The Case of a Dumb Email Forward

I got a mail forward from a friend saying "That happens only in bangalore !!!" as the subject line. I usually don't believe in such mail forwards. There are several such forwards we see/get from the friends in our daily life.

This happens only if the people are using the mail just for the forwards with out thinking for a while. If they know the actual reason for the snap, which i was talking about, they have to agree with me for the abnegation.
Here i am giving the mail content from the forward:
"Technology on street..
A techie transfers fund for a penalty from his laptop near Trinity Circle in Bangalore on Tuesday....
"

Forwarding such a mail is not a problem, sending blindly to create such an impression about the public services is a issue. So i finally found the actual reason for this on knowledge base[net]. I am not sure even this is the root cause for this photo or not, but since its a public site, i can trust site than the mail. See this link, it would reveal the actual reason of this snap...
http://www.kiruba.com/2007/07/case-of-dumb-email-forward.html


+

Procastination is the cause of all the problems . . .

I don't know whether you people have faced this or not. But i faced a situation with this concept in life. Things are going fine and every thing seems to be in control. I am a fan of delaying the things to tomarrow when it comes to shopping or purchasing some thing. The thing is that i won't give much preference to do this immediately. This started happening after i left the college. Belive me i am the first person used to put leg in college out of all the people.[used to stay near to the college campus where all the rest used to stay in the city almost 20K from the college.] So what ever it is, the moment you think you can do it, doing it immediately is better than delaying it to tomarrow. Ofcourse there are few exceptions, where delaying things might help in making a good and better decision. So it is up to us to decide and act so that the plan will be crystalized and stop the aberrant mind fluctuations...


.

We can search Flickr images with yahoo search now !

This is so cool that this takes care of searching for the images with the given attributes and renders the list of the returned list :). Same thing can be done even with google too, but i am not very sure whether google does indexing of the flickr images...

Any way the things are becoming clear and no need to remember hell lot of site names to search for a desired one...

FooPlot is really Cool ...

I tried by manually entering x+1 with a liner line funtion y = x + 1 in 3D to see the graph,














http://fooplot.com/x+1 the plot is well shown in the site. I read from this site that in coming days, it will communicate with Google spreadsheets and interact with server-side scripts that do curve fitting and other tasks :) Probably i will skim through my engineering graphics book to study the mysterious curves...




+

Jakie ...

I come to know from my brother that our pet dog has left to heaven ... It was part of our family since 1997. It was so good and understands the commands well. I still remember, it never used to leave my legs when i go to home once in a while... Actually it happened a month and half ago, since i love it much, parents didn't tell me immediately ... I was passive for a while after knowing this news and found the snap that looks similar in flickr. I was thinking to bring it to my place from the place where i had born. Bringing pets to office is not a restriction/ constraint in companies like google, yahoo or amazon. She is great. I am sure i will get a new pet very soon.


+

Nokia N-series ...

This cool series has many features . . . Recenly got this N70 - phone. It comes with a real player song by rehman, the song seems like it dedicated for this series of phones. You can take snaps using 2 of its cameras. I will try to post pics from this mobile soon here in this blog . . .

One liner to ensure desired directoy hierarchy exists . . .

This tick reveals unix command line depth and expertise:
You have a predefined directory structure hierarchy and before you start the installation/pushing the binaries into them want to make sure you create the directory structure.

How can you write a command line which creates only the directory structure of a given directory. It should not creates the files, just only the directory hierarchy.

Context:

Present directory is /home/narayana/ and it has the below structure:
a
|------- b
|.........|----- c
|.........|.......|---- t1.txt
|.........|
|.........|
|.........|----- d
|.........|.......|---- t2.txt

Create a new directory called programs in /tools/narayana/ and copy only the directory structure to this.

Solution:
Create a t directory and cd to /tools/narayana/ and execute the below command to create this hierarchy.

ls -Rl /home/narayana/a | grep -e '/home/narayana/a.*:$'| cut -d ':' -f 1| awk '{print substr($1, length("/home/narayana/")+1)}'| xargs mkdir -p

This command creates it!!!

Explanation:
------------
Check it by doing recursive listing byls -Rl:
narayana.desktop% pwd
/tools/narayana/
narayana.desktop% ls -Rl
.:
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 3 narayana homedev 4096 Jul 7 13:24 a

./a:
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 4 narayana homedev 4096 Jul 7 13:24 b

./a/b:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 narayana homedev 4096 Jul 7 13:24 c
drwxr-xr-x 2 narayana homedev 4096 Jul 7 13:24 d

./a/b/c:
total 0

./a/b/d:
total 0


Check with the actual directory format:
narayana.desktop% pwd
/home/narayana
narayana.desktop% cd a
narayana.desktop% ls -Rl
.:
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 4 narayana homedev 4096 Jul 7 12:41 b

./b:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 narayana homedev 4096 Jul 7 12:40 c
drwxr-xr-x 2 narayana homedev 4096 Jul 7 12:41 d

./b/c:
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 narayana homedev 126 Jul 7 12:41 3

./b/d:
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 narayana homedev 9 Jul 7 12:41 4


+ This is useful in many instances where you just want to create the bins into which
a scheduled job can populate the stuff/demographics :)




+

Prayer . . .

Lyrics of Hayley Westenra Prayer song.

It touched me . . . Came to know from one of my friends . . .

Tears dropping:
----------------------------------------
Let your arms enfold us
Through the dark of night
Will your angels hold us
Till we see the light

Hush, lay down your troubled mind
The day has vanished and left us behind
And the wind - whispering soft lullabies
Will soothe - so close your weary eyes

Let your arms enfold us
Through the dark of night
Will your angels hold us
Till we see the light

Sleep, angels will watch over you
And soon beautiful dreams will come true
Can you feel spirits embracing your soul [:(( ]
So dream while secrets of darkness unfold

Let your arms enfold us
Through the dark of night
Will your angels hold us
Till we see the light(x2)




+

Some times you achieve nothing if you go in their way . . .

I was upset at some thing which i was expecting didn't happen. Life has become full of disappointments to me. Nothing is happening like the way i want it to happen. My brother is doing his high level schooling and asked my openion on how he can improve his aptitude skills. So inorder to assess his present skills, i posed him a question on aptitude, and even before i could finish the question, he started blaming me that the question was wrong. I was shocked for a while, i tried to convince him that the question was correct but he seemed to me in a confliction mode of state.

So i asked him to bring one of the aptitude books. He grabbed a book from the shelf and searched some pages and finally told me that my question was wrong, and casted me also that question is not there in the aptitude books. I took the book and searched for a chapter and finally found the question which was same as the one i posed. He became calm when i showed him the question. I didn't like the way he treated me when i posed the question. I asked him why did he behaved that way the answer he told me was "You ask me questions back when i ask you some thing, and most of the times you are in tensed condition and rudely respond to my queries". Then i understood the reason why he behaved in such a way. I was wandering in the hall from the beggining when this discussion had started.

I gave the books back to him, and started telling slowly why i usually respond rudely to him. I started saying some thing like this. See, i have lost most of the patience that i used to have. I am not only here to answer your questions, but also to do my work better and ultimate way in my office. Even with that much pressure, i was ready to help you. I asked him to 'Just show me one person who is guiding their bother or dependents right after the daily job hours' i was sure he can rarely find an answer to that question. He realized and kept quite, i didn't stop my class :). I know much about him, if i go in his way, a big war could have happened in between us.

But i kept quite, showed him the question, started the class 'don't misunderstand that the class here means a subject related, its just another way of warning/scoldings'. I was awaken till 5'O clock just before that day and he didn't notice it. I told him the reason for that stay, i was pushing some thing into the production and busy working. All this happned in 2 hours and the room was so silent. I swear i can see his realization in his eyes and the way he was sitting. I felt bad about it my self and tried to bring his individuality back again. And finally replacated him. He was quite happy as he got a solicitor like me. This is not at all new to me, i have seen many people in my life who made me feel like this and i never gave the chance to them to miss my lecture. My intention here is not to blame them or scold them with my experiece, but i want to let them understand the actual things behind this glimpse. We two are just staying together away from home and if we quarrel like this, no one will be happy. I know he would definitely break my leg or some thing if i try to attempt him physically, so i took the chance of changing his mind, and used the power of words to make him realize about the situation. Then suddenly we realized that it was 2'O clock and went to bed.

Education . . .

I have taken a long way to finish my education, still feel some times like i could have continued till PhD. But badly my education ended at the b.tech level it self. I had no idea what a computer is when i got the admission into the intermediate computer science education, a + 2 course that is offered to the people who get a 75% distinction in the ssc standard. 1st year i didn't attend any of the classes properly. And i used to take books from my college buddies just before the exams. There was a situation, i was not aware that a class called Engineering Electronics. One of our lecturers used to conduct this class every Sunday. Just one month before the final exams i came to know about this and attended only once class. Then i realized that i have missed a lot more such classes. I didn't feel bad about it because i had the confidence that it is just a 3+ hours exam, i can write some thing and pass in it. But the thing is that i didn't have any material with me and its not a easy subject too. But some how i got one of my friends book for 2 days, read it completely and wrote the exam. Whole class was surprised about my result. I passed that exam with very good marks. That's how my +2 ended. I used to spend lot of my time sitting at the skate land. It is a place where kids learn recreation activities.

Right after finishing the +2, luckily i got the admission into the second year of diploma in computer science and engineering. Believe me i am from a middle class family and my family couldn't support for my education at that time. But some how i convinced my parents and with the suggestions of my father in law, i got the admission in to the DCME. There were so many instances where lecturers got impressed with my knowledge and programmings skills in computers. I still remember one of my lecturer named "Vasundhara" she used to highlight the students if they did some thing interesting and good. I was one in that simple list. I used to play with Data Structures in the 2Nd year itself, and this madam used to pose me good questions. She promised that she would give a gift to the student who would come college first in the final year. I came but unfortunately, when i went to collect my certificates from the college, she already left the job.

Lets ffwd to b.tech . . .

Then coming to my B.Tech education, i was not in a mood to take up this course as my family needs support from me in all the directions. But i couldn't kill my interest and there was a miracle happened and i got the financial support from no one to get the admission. I really spent a perfect student's life in my b.tech. Believe me i was able take Reference books from the library. More over i used to read the books not in my syllabus. I don't know how, but i used to be pointed out by the lecturers to explain few topics. And i used to take it up from my side like i got the chance to prove my self. There were 2 incidents which i still remember. There was a class on DBMS and the lecturer was seriously telling about the importance of normalization and its advantages. Since i found the class like the narration of text book, i started thinking about an algorithm. But unfortunately the lecturer noticed it and increased his volume little. I thought it was because of some lady or student and was continuing my work. Right after few minutes he called my name and asked me to explain what he had told to the entire class. I had to do it no other chance to escape. So i went to the Dias and started in my way explaining 'what is normalization' advantages. Randomly i have chosen some sample data and explained the advantages by using that example. It was so nice and the entire class became fan of me, including the lecturer too. He never disturbed me after that in his class.

Another incident happened in my final year. There was a question in the internal exam asking 'What is step-wise refinement ? Explain it with the Merge-Sort Algorithm'. Actually this was not at all part of software engineering text book by Pressman. When i saw the question in the exam, it made me recall some thing that i had seen in algorithms+data structures = programs by wirth book. So i answered well with my simple English. After a week, professor distributed the papers to all the students and finally asked that question to the whole class, no body responded. So he called my name and said, only one person from this class wrote the perfect answer for this, and requested me to explain my answer to the whole class. I was feeling little shy but i know internally that i got one more chance to guide the class. So i took a small chalk lying on the table and delivered the lecture. This lecturer became close to me after that class and was so friendly.

By reading this blog entry at least you could have felt that i would have undergone a studious education. But you would have to admit me that it was not studious, it just happened like that and more over i had no one elder to me who could guide me to take up more challenges continuing education further till MS and PhD. The thing is that i don't like is procrastinating the work or tasks. I all ways wanted to finish the tasks as early as possible so that i can get some more time to think for new ideas and interesting stuff.

I have attended, few programming contests, one national (University) level technical quiz competition, you can see in the picture above. May be i will explain my experiences on these things some other time.

Invisible parameters in estimations

It is a good thing to determine and estimate the plans before you actually start doing it. I was unexpectedly invited into a directors meeting to share my ideas and discussion. There was a director and an operations manager in the room. They were discussing about estimating the load on the site and resource management and at the same time the budget. It was a startup company so it was not surprising to me at all. They already have some statistics on engineers work, increasing load and so on.

From the available statistics, no of upcoming requests and the average no of requested by the engineers, the management wants to know, in order to finish the estimated tasks, how many working days it would take. And what if we keep only the engineers who are overperforming the serves per day. The problem is very simle, in deterministic terms. Let me restate this problem in my way: "We have N tasks to be finished and M workers. And determine the days count in which this has to be finished." A simple math will definitely give the solution for this.

But what acutally the big people thinking here is about the undeterministic part of it. Few tasks cannot be finisheed just like that. Say it may take an year to move it to the resolution. If we take the non transparent attributes in to consideration here, like the criticality of the task, levels of resolution stages, budgent constraints and last but not least and important thing the resource management, it crystalizes the dint of this whole discussion. Finally they concluded that they need a tool which can manage this kind of information well and reports them the answers as per their queries. If the problem given to is deterministic you can easily solve it, but if it has some inevitable intricacies, it becomes tedious and descernible problem. Many tools are now availabe in the market to answer such kind of questions. But a delphi kind of approach is allways better, thats why they could have invited me to join them in thier discussion. Finally we decided to use Spread Sheet for the time being as it has more features than what we are expecting :) So if you can figure out how to measure the invisible parameters, you can estimate and predict future happenings :)

Consistently Inconsistent Vs Inconsistently Consistent

This is a very good Quote from one of the famous authors... I heard this sentence from one of my professors in the middle of his class. Every body was so seriously listening to his class and the class was on "Simulation and Modeling". There was a girl who came in middle and waiting at the door for the permission to get into the class room. Professor was so busy in his lecture and noticed her, gave the permission, she got into the class. And there was a guy who came late only on that particular day. He usually comes early to his classes and used to sit in one of the front antique worktables.

Professor noticed it and also gave him the permission to get into his class room. I was sitting in the same class but in the 3rd workbench and had been noticing all these events. I could imagine the professor's feeling as he was very good at his explanations not only in teaching technical stuff but also in guiding students. He said a simple sentence like "There is no problem with the people who are consistently inconsistent, but there is with the people who are inconsistently consistent". The whole class became silent and wondering why he could have made such a statement. It took me 5 to 10 secs to understand his statement and relate this to the events that were happened just few minutes before. He was very good at his comparison and associations.

His intention was not to blame either one of them or both, he was just telling his feeling about his class and the students. What he meant with his statement was that the lady who came in the middle of his class comes late every day and some times we find her missing in the classes, the guy who came next to her entrance comes regularly to his classes and sits in the front and every lecturer knows him well. Professor was trying to relate this to the general statement. If students miss classes regularly then there is no problem at all because they would have been missing concepts or theory from the beginning and that too also everyday so they wouldn't have to bother much about the missed concepts. But if a student who has been attending the classes from the beginning regularly with out fail and on one fine day if she/he misses the class or concept(s), they will be in trouble as they missed one important concept in the curriculum and they can't easily understand subsequent classes.. So this was the intention in his words.

Not only to the students this can be related this to any thing. For example, let me relate this to the physical exercises. If i am consistently doing exercises daily no problem, but if i am doing exercises once in a while it is the problem. Either i have to do physical exercises consistently or i should stop doing it. But if i try to do it on random basis, it will bring pain to my body and creates more struggles in my soul.

Think how nicely he had put it in his words :). This comes only from experience and maturity. Instead of scolding or warning just relating observation(s) to a general statement and made the whole class to understand his feelings and importance of consistency.

Sudden holiday Schedule . . .

Hmmm, i woke up in the after noon at 1'O clock, when i heard some thing like "Mess will be closed" from my room mate [he is my brother :D]. Then i woke up and brush my teeth and took bath and finallly became ready in 30 mins and ran to the mess and sat on one of the tables. After finishing lunch i was feeling like going to office even on this holiday [May 1st is a holiday in india]. But after coming back to the home, fell on the bed and was trying to take a nap, i don't know i tried hard to get sleep but it didn't come. So i opened a text book that was lying on the bed from almost 2 weeks and read some techology related to servlets. The author was Hunter and it was a very good book on Java Servlets.

After lying and reading one chapter from the book, i decided to go out and refresh my mind. So left room at 4'O clock and went to one of the famous churches in bangalore. It was Saint Patrics church on residency road. The church was closed when i went there, so i sat under a tree near by there and was staring at the doors and the greenery. Soon after one person came and opened the doors then i went inside and adjusted myself into a bench at the last from the dias and sat on my knees for praying. I spent almost considerable amount of time there. Then i heard some message beep from my mobile, and accidentally noticed that it was 5.15 PM.

Paster came and started the speech, it was in tamil so i could't understand much but got some gist out of it - "Udyogam Purusha Lakshanam" obviously this statement is same in telugu aswell so i understood his lecture to some extent. After spending some more time there i left that place and went to the nearest bus stop. Finally got into a bus after little struggling as there was much rush when i tried to get into the bus. Had food by 10 PM and made a call to home and wrote this msg.

Unfortunately i was not aware that may 1st is a holiday and i come to know about this only one day before that so i couldn't plan any trips, else really i could have planned some trip to see some place. :)

Computer in simple terms to a Child

It was morning 11:30 am, i entered into a class room where every body was jotting down seriously some thing by peeping into their books. I went to the last bench as every body is new to me and adjusted my self into a bench far away from the dias.

Few minutes after settling, i heard some voice coming from the front of the class room, she was a lady with nice voice and started pointing out the people for the passage that they were expected to finish. Pupil started getting up one by one and reading the passages that were asked to write.

Since that was my first day in that college i kept quite and took the task for the next day. She asked us to write a simple and legible paragraph on computer so that a child can understand it with out any problems...

I really liked her class and thought for a moment, decided to write it up for the next day in very simple terms like this . . .

"Computer is a machine that does calculations so fast compared to the humans. It contains a big tv like square box called monitor, a piano kind of instrument called keyboad, rectangular shape box called cpu and a small mouse like device called mouse.

Just like any other machine, it takes the input from the keyboard [you can enter by pressing the keys] does some processing and shows the result of the calculations on the monitor. We give feed or input to the computer with keyboard and it uses the cpu [Central processing unit] to perform the calculations and uses the tv screen to show the resulsts. Computers are meant to do repetitive tasks infinitely to serve the public needs. It is used for many purposes, people use these machines to play games, to watch movies, generate reports and so on.

Scientists and mathematicians have been trying to use these computers to resemble human beings. There is a subject called artificial intelligence, in which the computers are playing an important role.

I drew few pictures also with the above passage on the paper so as to grab the childs attention :). She created a very good impression in all of us. Now she is the principle of the school and have been helping lots of children in thier english."

I come across from one of my friends channels that this question has been posed by big companies during their recruitment. But i am lucky that i have faced this question at the school itself :).

Gain Band width product of a human is constant.

Surprising ?? yep, you have to agree with me on this after reading the below scribbling. Don't worry and run away, i will not heat up your head by making you sit and explaining of the derivation of transistor H parameters and amplifiers :D

If i ask you a question, say "Do you know the person who is very good at theory of relativity? ", you would obviously come up with an answer saying Einstein. Let me ask another question, "Tell me an indian mathematics scientist whose inventions and contributions are not easily digestable by the present young engineers ?" the answer shall be "Srinivasa Ramanujan". There is a special reason in common, why these people are so great.

Let me correlate this to the present world's software engineer's life. If a person concentrates on too many technologies he is knowledgeable in all of them, but he would not be that perfect/master in all of them. Rather, if he/she concentrates on only one thing, she/he will deserve a great position and point of contact for the questions and even for the research problems in that area.

Well, this correlation was blinking in my mind when i was on the way to the office today morning. If you want to understand the actual technical details, you are most welcome at the link below.

[Note:] Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gain-bandwidth_product for a technical understanding.

"Love" A reading from Times Of India

I read this article in times of india when i was staying with my room mates in bangalore. The actual rights goes to the author. Enjoy this article, you would definitely feel some thing if you read this completely...

My husband is engineer by profession, I love him for his steady nature, and I love the warm feeling when i lean against his broad shoulders.

Three years of courtship and now, two years into marriage, i would have to admit that i am getting tired of it. The reasons for me loving him before have now transformed in to the cause of all my restlessness. I am a sentimental woman and extremely sensitive when it comes to a relationship and my feelings. I yearn for the romantic moments, like a little girl yearning for candy. Myhusband is my complete opposite, his lack of sensitivity, and the inability of bringing romantic moments into our marriage has disheartened me about love.

One day, I finally decided to tell him my decision, that I wanted a divorce. "Why?" he asked, shocked. "I am tired, there are no reasons for everything in the world!" I answered.

He kept silent the whole night, seemed to be in deep thought with a lighted cigarette at all times. My feeling of disappointment only increased. Here was a man who can't even express his predicament, what else can I hope from him ? Finally he asked me: What can I do to change your mind ?

Some body said it right:it's hard to change a person's personality, and I guess, I have started losing faith in him. Looking deep into his eyes I slowly answered: Here is the question. If you can answer and convince my heart, I will change my mind--Let's say, I want a flower located On the face of a mountain cliff, and we both are sure that picking the flower will cause your death. Will you do it for me? He said: I will give you your answer tomarrow... My hopes just sank by listening to his response.

I woke up the next morning to find him gone, and saw a piece of paper with his scratchy hand writing, underneath a milk glass, on the dining table near the front door.

The note read: "My dear, I would not pick that flower for you, but please allow me to explain the reasons furhter."This first line was already breaking my heart. I continued reading... "When you use the computer, you always mess up the software programs, and you cry infront of the screen. I have to save my fingers so that I can help to restore those programs and wipe off your tears.

You always leave the house keys behind, so I have tosave my legs to rush home to open the door for you. You love travelling but always lose your way in the city, I have to save my eyes to show you the way. You always have the cramps whenever your 'good friend' approaches every month, I have to save my palms so that I can calm the cramps in your tummy.

You like to stay indoors, and I worry that you will be infected by infantile autism. I have to save my mouth to tell you jokes and stories to cure your boredom. You always stare at the computer, and that will do nothing good for your eyes, I have to save my eyes so that when we grow old, I can help to clip your nails, and help to remove those annoying white hairs.

So Ican also hold your hand while strolling down the beach, as you enjoy the sunshine and the beautiful sand... and tell you the colour of flowers, just like the colour of the glow on your face... So, my dear, unless I am sure that there is someone who loves you more than I do, I could not pick that flower yet, and die..."

My tears dropped on the letter, and blurred the ink of his handwriting. I continued reading... "Now, that you have finished reading my answer, if you are satisfied, please open the front door for I am standing outside, like everyday, with your favourite bread and fresh milk."

I rush to pull open the door, and saw his anxious face, clutching tightly with his hands, the milk bottle and loaf of bread. Now I am very sure that no one will ever love me as much as he does, and I have decided to leave the flower alone.

That's life, and love. When one is surrounded by love, the feeling of excitement fades away, and one tends to ignore the true love that lies in between the peace and dullness.

Love shows up in all forms, even very small and cheeky forms. It has never been a model, it could be the dullest and boring form. Flowers and romantic moments are only used and appers on the surface of the relationship. Under all this, the pillar of the true love stands. And that's reason enough to live.

Message to Students

Many times i see the people doing crash courses to get into a job after the graduation. But what i feel is that, the employers really want people who are smart enough to do the given job/task, irrespective of the technology. The important thing is the confidence in basic concepts which is lacking in few people now a days. I am very sure only college days are the ones which are very critical in our life time. What ever we learn/ practice in these days, would help through out our career.

You should be smart enough to learn a new technology. For achieving this, you should be very good in basic concepts. For example, i came accross one situation in my task where i have to find out the product which has occupied the K'th place in the page view counts list. And there are huge number of products. If you look at this problem, this is a basic computer science algorithm "Find the Kth highest element". You can do it in O(N^2) with a simple heuristic. But there is a way to do it in O(N). This is how you should THINK. Similarly OOPS, very interesting topic is related to every thing in the IT industry. Software engineering is another thing, with which the present organizations are perpetually following for their success. There will be lots of project processes involved in the organizations and they strictly follow the concepts of software engineering, like Requirements gathering, Design, implementation, testing, release, maintanence and so on.

You might have atleast felt why Studying outdated things in our syllabus, but you should remember that you are learning the core which is basement for your career. So be confident in all the subjects in your syllabus and if you feel that you are confident, then try to learn advanced technologies. Learning a new technology or platform is not that difficult for a person who is very good in basics. Try to be in sync with the latest problems. I still remember on of my professors lecture, he said "You should have a daily feed back from your side, At the end of every day, you should think before sleeping whether you have learnt any new thing/idea/process/topic that day or not. If you do it for few days, you would come to know what you are and upgrading to the rapidly changing world".

Lecturers are gods when you are in college so please dont hesitate to ping your lecturers for new problems and think differently, you would become a master in your area of interest. Try attempting the programming puzzle contests and participating in technical Quizs, this must be a begining for your search.