Vacation Resources

Make your vacations worth it!

Contents

Hello Juniors!

Enjoying with friends and partying? Well, we hope so. One advice: don’t do drugs. ;)

Since this is the first big vacation, you should spend this time productively.

Apologies on being late, but here are some suggestions we thought to be useful:

Fun and enjoyment

The first and foremost objective of any vacation is fun. At first glance it might not seem so, but quarantine and fun can go hand in hand! Binge your favorite TV shows, movies, YouTube channels, workout in your home, video-call your relatives, or try your culinary skills. Observe good personal hygiene and practice social distancing.

Academia

Starting the courses of the next semester is a good idea. The courses are interesting and some of them (or at least their basics) can easily be understood, by reading the books of the respective course. However, we would strictly recommend that you devote your time to learning something new as you may not get time to learn new things during the semester.

Additionally, you can learn from online courses which can be found on these websites:

  1. EDX
  2. Coursera
  3. MIT OpenCourseWare
  4. Udacity
  5. Udemy

Universities like MIT offer free online courses on a variety of subjects. You can access these courses here.

You must try something that you will not learn in your courses. We would recommend to go for courses from the above-mentioned sites, choose one which does not have many prerequisites and complete it by watching lectures according to your pace, say 1-2 at a day. You can try your hand on courses of basic sciences, i.e. either physics or maths or something completely different, like Web development and Designing.

Let’s dig into the content now.

Basics of Circuits and Electronics

For basic knowledge of circuits and electronics you can try :

MIT 6.002 Circuits & Electronics

  1. MITx 6.002.1x Circuits and Electronics 1: Basic Circuit Analysis | edX.

  2. MIT 6.002 Circuits and Electronics, Spring 2007 | Youtube

It will give you an idea of why we study what we study. This is a must-do.

Digital Logic Design

For those of you who enjoyed the Digital Logic Design course this semester,

This video series covers the very basics of digital electronics and seeks to develop the basics for combinational and sequential electronics.This series is the starting point in the world of digital electronics.

This video series is the second part of the digital electronics series,it covers the combinational and sequential circuit design and also delves into the designing of systems to solve the real world problems.

This video series is the third part of the digital electronics series,it covers System design using various tools available to us and also try to design some systems.The series also covers the basics of FPGA prototyping and circuit implementation.

This document deals with static time analysis of a system.Static timing analysis is a method of validating the timing performance of a design by checking all possible paths for timing violations under worst-case conditions.

Semiconductor Devices

This course will be taught to you in the 3rd semester. It is advisable to go through the following material before coming back from the vacations.

Analog

DO NOT WATCH ANALOG IC BEFORE WATCHING ANALOG CIRCUITS

For further resources this Google Doc

Lt Spice

For Those of you who are interested in circuit design and simulation you can check out Lt Spice,it is one of the open source tools we use to design,analyse and test integrated circuits is Lt spice.It provides a plethora of different analysis utilities like transient, noise, AC, DC, DC transfer function, DC operating point and fourier analysis along with the basic simulation of the system.You can install it from https://ltspice-iv.en.lo4d.com/windows.In order to use Lt spice to its full extent,you can check out the link given below to see various articles on how to use specific features of Lt spice.

link

Software Development

Competitive Programming

This is the best time to learn C/C++, as it will come in handy in future courses and also in competitive programming. After learning Java, it will not be too tough.

You can solve problems on SPOJ, Codechef, Project Euler, Erdos.

Design

  • Behance, Dribbble, EyeOnDesign - for inspiration and ideas.

  • Lynda - for tutorials

  • Dribbble > Behance for UI/UX.

  • Medium for reading about design processes and things like typography

  • For UI/UX: go here

  • For fresh updates/insights: updates-insights

Computer Architecture/Verilog

As this course will also be taught to you in the 3rd semester, you are advised to go through the basics during the vacations.

Machine Learning/Deep Learning

Physics

You can also try reading research papers and blogs.

  1. Arxiv
  2. Reddit Ask Science
  3. Physics Stack Exchange
  4. Google Scholar

Your IITR email and the LAN provide access to IEEE and other journals where you can find research publications. In case you donot have access to IITR services then you can also use websites like Sci-Hub or Library Genesis

Networking

LinkedIn

Math

  1. Online Courses
  2. Better Explained
  3. Division by zero

Trying small electronic circuits, e.g. Implement a basic logic gate on a breadboard, Using 555 timer for making buzzers etc.

  • You can also read blogs about upcoming computing technologies and the future of the transistor. This will help you in figuring out your field of interest.

  • A very nice website related to making products out of your project idea is Predictable designs. You can subscribe to get interesting articles.

Non-Academia

Besides learning academically, you can try learning something else also like driving, or any other fun sport, say swimming or skating. Basically, do whatever you like. Read novels and blogs. You can even write your own blogs on Medium by making your account on it.

You can try some courses offered by the Department of Humanities too, like: Public Speaking (Resource: Coursera Course) and Communication Skills (Resource: Coursera Course). Don’t hesitate, you need to start somewhere! :D

Reading

Books can show you new worlds (real and imagined) and speak with voices you may not encounter otherwise. College marks (sadly) the end of childhood and the start of an independent existence. Therefore it is imperative that you attempt to observe and understand the world around you. Push the limits of your comfort and use this time to read authors and subjects that you may not otherwise. Easy reading includes Ruskin Bond, Neil Gaiman, Agatha Christie, etc. For deeper reading, a theme-wise list of suggestions is provided below. This is of course not the best or exhaustive, but it is a start.

Some Easy Reads

  1. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck - Mark Manson
  2. Wings of Fire - Kalam
  3. The Story of My Experiments with Truth - M.K. Gandhi
  4. Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie
  5. Wise and Otherwise - Sudha Murthy
  6. Start-up Nation - Dan Senor and Saul Singer
  7. Ananda Math (Hindi) - Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
  8. आज भी खरे हैं तालाब (Hindi) - Anupam Mishra
  9. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out - R. Feynman
  10. Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
  11. Karma Yoga - Swami Vivekananda

Political Theory

  1. The Three Languages of Politics - Arnold Kling
  2. Prisoners of Geography - Tim Marshall
  3. Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari
  4. The Clash of Civilisations - Samuel P. Huntington
  5. Why Nations Fail - Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
  6. Hind Swaraj - M.K. Gandhi

Continental Philosophy

  1. Man’s Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
  2. The Stranger - Albert Camus
  3. The Hindu view of life - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
  4. The Web of Indian Life - Sister Nivedita
  5. Integral Humanism - Deen Dayal Upadhyaya

Feminism

  1. A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf
  2. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

History

  1. The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History - Sanjeev Sanyal
  2. Pakistan or the Partition of India - Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
  3. Chicago Addresses - Swami Vivekananda

Economics

  1. Economics in One Lesson - Henry Hazlitt
  2. Freakonomics - Steven Dubner & Steven Levitt
  3. When Corporations Rule the World - David Korten
  4. India Unincorporated - Ramachandran Vaidyanathan
  5. Small Is Beautiful - E. F. Schumacher

Satire

  1. Lord of The Flies - William Golding
  2. 1984 - George Orwell

Random Cool Stuff

  1. The Rusty Series - Ruskin Bond
  2. White Nights - Fyodor Dostoevsky
  3. The Kingkiller Chronicles - Patrick Rothfuss
  4. Dune - Frank Herbert

Miscellaneous

  1. In Conversation: A series of Interviews with people who have helped shaped India - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAJ6pLsaJ-Yq82ut-wc61A885BqR9Bn2u
  2. Richard Feynman: The World from another point of view - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNhlNSLQAFE&list=PLAJ6pLsaJ-YoyZdGMhEDz9hjxUvitf4U2&index=7&t=45s
  3. The Tao of Physics: Fritjof Capra - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBJFJVZMnlo&list=PLAJ6pLsaJ-YoyZdGMhEDz9hjxUvitf4U2&index=5&t=1527s
  4. Principles of Microeconomics (MIT) - https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/14-01sc-principles-of-microeconomics-fall-2011/
  5. Crash Course Philosophy - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtNgK6MZucdYldNkMybYIHKR
  6. exurb1a - https://www.youtube.com/user/willunicycleforfood
  7. Every Frame a Painting - https://www.youtube.com/user/everyframeapainting
  8. The Seen & The Unseen - https://seenunseen.in/
  9. Nerdwriter - https://www.youtube.com/user/Nerdwriter1
  10. Six Centuries of English Poetry - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30235
  11. Course on Indian Knowledge Systems - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRfu94TCePTtVPR-kC4RpIGIwo7-ViCGP

Bottom Line: Just don’t sit dumb. Do something, anything you like, and make your vacations productive and fruitful.

Cheers.

P.S.: Contact us anytime you want, we will be happy to help! :)