. This being the first post of this year is not different to what I have mentioned in the previous sentence. If you are interested in learning coding or computer programming and ran out of ideas to learn, then I am pretty sure you should check out the site of Code Year.

Code Year is the brain child of the duo Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski of the Codecadmy fame. If you haven’t tried out Codecadmy yet, then I recommend going to the site and experience it for yourself. Codecadmy is created to help teach programming interactively. It is much better than reading and re-reading those thick computer programming books where the method of learning is kinda one-way. The best part is Codecadmy or Code Year will teach you about programming from scratch. There are no prerequisites to these lessons none at all and most importantly it is all FREE. You read it right…FREE. So far Codecadmy uses Java Script as its primary language to introduce programming but soon lessons covering Ruby and Python will be made available on the site.

Code Year launched on 1st of Jan’2012 have so far attracted 200,000 users who want to learn programming this year. When I registered on 2nd Jan I was preceded by some 19,100 users. As of now the site has seen some 210,708 registrations and they are increasing every second. The concept behind Code Year is simple, you register by providing your email address and in return the team behind Code Year will mail you the interactive lessons. I cannot explain much about that as the first email with the lesson details will start coming from Jan 9th and I am pretty excited about it.

Necessity is the mother of invention and that is exactly what Zach and Ryan have done in order to make programming fun and interactive. Zach coming from a non technical back ground have struggled a lot in order to learn how to code and hence Codecadmy was born. So far the site Code Year has gained lots of attention. People ranging from Mike Bloomberg (Mayor NYC) to VC Fred Wilson have registered on Code Year.

After running from coding for more than a decade I have decided to give it a try. I knew at some point I need to learn coding and I guess the time is right. So what are you waiting for? If you are someone like me who want to give coding a try then this is your chance. Go to the site of Code Year and register. I am sure it will be lot of fun.