Wednesday 11 January 2017

Welcome 2017

First blog post at the beginning of the year, as was last year's, is a quantified compilation of my personal activities outside of my day job.

My digital presence stats at the beginning of 2016 were:
Twitter     -- 2695 tweets, following 16, followers 65
Facebook    -- 936 friends, member of 40 groups
Blogger     -- 129 posts
Github      -- 3 repositories;
               raygate = 560 KB, ruwi = 228 KB, gtdm-r = 35.46MB
               total = 36.25 MB
Short Films -- Ray Mahruwi Productions = 11.

As of beginning 2017 they are:
Twitter     -- 2890 tweets, following 9, followers 76
Facebook    -- 1285 friends, member of 57 groups
Blogger     -- 135 posts
Github      -- same as last year
Short Films -- Ray Mahruwi Productions = 13

So I did a mere 195 tweets in the year, not even averaging one per day. I did a measly 6 blog posts, not even averaging one per month. Similarly I did not touch or add to my existing github repositories.

Next activity of my interest is short films. Here are the views for 2015 and 2016:
Name Jan 2016 Jan 2017
Gamanam
(a film by Sudeep Kumar TG)
3972
Anoohyam 4413
Nannu Kshaminchu Mahatmaa 2747 4985
Malupu
(a film by Prabhakar Ellu)
5387 7335
Nava Bethalam 1874 2138
Manasa Ne Cheppe Maata Vinamma 26722 27823
The Upliftment 5378 13282
Ahana Kalyanam
(a film by Krishna Chaitanya Joshi)
51747 56767
Katha-Screenplay-Darsakathvam - MH (Appalraju Kadu) 573 631
Glamour 2027 2377
Aatmabhimanam - Idi andariki artham kaaka povachchu 210 215
Nirvana 1638 1747
Parody Video 2389 2455
Total 100692 128140

I made two shorts last year, Anoohyam and Gamanam (a film by Sudeep Kumar). A total of 27,448 views were added this year. In terms of views, the top three are : 1) Ahana Kalyanam 2) Manasaa Ne Chepee Maata Vinamma and 3) The Upliftment. In fact, in 2016, The Upliftment garnered the highest number of views, 7904. A pleasant surprise that! Gamanam was a bit of disappointment as we expected it to get a lot more views. We are discussing internally what we can do now to rectify the situation.

Overall, the total count of 128140 is not a great number, but I take some satisfaction in the fact that these were obtained though I am not a full time film maker and I allocate only a small part of my time in the whole year to short films.


On to books. From last year's reading list, I could do only David and Goliath, and Blink and The God of Small Things (re-reads). Of course there were books that were not in my reading list, but I happened to read them. They are: Execution : The Discipline Of Getting Things Done, Everyone Has A Story, How To Read A Book, Defending The Undefendable and Economics In One Lesson.

From last year's unread books, I have droppped India Shastra by Shashi Tharoor, and have the following list for this year:
  • The Rise Of The Robots by Martin Ford
  • The Love That Feels Right by Ravinder Singh
  • Raising the Floor: How A Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild The American Dream by Andy Stern & Lee Kravitz
  • A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. (This one’s been pending for long).
  • Structure And Interpretation Of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, Julie Sussman
  • The Mind’s I : Fantasies And Reflections On Self And Soul by Daniel C. Dennett and Douglas R. Hofstadter
  • I Am a Strange Loop : 0 by Douglas R. Hofstadter
  • I’m OK -- You’re OK by Thomas Harris. (re-read)
  • The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen
  • Autobiography Of A Mad Nation by Sriram Karri
  • From The Ruins Of Empire: The Revolt Against The West And The Remaking Of Asia by Pankaj Mishra
  • The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
  • The Silk Worm by Robert Galbraith
  • Indianomix by Vivek Dehejia and Rupa Subramanya
  • Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
I had read through a few pages of Structure And Interpretation as well as The Mind's I, but will get through them properly this time. Another point is that I have not included the Telugu books or programming / management books that I'd be reading. I am sure there will be more than a couple of them.


There were two points of cheer during last year. One is the VRCE (now VNIT) silver jubilee reunion and the other is the meetup group Hyderabad Software Architects. I had devoted some amount of time for these events through the year. My facebook updates on them, here --> https://goo.gl/ENTBZL and here --> https://goo.gl/hwZNq2, give some elaboration. In addition, for the purpose of analysing and bringing home the various positive aspects of international cinema, Cinephile FILM Club was started.

So, what's with going forward? I should do better in 2017 on all the above counts. That is, a minimum of 365 tweets, 12 blog posts, and two short films. There will be some output in fiction, but I wouldn't quantify it now. Regarding the reading list, all fifteen books should be very much doable.

In closing, as I said on Facebook, a happy Dangal new year* to all of you.

* https://www.facebook.com/mahboob.hussain.33/posts/1478067435544512
Pics courtesy :
Stock Photos (https://stockphotos.io/)
Death to Stock (https://www.instagram.com/deathtostock/)

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