Hey there, My Name is Kiran Kumar (so is the name of this site) and I am a 23 yr old web developer from Mangalore, India. This blog is a place for me to share my thoughts and my contributions to the open source community. Apart from that, this website is my face on the internet where I publish links to my work and a medium for you guys to reach me anytime. You have reached the about me page on my blog and I should say that this was one of the most difficult part of writing a blog, i.e, writing about thyself. So here it goes,
I am a Chemical engineer by degree, Oracle employee by the day and a freelance developer by the night
My interest in the web technologies started in late 2005 when I became a part of the web enthusiasts club at my college; NITK Surathkal. By then I had already decided that I would pursue chemical engineering as I had no clear cut idea on what specialisation to choose. But slowly my interests in web technologies started to captivate me and I started spending most of my time working on the web. In my college, I started becoming known for the websites I designed and the posters I created. In my free time I had learnt a lot of different technologies on my own. My first love was for SWiSH , an alternative to Macromedia Flash 5 at that time. I liked to create fancy text effects and make small flash movies using Swish. Slowly, I moved on to 3dsmax, to enter into the world of visual effects. But the hardware config of my desktop prevented me from getting too close to CGI. Simple 3d scenes took a lot of time to be rendered, and when the rendering time went to the magnitude of days coupled with the frequency of power cuts in India , it became an impossible feat to get anything out of it.
Then I found my new interest in PHP after one of my friends told me about it. And since then, I have been actively involved in PHP development. To me, the simplicity of the language combined with the power of the open source community always gave way to endless possibilities. Along with PHP came all its friends. Javascript, HTML, Flash, Photoshop, I loved them all !
I worked on a couple of different softwares/technologies and here is the list of things which I can recall right now :
- Rating:
PHP 5 - Rating: ExtJS framework
- Rating: Flash CS3 & Actionscript 3 -
- Rating:
HTML & CSS : - Rating: Javascript
- Rating: Joomla 1.5 component, plugin creation
- Rating: Selenium & QTP UI automation
- Rating: Titanium framework for iPhone & android app development
- Rating: Photoshop
- Rating: VBscript & VB app design -
- Rating: Google sketchup 3d modelling & rendering
- Rating: Facebook API & Twitter API
- Rating: Poser animation
- Rating: 3dsmax
- Rating: Matlab coding & GUI
- Rating: Autocad (2d only)
- Rating: HP Quality center OTA API
I worked on a small content management system of my own which , in the final year of my college this helped me get a job in Oracle and be a part of Content Management (ECM) team in Oracle. At Oracle, I am a part of Middleware suite globalization team where I work with people from Beijing, Tokyo and San Francisco on Oracle’s acquired as well as in-house ERP applications. The toughest part of the job is learning to understand the accents used by different people.[Update: I now work as a mobile developer at an e-commerce startup flipkart.com]
Until recently, I was only involved in web based projects, but the day I can across Appecelerator’s Titanium framework, I said ‘this is definitely my cup of tea’.For the last 6 months, I have been busy developing native applications for iPhone & Android using the Titanium framework and I absolutely love it.[Update: I have started hating it now. Its very difficult to manage titanium projects when they become big]
I am passionate about my work and I always love to learn new things. I hate limiting myself to a single domain and always push myself hard to explore new interests which can keep me occupied all the time. People may call it ‘lack of focus’ , hyper-wandering-mind or a Jackass of all trades ! But its just the way I am designed. There hasnt been a day where I dont get a tingly feeling about learning or doing something new. But most of my work have been in varied domain, and are unorganized.
I think that much text should be good enough for you to give a glimpse into my life, if you like to get in touch with me send me a mail, or chat with me, or follow me on twitter or drop in a comment.