When mind has enough time to wander...
The topic needs no introduction. We are amidst one of the greatest adversities humankind has ever faced. And for the first time, "and this time literally". We will overcome this. Scientists and researchers are toiling away, endless days and nights pushing all boundaries, and they will find a vaccine. And we will bounce back as always. But when we do, Don't let this time be marked with regrets.....
Cherish your time with your loved ones. We grew up and grew apart. But these grim times have pulled us together. For once, we finally have time to sit and talk—about stars in the sky and everything underneath. Because now we know, we could have avoided that party and stayed for this chat.
Up skill
This image has been floating the internet recently. Amidst this situation, almost all technology-based companies have allowed their employees to work from home. Essential services are running on a lean workforce. And all colleges and universities have been closed down. This means most of us are spending a considerable amount of time glued to our smartphones/ computers. And we have plenty of time which in the recent past would have been lost in transit/partying etc. Make use of this time. Many online MOOC platforms have subsidized their courses.Universities and professors are hosting online MOOCs on their own. Take this time to upskill yourself. MIT open courseware is one among them.
Machine Learning and AI is one such field that can be learned online, and there is tremendous interest. You can learn it from the pioneers or ivy league professors. The book Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning which is used as an introductory material to machine learning in leading universities around the world is made available online. There are lot of Beginner MOOCs like Andrew Ng's course on Coursera. SHALA is one such upcoming course by a group of industry professionals and researchers from various organizations in India, including IITB and IISc.
Deep learning is one area of ML, which is gaining immense popularity of the late. Mostly with the availability of high-performance GPUs and frameworks like Pytorch and Tensor Flow. GPUs in your local machine where a requirement to do deep learning for a while. But not anymore. Google Colab, Kaggle, and similar websites allow you to use hosted runtimes to train your models. Meaning, now you can work on your deep learning models from any device which has functional network connectivity. There are lot of introductory coures on Deep Learning. Most Universities, conduct short term crash courses as intro to DL. One such noteworthy course done by MIT can be found here.
Geek up
Over time, even the most sophisticated and elegant distro may look boring to you. We got all the time in the world. Maybe you should try out that one Linux distribution you always wanted to try; Or that terminal emulator which gives you cool new features on your terminal. Trying out these things will take hours of browsing and configuring; verdict - usually, we put them aside for later. These tools, when correctly used, can have a massive impact on your efficiency, and it makes you look cool.
For instance, I had been using neovim for almost two years now and is happy with it. Code completion works smoothly with ncm2 and jedi plugins. But things changed when I started using virtual env's. Auto-completion broke, and imported classes were not highlighted. Was tight on schedule and had to switch to vscode for the time being. Later realized that this mishap was due to minor problems in the configuration. And there are some excellent semantic highlighting plugins available.
While going through some blogs to fix this issue, I came across ranger. Ranger is a terminal-based file browser with vim like key bindings. It can do a lot of cool stuff, one among them is the ability to display images in the terminal. But sadly Ubuntu's default terminal emulator- gnome-terminal can't render images in the terminal(or at least it doesn't do it OOB). The next option was to use any other terminal emulator. After a little bit of googling, I came across 3 - urxvt, terminology, andalacritty. After a little bit of tweaking and using a patched font, this is how my ranger in alacritty terminal looks like.
Connect with yourself
Take up that guitar. Sing some songs on Smule. Dance to some random choreography on youtube. Poke your friends on Facebook. I have seen many friends put up their freehand sketches in Insta. Some are doing calligraphy, yet others -cooking. And of course, everyone finished their favorite TV shows. Fitness groups are active with their daily challenge routines. In short, be creative, be productive, lure out negativity. Be thankful to the health workers, researchers, police, and other essential services. Cheer up, don't fall for fake news. And most importantly, stay home and wash your hands
