The Year 2015 - for me

As usual every year, I am starting my blog post this year with a recap of events I encountered in the previous year. So, here it goes.

Pleasant Learning:

• Pleased with the smooth operations of  a critical infrastructure that I struggled and established few years ago.
• Glad to note that one of the difficult activity of promoting digital signatures to various Government staffs across the nation progressed smoothly in the later part of the year.
• Had an opportunity to give a vent for my creative thinking - Wrote the script and narrative for an animation movie - to teach the concepts of Public Key Infrastructure - and the movie can be found here.
• Creating and Fostering Virtual Communities of Learning: Started a YouTube Channel on my (current) favourite subject - Public Key Infrastructure and slowly built up the community.
• Started to build another Indian technical community - this time focusing on Internet Protocols and Standards - Details can be found here, here, and here .
• Had an opportunity to perform a review of the academic activities of the computer science branch of a prestigious institution
• Knowledge Consolidation - Over the years, I have diversified myself  into many technical areas: Applied AI, Community Informatics, Content Delivery, Contextual Intelligence, Network Security, Usability, Information Security etc..  However this year, I was able to anchor myself under the umbrella of Cryptographic Applications - though I worked on PKI, Internet Standards, and DNS Security
• Personally - bought (more) than a decade old flat !  -  have come a long way from my thinking against the flat system (in my young days) and now realizing the benefits of community living
• Travel (Many places, this year): Mangalore (Visited many temples), Varanasi (Ganga and many temples), Visakhapatnam, Meghalaya (Shillong, Cherapunji), Delhi, Noida, Trichy, Srirangam,Alagar Koil (Madurai), Chandigarh, Arani, Vellore Golden Temple, Tiruvanamalai Temple. 

Tough Learning:

• Discovered how tough to restore a tape backup, when it really matters!
• Realized that how easily you can be taken for a ride, when managing enterprise level systems and infrastructure.
• A Proposal on an effort that started in 2013 is still dragging and no light visible even this year too,with so many back and forth happening and eating my time and efforts
• Patiently waited another whole year for the recognition from the office, which did not come as usual. Expressed them in formal ways, but of no avail.
• Realized what a big folly is to buy a washing machine like Bosch in India. Will blog about it soon.
• Health of my parents was a big concern, and especially my mother had to undergo a surgery. Tough times during that period, but we overcame, thanks to almighty.