Running away from the vicious social media cloud

Random | Oct 23, 2015

This is the era of social networking websites, pouts/duck-dog-cat faces on Snapchat and Instagram, cats and memes on Facebook/Twitter, chain messages on Whatsapp we’re all addicted to at least one of these. Our media consumption is increasing day by day as we drown ourselves in these platforms.

Undoubtedly they’re beneficial to us but to what extent? We’re getting so addicted to it that we’re losing control and succumbing to the temptation. During this period of my life when I had literally no pressure of exams/studies/job I also made the mistake of caving in, but I soon realized the trap and decided to quit Facebook and Whatsapp for a while.

I missed it for a while but once I started investing my time in other hobbies and learning other things like Spanish, Python, Guitar etc! I felt much better. One of the changes I brought out in my social media world was the quality of content I was spending my time on, for this I switched to Quora and Reddit. For those of you who are relatively unaware of these platforms, I would give you a brief overview of them.

Quora is a Question and Answer based website where users can post queries related to any subject be it science/sports/personal life/hobbies/career counselling just to name a few, and then other users who have better understanding of the subject matter can attempt to answer those questions. These questions and answer both can be upvoted and/or promoted by the audience/OP to make it popular and appear on the feed of other users who’re following that topic.

Reddit is also pretty much the same forum based website which likes to call itself the Front page of internet.

Once I started spending my time on these websites I was initially just a viewer, reading answers by other users and increasing my knowledge. As I built a little confidence, I started posting Questions and replying to other users queries. My reading/writing skills have improved significantly which is also one of the reasons I could dare to start my own blog. The knowledge gained by reading others experiences and hacks for day to day life makes me feel I’m a little better than I was yesterday and isn’t that what we all yearn for? I recommend following at least one of these platforms and actually benefit from a social networking website.

Follow me on Quora/Reddit and let’s learn from each other.

Romance with the languages, pun intended

Language | Sep 8, 2015

###Hola amigos!!

Still enjoying the break before my joining. Things were going slow and dull and after learning Python last month and I was searching for something else which I could pursue. This time I yearned to learn something in a totally new genre. I had learnt quite a few things in Software Engineering, Music and outdoor/indoor games. I was searching something totally bizarre. That’s when I thought that “Hey, I’ve learned plenty of computer languages why not go for a real spoken language this time.” That’s when I decided I’d be learning a new language, just for fun.

So I started looking out for the perfect language to start with. I had Japanese, German, French, and Spanish in my mind, so I started narrowing down my choices. After a lot of research I stumbled onto one of the most beautiful Romance languages: Spanish. Mostly since it is the one of the most spoken languages in the world. Most of the US speaks it which is a dream for any IT graduate to visit (SILICON VALLEY Yikes!!!).

So the journey started with Duolingo being my mentor, but wait did you know, you’re much more motivated to achieve a goal if you do it with someone? Of course you guys know it, as the old adage goes “If you want to go fast go alone, but if you want to travel far go together”! So I found my grand-mother to be my partner in this journey! Yeah you read that right, my grand-mother. She’s uber cool. She retired from the Rajasthan University as the H.O.D., Economics Department. Awesome, ikr?

Both of us have started this wonderful journey and practice the language every day, doing home-works, maintaining notes, revising stuff, trying to talk in Spanish with each other, confusing other family members and what not. It’s been a month or so and both of us are pretty good at elementary Español.

Turns out learning a new language opens up your brain to so much new stuff and gives you a new perspective of looking at things, it’s an amazing experience everybody should feel! To describe the journey in a few words I’d ask you one question “Can you imagine a new color apart from the staple 7? Of course no, right? Learning a new language is figuratively speaking seeing a new color.” Mind-boggling isn’t it? And you right there should feel this too.

Follow me @Duolingo: abhisheksaxena7 and let’s learn and compete with each other.

Soundcloud Covers and OC's!!

Music | Aug 16, 2015

###Hi friends, Music is something which calms the soul and directly soothes the mind and body together. Some like to listen to it and others who are more blessed with talents of playback, composing; make music!.

My love for music started off pretty early. I was always a choir student in my school. I remember how I used to be the only guy in the front row feeling so shy as I was surrounded by 2 girls on my right and 2 on my left. I learned playing synthesiser when I was in 2^nd standard. Now apart from singing, I had also started playing synth in the class assembly.

Numerous competitions and years later I developed a taste for western music when I was introduced to one of the cult band of our generation Linkin Park. Then later on EMINEM became my Rap-God. Seeing my passion for music, my grandmother bought me my first acoustic Guitar. Now I wanted to learn Guitar!! So there I was learning Guitar at summer classes, at the end of those 15 days I had learnt the basics of it and on the gala night of the classes I even performed with one of the most famous bands in our city The Oceans.

Well things went slow until I met one of my friend who played Electric Guitar. He inspired me to learn guitar further. So I bought a shining new ESP-F10 and the journey continued. I joined my college band Sarhad performed with them on many occasions, played as a solo artist on separate occasions. Music still remains not a hobby but a passion and the journey continues!!. Here are some of my songs which I have recorded these past few years. I hope you like them. Feel free to comment and let me know your views.

You could find me on SoundCloud where my songs have been played more than 15K times and still counting :)

Debut with Blogging!!

Blog | Aug 15, 2015

###Hello Fellas!!

Since past few weeks I’ve been really bored with the daily monotony. Waking up at 5, going to gym, swimming and then nothing. I was simply procrastinating. I even deactivated whatsapp/facebook to stop this. I started a few things like learning Spanish and it felt good studying a totally new language, but the charisma, spark and excitement I felt while programming was missing.

I created my last website a long time back and since then my interest in web development had also decreased, but a website for myself was long due. So one day when I stumbled onto Jekyll while looking at a friend’s website created on it. I was suddenly craving to make one for myself. I started browsing about it. I had some experience using git but didn’t know much anything about jekyll so I started googling about it, and hours and hours later this is the result in front of all of you. My own personalized Jekyll based website. Made up from scratch in less than a day :).

I hope you guys appreciate the content I’ll be posting. If you have any suggestions for this website feel free to post a comment below and let me know about the topics you’d like to read about.
Cheers to the new beginning!!