Since April of last year I have been volunteering for Vision Aid as a Python programming instructor. Vision Aid did a pilot program to teach computer programming using Python to the visually impaired in 2016. The pilot program was well received and so the folks at Vision Aid decided to offer a more structured course based on the pilot.

I learnt about Vision Aid and the Python course from my cousin Swaroop and his wife Reena, both of whom have been volunteering for Vision Aid for years now. Swaroop was part of the pilot program and asked me to volunteer when they offered the course to a wider audience. More details about the course and other programs offered by Vision Aid can be found here. The idea of the program is to teach basic programming to folks and give them a solid foundation on which they can build further by learning more advanced programming concepts as well as use the knowledge in their work places to advance their careers.

So far I have been part of 3 quarters and have taught 7 students. Swaroop and I conduct joint classes, one class of around 2.5 hours, every week. We are teaching the beginning/introduction to programming course. The course is designed to be completed in 12 weeks but depending on the students sometimes we end up overshooting by a couple of weeks depending on our availability as well as the students'.

We conduct the classes over Skype and we suggest the students use Liclipse as the IDE since we have seen that it provides a good balance of programming features as well as accessibility features without hogging too much memory. We use Skype because it allows screen sharing, the students have some previous experience using it and it's free.

Most of our students are located in India and come from various backgrounds. Of the 7 students that we taught over the past year, we have had 2 students pursuing university education - one majoring in history and the other in computer science, one bank manager, two folks working at SEBI, one computer instructor, and one accessibility tester. All of them are visually impaired and are fairly well versed at using the computer for their daily tasks and needs. They use a screen reader to navigate and perform tasks on the computer.

Over the past 3 quarters of teaching, I got to learn a lot of things. I learnt firsthand how the visually impaired navigate computers, how screen readers work and that so many things that we take for granted are not available to them. Screen readers read every single word, character, link on the screen. The experience can be quite overwhelming specially since we are also giving instructions over skype at the same time as the screen reader is speaking.

Additionally, Python, by the nature of the language itself, brings its own challenges. The concept of indentation is quite new to non-programming folks and that causes some confusion. The IDE/editor adds indentation automatically at the beginning of a code block which is not read by the screen reader, so the students have to pay special attention to what indentation level they are at currently. But these are minor hiccups and I have seen that our students overcome these challenges gracefully.

My experience teaching over the past year has been very fulfilling and I have had the pleasure of meeting and teaching highly accomplished people from various walks of life. The students from the previous quarter went on to participate in a hackathon organized by Vision Aid and one of our students - Abhishek Agarwal - went on to win a prize at the hackathon. Students from previous batches have participated in hackathons organized by Shaastra - the IIT Madras tech fest.

Below are some of the students that we have taught over the past year:

Amitha bought this book for me as a birthday gift this year. Both her and I maybe called astronomy and astrophysics enthusiasts. We both love reading and learning about space, planets, stars, and galaxies as well as the physics behind some of the astronomical phenomena. And I have to admit, we both got a bit emotional when Cassini ended its mission last month.

This book is a surprisingly breezy read. If you follow Neil deGrasse Tyson on the internet and are familiar with the talks he gives and the concepts he presents, about 40-50% of the concepts presented in this book may be things that you may already know. But that doesn't mean that the book is useless. It does introduce and briefly explain a lot of new concepts. Briefly being the key word here. After all, the book is called `Astrophysics For People In A Hurry`.

There is a chapter on the periodic table that explains where most of the naturally occurring elements come from and how they are formed deep inside star cores. There is also a chapter on why most of the astronomical objects are spheroids and how these objects get shaped based on their own mass and their proximity to nearby heavy objects. There is also a very interesting chapter on how exo-planets are discovered and the different kinds of telescopes we use to study outer space. And, of course, there is a chapter dedicated to the quest for extra-terrestrial life forms.

Most of the efforts for the search of extra-terrestrial life seems to be focused on finding carbon-based life forms like us and thus focused on finding planets that support liquid water and an abundance of carbon. I had always wondered why this was the case. And I found the answer to that question in this book. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, followed by Helium and then Oxygen. That makes water the most abundant compound in the universe. In addition, Carbon is the 4th most abundant element and Carbon's unique property of being able to form polymers very easily makes the likelihood of alien life being carbon-based very high.

The book ends on a philosophical note asking the reader to acknowledge their position of privilege to be able to think about what is out there and what our place in the universe is. For, it is people who lead lives that don't involve a daily struggle for basic necessities, who can afford to think about these things.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book. It has encouraged me to look into some of the more detailed works in this field.

I came across this (slightly NSFW) post shared by Roshan on Facebook and started wondering about how evolution does not have foresight and cannot see forward nor can it go back and re-design things from scratch. I also remembered this (NSFW for gore) video of the autopsy of a giraffe where they trace the path of the laryngeal nerve from the brain to the throat which goes all the way down to the heart and back. Notice how many times Richard Dawkins uses the word `legacy` in the video. That made me realize how similar evolution is to programming on large software projects. So much of programming on large projects involves building on top of code that already exists and that involves, many a times, writing patchwork code that keeps adding on top of things so as to not break legacy support. Now, nature does not need to do maintenance and provide user-support unlike software engineers. After a point, doing this kind of patchwork starts to get unmaintainable. No wonder programmers are so eager to throw everything away and start from scratch most of the times.

This past March was 'Podcast Awareness Month' apparently. It was a concerted effort by leading podcast publishers to expand their audience. Most podcasts I listened to asked their listeners to share their podcast recommendations with the hashtag trypod on social media. So I too shared my podcast recommendations here. I thought, in addition to the tweet, I could also expand a little more and talk about what about these podcasts I like.

Today I read two very interesting articles. One was about the first "First officer" on Star Trek. Star Trek - The Original Series ran from 1966 to 1969 and it was famous for its Captain, Captain James T. Kirk (played by William Shatner, later reprised by Chris Pine in the new movie series) and even more famous for its first officer Command Spock (played by the amazing Leonard Nimoy, later reprised by Zachary Quinto in the new movie series). But, the pilot episode did not have either of these characters. The Captain in the pilot was a character named Christopher Pike. I knew this because the character makes an appearance in one of the later episodes of Star Trek. However, what I did not know was that the first officer in the pilot was played by a woman. She was referred to only as "Number One" apparently. The actress who played this character was Majel Barrett. And apparently, people were not ready to accept a woman playing the second in command on a starship. Not just the network execs but even the test audiences were not happy with this apparently. And so, the character was ditched. In fact, Majel Barrett went on to play a nurse on the series and later she appears as a different character in Star Trek - The Next Generation. In addition, she was also the voice of the ship computer on all the TV series. And hopefully, she will continue to do so in the future as well.

The second article I read was about a 13 year old Canadian girl who broke the world record for the fastest marathan in 1967. It was a time when women and underaged boys were not allowed to compete in long distance running events such as the marathons. This article is an interview with Maureen Mancuso who ran the marathon in 3:15:22 in 1967. In the article she talks about how instead of recognizing her amazing feat, the media created a controversy of her achievement. Her parents and coach were admonished for letting her compete citing health concerns. And apparently, one of the news agencies even asked her coach if she was a male in disguise. In spite of all this, she is still going strong. This is a story she shared in the article about her will to compete:

“I was running this run in Burlington, not so long ago. The Robbie Burns. And I guess nobody expected it, but the last hundred yards to the finish line, I went into a full out sprint and the guy that I was catching up to, heard me coming and he was like, ‘I don't think so!’ And so we battled it out hard as we could to the line, and then we just sat laughing at the end. The crowd caught on, and they were laughing along with us…the pair of us charging along saying ‘Oh no you don’t!,’" Mancuso laughs, again.

Credits:

• The first article, I think I found on Reddit.
• The second article was shared by Leigh Honeywell on Twitter.

I just finished reading this book called 'The Sceptical Patriot: Exploring the Truths Behind the Zero and Other Indian Glories' by Sidin Vadukut. I haven't been reading as much as I'd hoped but I have been trying to change that recently.

Before starting 'The Sceptical Patriot', I read 'Lord of the Rings'. It took me a little more than a year to finish reading it and I am quite ashamed of that fact.

Anyway, I highly recommend 'The Sceptical Patriot'. It's a breezy read and yet gives you plenty to think about. It's especially relevant in this day and age of fake news and fake pride that is spouted around. The book picks up a few of the very common 'India facts' that are forwarded on emails, WhatsApp groups and Facebook by so many and examines them in some detail all the while maintaining a charming and funny tone.

It evokes a sense of awe about the study of history, specially Indian history. I felt that there are so many historical places in India that are under appreciated. One of the 'India facts' that is explored in the book is 'India has not invaded any other country in a thousand years' and in this chapter the author mentions the 'Brihadeshwara temple' in Tanjavur (or Tanjore). I have been to this temple when I was very young and have very vague memories of it, but I hadn't understood its historical significance nor appreciated how old the temple is. Reading this book made me want to visit that temple and many other such historical places.

The book takes these 'India facts' and tries to determine if they are true by searching for and examining the evidence that supports these so called 'facts'. The book purposely does not go into great detail with the research so as to not be boring. However, it does provide references to all the research papers and historical records referred, for anybody inclined to research.

I feel that we, as Indians, tend to spout, repeat and feel proud about these so called 'facts' very often. I am sure that I have done it myself many a time. And so I wanted to learn if there is any truth to them. As it turns out, some of them do and some of them don't. To varying degrees. And I shall not spoil the fun by revealing which ones are true and which ones aren't. Go ahead, read the book and, find out for yourselves.

Hello folks!

This is an attempt to start blogging/cataloguing my thoughts again. Hopefully, this time I will be more consistent. I plan to make small posts frequently to make this into a habit. Let's see how it goes.