Atharva Kulkarni

A new tutorial series for computer science beginners!

2021-07-27T20:35:23+00:00

When I created this website, I had a goal to upload weekly blogs on topics I find interesting and share my opinion on them. A lot has transpired since then and obviously, I have not been able to upload anything onto this website for quite a while now. With that being said, I hope this post marks a new “phase” for this website. Hopefully, this phase entails a lot of blogs, tutorials, and other editorials.

Okay. Enough of this accountability drama. Let’s start with why this post exists.

As I finished my Masters’s program and get ready to embark on my professional journey as a Full-Time Software Developer, it quickly dawned on me that this was probably my last experience of being an academic student. This doesn’t mean I won’t ever consider another degree but at least for the foreseeable future, I will not be attending any academic institute. What does this mean for me? Do I stop learning? Well, the short answer is NO. I could bore you with the long answer of how knowledge increases by sharing and blah blah blah but you get my point right? The goal of this tutorial series is to push me to learn new things continuously and keep up with the latest trends all the while creating a basic tutorial series to help beginners. The idea is to create a step-by-step guide that is very easy to follow and recreate. Does this mean I am an expert in this field? HELL NO! But I do feel that I have gained enough experience to write a basic tutorial series to help you get started in your journey of building and deploying apps! Enough of this now. Let’s get to the meat of it.

Starting out in computer science is not easy. Sometimes the abundance of resources creates a huge problem. Many times, people keep watching hours and hours of tutorials online only to forget everything they have learned within a few months. I have fallen into that rabbit hole many times and wasted a lot of time. According to my experience, the best way to learn anything is to actually implement code, build projects and deploy apps. In that way you can get into the meat of things and learn more rather than just staring at the screen for hours and watching someone write a code which you will never implement. With that out of the way, I do want to make it clear that although the title says this series will be for beginners, but I am gonna lay down some basic pre-requisites which are really important for following the series the way it is intended.

This tutorial series is for any person who:

Has a basic idea about cloud services.
Is at least a beginner in any of the object-oriented programming languages.
Is proficient in using Bash and Github.
Is capable of reading official package documentation for download and installation.

What all will you need to setup beforehand?

A Github account. You can set it up here.
A free-tier AWS Account. You can set it up here.
A workbench with the latest version of Python and Git installed. You can skip the installation of Git if the operating system of your choice is Linux.
A code editor of your choice. I personally prefer Visual Studio code and you can find it here.

Voila! It’s done. But this is just a teaser. A Hello World post. Hopefully, every week from now on, I shall be able to churn a new tutorial that helps someone to start building and deploying apps. The first tutorial will be on “How to build and deploy a basic Flask app on AWS using virtual environment”.

I would love to see comments on suggestions from readers on what topic they would like me to cover. Do share this and all the future posts if you like what you are reading. Always open to new ideas in the comment section below.

With all that said and done, I want to end this post with a great quote from Lex Fridman:

“You can never say you are an expert in anything because being an expert requires humility.”

A letter to my Grandpa on his 90th Birth anniversary

2020-08-11T06:00:00+00:00

A letter to my Grandpa on his 90th Birth anniversary

Dear Anna,

Well I don’t know how to start writing this. Today marks 6 months since you left us and it is also your 90th Birthday.

Writing one fond memory of you when I have lived most of my life with you and Aai is perhaps the most difficult thing to do. Now that I think retrospectively, I realise, all my life I have spent more time with you than with my parents.

For me the oldest memory I can think off is spending the hot summers with you and Aai in Aurangabad. I remember how we travelled in train, I remember how you put me to bed on the middle berth. I remember how you tied a rope around the berth so I won’t fall off.

During my childhood I remember Pappa used to ask me, who is the one person you fear the most in our family? More often than not, my answer used to be You. That is how your personality was. It instilled fear. It commanded respect.

Over the years, my equation with you changed a lot. From the person I used to fear the most to a joyful retired grandfather who was always keen to do something for me. Starting from cooking my favourite dishes for me to giving me some outrageous gifts.

Over the years, your personality changed a lot as well. From venerable Dr.V.N.Kulkarni of MGM medical college to quite a mellow character especially towards me. After I moved to Vellore, and now to Dallas, our communication whittled down reason being your problems with listening. But I clearly remember you asking me one question always. “Jevan zhala ka?”. After that you used to pass the phone to Aai and she used to talk with me. As always, this was backseat driving. Aai used to ask all the questions you wanted to ask. Once the call is done, you both used to have their cute little summary of the call. Sometimes the call used to stay connected and listening to your conversation was one of the funniest things. Sorry for intruding your privacy with your Saheb. I am sure you won’t mind.

I think I can call myself the luckiest of all to experience and taste all the dishes you made. I can go in detail and talk about how every dish you made was special but I am not going to do that. Although I’ll count myself lucky that I was able to eat Kachori made by you as recent as January 2020.

As witty your personality was, I have one story about you which I want to tell you and everyone reading this. It is very close to my heart. You were admitted in the hospital around the time I had to leave for Dallas. Everyday you used to ask the Doctor, when am I getting discharged. You wanted to be home before I left. Unfortunately, that didn’t pan out. I said my last goodbye to you at the hospital. Once I was gone, you stopped asking the doctor when am I going home? When the doctor asked you why have you stopped asking you just replied “Aata Atharva gela aahe, Mi ikde ek mahina hi rahu shakto kahich problem nahi.”

Teaching you how to use the smart phone was one of my guilty pleasures. We as a young generation take some things for granted especially related to technology. But all was not easy for an 80 year old man like yourself. But as smart you were, you picked up things pretty quickly and mastered them. Before leaving for Dallas, you said to me, “April madhe 4G pack samptoy, recharge karshil”. Since you left us in February this line really saddens me but also makes me appreciate the positive outlook you had towards life.

When you left us on 11th February 2020, we lost a gem of a person and you left a very huge void to fill. The only way to try and fill this void is by following what you did. Maintaining relationships like you did. Helping others like you. Living life like you did. Today, as we mourn over your 6 month death anniversary and your 90th birth anniversary, I promise you from that tomorrow onwards we will celebrate your life and carry this great legacy forward.

I still remember one thing you asked for me to do before I left for Dallas. I promised you I will do it and believe me when I say, I am working hard towards achieving it.

Yours loving,

-Pillu(As you used to call me affectionately)

I want say something to everyone reading this. I don’t think I am credible enough to say this but I am still going to. As inspiring Anna’s personality was, I want everyone to learn something from it. This is the way we carry forward his legacy.

Remember how he never stopped learning. Remember how he never stopped husling. Remember how he thought us that age is no limit to learn. Keep on learning. Never stop. Remember how respectfully he lived his life. Remember how even after retirement he didn’t stop working. Remember how while doing all this, he never stopped helping his wife in the kitchen. Remember how he kept maintaining all the relations. Remember how he helped anyone selflessly when needed. And most importantly, Remember how he never stopped enjoying his life.

Dear Anna, we all miss you but we all know you are in a better place. Wish you a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Thank you all for taking time to read this. I hope you like it.

-Atharva Kulkarni

The girl with the dragon tattoo

2020-07-17T02:30:00+00:00

Book review: (This review has no spoilers)

The girl with the dragon tattoo is a classic who done it mystery novel. This book will strike a chord with the thriller aficionados. With various digressions into financial journalism and Swedish Nazi mafia, this book definitely stands true to its hype.

This book is written by Stieg Larsson and is the first book in the 3 part series by the author. Unfortunately, Stieg died in 2005 and all his books were published posthumously. The books in this series are stand alone. So you don’t have to worry about unfinished business.

The scene is set in the first decade of the 20th century Sweden in which the protagonist and owner of Millennium magazine, Mikael Bloomkvist is duped by a infamous business typhoon Wennerstorm. Owing to the calumny of Wennerstorm, Mikael is ascribed 3 months in prison by the court. To keep his publishing running and save its reputation, Mikael also has to give up his role in Millennium.

With unemployment glooming over his head, Mikael is confronted by Henrik Vanger, the head of Vanger Corporation for a job. Although well past its heyday, Vangar Corporation still had some stand in the Swedish manufacturing industry. What is his task you may ask?

Harriet Vanger, the niece and probably the one set to be Henrik’s successor had disappeared 40 years ago. With no vestiges of Harriet’s disappearance, the task for Mikael who wants to redeem himself in the Wennerstorm case is to find how did she disappear. To finish this undertaking, he is helped by an Autistic, tattooed girl with a photogenic memory and unparalleled hacking skills, Lisbeth Salander( read Mike Ross).

Lisbeth Salandar, the girl who is subjugated to various acts of rape and mistreatment by men helps Bloomkvist to uncover the sudden disappearance of Harriet. What these two uncover together next are series of unfortunate and unfathomable events. The corruption, misogyny and killings in mid-twentieth century Sweden. The story is immense and thorough in the investigation of Harriet’s disappearance but fails to land a solid punch towards the end. The story of Mikael’s retribution lacks some solid base and sometimes feels stretched.

This book earns a solid 8.75/10 from me. It invokes all the feelings of excitement and backyard detective in you. With the book being New York’s best seller in 2005, I can only recommend it to everyone who likes this genre. If you can put behind the diluted ending, this book is a must read.

How to deploy devlopr-jekyll Blog using Github Pages and Travis

2019-05-21T09:05:23+00:00

This guide assumes that you already have created your blog and tested locally. If not please follow this tutorial : Create a Blog using devlopr jekyll. Then come back and proceed with the deployment process.

In this Guide, we are using Github Pages and Travis CI for deploying our blog. Sometimes Github Pages does not support external third party plugins. In that case we deploy our blog using Travis CI, it automatically builds our website and pushes the static files of the site to a deployment branch. Which then Github Pages uses to render the site. Hope you get it :P !

We might need to instruct Travis CI to follow deployment instructions. Copy the below content in .travis.yml file:

language: ruby
cache: bundler

# Travis will build the site from gh-pages branch
# and deploy the content to master branch
# use gh-pages branch to serve for github pages
# master branch will be used for deployment

branches:
  only:
  - gh-pages
script:
  - JEKYLL_ENV=production bundle exec jekyll build --destination site

# You need to generate a Personal Access Token
# https://github.com/settings/tokens
# Add this token in environment variable GITHUB_TOKEN in Travis CI repo settings

deploy:
  provider: pages
  local-dir: ./site
  target-branch: master
  email: deploy@travis-ci.org
  name: Deployment Bot
  skip-cleanup: true
  github-token: $GITHUB_TOKEN
  keep-history: true
  on:
    branch: gh-pages

# Generate your secure token with the travis gem:
# get Github token from your Travis CI profile page
  gem install travis
  travis encrypt 'GIT_NAME="YOUR_USERNAME" GIT_EMAIL="YOUR_EMAIL" GH_TOKEN=YOUR_TOKEN' --add env.global --com

# env:
#   global:
#     secure: Example

All we are doing is telling Travis to pick up files from our gh-pages branch and push the build files to master branch.

Generate a New Github Personal Access Token

We need this token as a Environment Variable in Travis. For Travis can automatically login as you, and finish its job of building your site and pushing it to your repo’s master branch.

Go to Github Generate a New Token Page.

Create a new Access Token

Configure Travis

Go to Travis and Toggle the repository access to use Travis

Go to the repository settings page and Add Environment Variable ‘GITHUB_TOKEN’

Push your changes to Github

Commit your local changes in gh-pages branch

git add . git commit -m "added new post" git push origin gh-pages

After push, Travis will automatically run a build process and deploy your blog.

You can visit your site at https://yourusername.github.io

Done ! Enjoy your brand new devlopr-jekyll blog. You can visit the site at https://yourusername.github.io