I was wondering what the purpose of my life was. I felt worthless. And then I realized that an idle mind is a devil’s workshop. So I thought of doing something creatively and artistically with what I already know. One way is to rekindle my movie making senses. My friends claim that I’m good at making videos (judge it yourself www.youtube.com/user/bluexgene ) but I don’t think so. When compared to those talent pool out there who make stunning graphical visuals, I’m an amateur. Anyway I still wanted to do something new with my so called skills, but then I had a constraint, this time its not my laziness or lack of will, but its my PC’s hardware configuration. Even with a monstrous Core i7 processor, 2 GB NVidia GPU it would take days to render a simple animation clip. It literally ate in to my confidence. so I gave up the idea of video making.
Then my focus turned towards programming and development. The only language I have know by that time was C++ , that too basics (too lazy to learn the last 7 or 8 chapters of my C book) I was confused on what to do with all my knowledge on For loop, While loop and If statements in C. So I was thinking of starting from scratch with some new Object Oriented Programming language. While browsing through forum posts I zeroed in on one of the best OO language to start with. Yeah its none other than JAVA. One fact that really fascinated me is that the mars rovers Opportunity and Sprit are programmed in JAVA and NASA uses loads of JAVA to fire up its operations. So I decided to dedicate my life to JAVA (that’s like promises you make to your girlfriend. you know what I mean). I was interested so much on building User Interface. so I decided to learn the rest of the functionality quickly from YouTube tutorials. I must thank the Youtuber Bucky for the quick start tutorials in the channel thenewboston . Again I learned some basics in Java, but it wont take me anywhere near building a successful application. In between I lost interest with programming and decided to just go with my shallow normal life.
After a while I got all my JAVA related neurons wiped out. But then out of nowhere one last remaining neuron sparked inside me and directed me to reboot my Operation Learn Java. This time I wanted to learn it from a book. I wanted to read it from Author’s Preface page till Glossary. I have this habit of never-reading-past-the-first-five-pages. I searched for a book that makes learning JAVA a live experience. I finally found a book of that sort. Yes its O’Reilly’s Head First Java, 2nd Edition. If you have read any of the Head First series books, you would now how interesting this book is. Though its entirely not a reference book by itself, its good at making concepts stick to your brain.
Meanwhile I had plans to learn some other platforms along with Java. As this is the age of smartphones, I was thinking what's the most successful mobile platform is. I had to decide between Apple iOS and Android. Obviously Android is the winner. When I just skimmed through first pages of an Android book for my surprise I came to know that Android is based on JAVA and XML. Oh My God, was that a coincidence!!! Now I need to entirely rethink my strategy. Android is the most popular and profitable platform out there. You can make real money by making utility apps in Android. So I started to learn JAVA in the angle of Android apps. My focus shifted once again from making JAVA applets to Android Applications. I started with the book Android Apps for Absolute Beginners by Apress. It’s a neat book to quick start with Android, though you need a minimal knowledge in JAVA to understand some concepts.
Thus began my Android Journey. I’m still a learner. Meanwhile I had an Android App Contest in my workplace. Though I was a zero when that contest was announced, I participated hoping to learn something new. But anyway I had opportunity to learn how Android Apps are supposed to work. This reminded me of Steve Job’s speech at Stanford University - “So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” I don’t say I have connected the dots in my life but I could see a hope of connecting a dozen of them somewhere in near future.
Follow more of my journey here: https://plus.google.com/b/117198347767165412301/
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