zarth.dev

Day 2 of Build in Public - Today I added an input field, and worked on the interaction. User sees the mandarin (with pinyin as a hint) and types his answer in the input field below the flashcard. And then he presses Enter. The card rotates to reveal the correct answer. Currently seeing a weird flicker that appears while the flashard rotates. I am working hard in removing that flicker.

i want to perfect this flashcard's look and animation before working on other things. After that is done, I want to add an input field for the user to write the meaning of the mandarin. Still looking for more feedback on the UI. (Because I don't have a designer's brain)

Dropping today.

Day 3 of learning Chinese. Today I started reading the history of China. And I have not taken the traditional route of starting from prehistory. I am really interested in learning about the period from Shang dynasty to Ming Dynasty. Note how I tired writing the Mandarin characters of the names of these dynasties. These buds are complicated on next level. I mean just look at it: Xia: 夏 (朝) Shang:商 (朝) Zhou: 周 (朝) Qin: 秦 (朝) Han: 汉 (朝) Sui: 隋 (朝) Tang: 唐 (朝) Song: 宋 (朝) Yuan: 元 (朝) Ming: 明 (朝) Qing: 清 (朝) Special note: The character (朝) is read as Chào and it means DYNASTY. I can't even think of how do the Chinese manage of type Mandarin on their smartphones and computers. Like for a foreigner it is really easy. We write the word in plain English (called the pinyin), like Chào and the software automatically selects 朝 character. But for the natives, who don't know pinyin, it must be really hard. I have seen a video where a radicle based keyboard was designed in 19th century but that shit was so hard to massage manufacture that it never became very popular. And this is why Calligraphers were and are so important in all East Asian cultures. Their pictographic languages are very hard to type without using a helping language like English. Coming back to the history part, I am really interested in reading a lot of Chinese history. Coming from India which is the only other culture that continues to thrive even today, I find a lot of similarities between both of them. We both originated from remote river valleys and spread over vast geographical areas. Both of us survived thousands of years, pioneered different technologies and created complex society structure, influenced our neighbours. We both created our own distinct languages : Sanskrit and Mandarin which are really sophisticated despite being really ancient. We both developed our own architecture, religion, and even pioneered two of the most widely known fabrics of ancient world - Indian cotton and Chinese Silk. I mean, everyone who tried to conquer India or China, became Indian and Chinese. We conquered the conquerors. Be it Bactrians, Sakas, Kushans, the muslim rulers and even Europeans, everyone assimilated in Indian culture. Same happened with Mongols in China. I am particularly interested in Han, Sui, Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties. The amount of innovation done by these dynasties were really ahead of its time. Like they were the ones who started Government exams, paper currency, standardized weights and measures, manufacturing of sugar, and so on. Man I can talk about it for hours.

This series is digital version of my notes of STM32's reference manual, and Cube Mx generated code. In the first one, I have talked about the memory architecture and also listed the peripherals provided in the STM32F446. I hope you all like it!

Would you rather take a 100 hits from a whip or eat a 100 onions? (you have to choose one or the other, there's no escape)

This week's articles - 1. Make a good frnd 2. Don't ask for success 3. Learn Analog electronics. Dedicated to my Maggi! We miss u maggu, we will carry your memories forever. - me, mom, paa and sis

So while weekend culminated with: "What the fuck are you doing with your life thing!" * And I kept on thinking ki agar X pe early start krta to monetization se paisa aata. * Agar professor ne application accept kr li hoti to aaj IISc me rehta. * Agar micro controller me pehle se interest aa jaata to aaj kisi startup me decently paying job me hota. * Agar college me ladki pe km aur android app development pe zyada dhyaan deta to aaj kisi jagah pe senior android developer hota Ghar waalo ko mere me stability chahiye, employers ko mere me skills chahiye, professors ko mere application me top degrees and top colleges chahiye, ladki ko mere me thodi maturity n seriousness chahiye and mujhko mere me wo rich dad k sons jaisi lifestyle, low fat physique chahiye. I feel like the person jisne apni life ka easiest path to success bohot saal pehle hi kho diya h. Can't blame my family, the did everything to deserve a talented, mature, and intelligent child, but they got a rebel like me. Can't blame myself because everything I did was on my own, comeback in studies, comeback from lowest times, saving myself from bad addictions, compromising on stuff that most of the ppl of my age do, hiding what I feel and yet listening to them, and so on. Whom should I blame? I feel like a guy born in wrong era, ek generation aage ya ek generation peeche paida hota to shayad life itni miserable ni hoti. The hardest part of dealing with everything is that the parents don't have faith in me, they want instant results. Professors and CTOs needs kids with ready made skills and don't care for someone with a curious mind. Behen k laudo, agar mai 2 month me sabkuch se deal krte hue tumhe letter likhne ki capacity pe aa gya hu, to 3 ya 6 month sirf tumhara kaam krte hue mai kaha pahuch jaunga? Lekin nahi, sb ko pehle se seekha hua banda chahiye. All I need is an environment where I can focus on one thing with 0 need to think about anything else. But I think it is too much to ask.

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We ain't 1% of this legend. I urge everyone to read about M. Vishweshvaraya, whose birthday (today) is celebrated as Engineer's day in India.

I have sent the email on this auspicious day of Bappa. Please pray that I get the opportunity to work at one of the most amazing labs in IISc BLR. 🤞

Today's goal

I am sceptical of future me fumbling the interview for an embedded system developer role. Reason: I am using STM32 HAL. While HAL in itself is not a bad thing, but it encapsulates a lot of imp stuff. That is why I am working on a series of articles, where I deep dive into the HAL and explain the low-level stuff it is hiding. So, I urge all of you to read them, ask questions to me in DM/comments, because if I can explain the stuff to you, I know the stuff. Here is the first one in the series: medium.com/@the.zarth.dev/st…

Maybe now you can appreciate how f-ing cool @QVHenkel's work is.

And at last I thank myself to choose HAL over bare-metal because look how much code did it write for me. in my main.c file.