Telugu Bytes

We chart the rise of SS Rajamouli over the years, from Shantinivasam to Baahubali.

• Shantinivasam
• Student No. 1 and the years of obscurity
• Simhadri
  • Intensity
  • Inspirations from Braveheart
  • Dialogues and dramatization
• Sye
  • The villain
• Chatrapathi
  • Utilizing Prabhas
  • The interval block
• Vikramarkudu
  • Sleaze in the first half
  • Titla
  • The mass appeal
• Yamadonga
  • The pre-interval scene
  • NTR's transformation
• Magadheera
  • His best story?
  • Periods of sustained drama
• His influences, inspirations and claims of plagiarism
  • Simhadri : Singamalai scene - Braveheart
  • Sye : Coach pep talk - Any Given Sunday
  • Chatrapathi
  • Magadheera : Om Shanti Om?
  • Magadheera's original story
• Maryadaramanna
  • Purpose
• Eega
  • Story and VFX
  • Surprises
• Baahubali
  • Culmination of his learnings
  • Craft
• Rajamouli vs. Competition
  • Top 5 directors in India
• What's next for Rajamouli?
  • Meluha trilogy
  • Mahabharatam
• What makes Rajamouli Rajamouli?
  • Personality traits
  • Forever the learner
  • Lessons
• Conclusion

Dhruv and Spidy (Sri Atluru) attempt a review of Baahubali.

• This episode is full of spoilers. Please watch the movie before you listen. Please!
• We sometimes slip into English during the conversation. It's not deliberate. Excuse us.
• We sometimes refer to celebrities (cast and crew) in the singular (athadu, vaadu). This is purely because it's a casual conversation between friends. We mean no disrespect - we love and adore them!

• How we liked the movie
• Talk from the audience
• Announcement, budget, marketing and expectations
• Spidy's favorite scenes from the film
• Dhruv's favorite scenes from the film
• Character introductions
• How songs fit into the film
• Post-interval block
• War scenes
• da Vinci's chariot design
• Prabhas and Rana as Baahubali and Bhallaladeva
• Anushka as Devasena
• Ramyakrishna and the character of Shivagami
• Senthil's cinematography
• VFX - The waterfall and the fort
• Keeravani's outstanding music and background score
• Tidbits and trivia
• Flaws
• Reviewing the reviews
• Looking forward to Part 2

• Dhruv and Ravi's take on trips and planning
• Dick Costolo is stepping down as CEO of Twitter
  • An employee's farewell letter
  • BBC's worst CEOs of 2014
• TWTR stock price in the last three months
• What is Twitter?
  • Microblogging service or a social network
  • Montly Active Users (MAU)
  • Twitter vs. Facebook MAU
• Chris Sacca's open letter - What Twitter Can Be
• 1 billion people have tried Twitter, but most don't stick
• Is the onboarding process broken?
• Are they slow to execute?
• What can Twitter do?
  • Become a protocol - or is it too late?
  • Focus on 'Live'
  • Mine tweets for deep insights
• Who should be the next CEO?
• Will Google buy Twitter?

• El Capitan, the name (hint: Yosemite's half-dome)
• OS X Wi-Fi performance
• Metal on OS X
  • Possibilities on Apple TV
• iOS 9
  • Search and deep linking to apps
  • WebKit content blocker
  • WKWebView
• watchOS 2
  • Native apps
  • Possibilities
• Apple Music and Apple News

• Sundar Pichai's shoutout to the TV show 'Silicon Valley'
• Hooli, the fictitious company in the show
• Android M
  • Granular app permissions
  • Web views can share cookies
  • Google Now on Tap
• Josh Topolsky's article on Google Now on Tap.
• Google Photos
  • Competition: Flickr, Amazon Photos, iCloud photo library, Dropbox
  • Machine learning for photos
• Android Pay
• Google Cardboard (VR headset)
  • Google : RGV :: Oculus : Rajamouli

• Dhruv's thoughts on his Apple Watch
  • Pricing - is it really worth it?
  • Fitness trackers: Apple Watch vs. Fitbit vs. others
  • Other features
• Dhruv's India trip
  • Situation in Telangana
  • Situation in Andhra
  • Weather
  • Tech scene in Bangalore
  • Indian tech salaries vs. US salaries
  • Web apps vs. Mobile apps for Indian startups

• Thoughts on MacBook
  • Pros and cons
  • Looks
  • Ports
  • Who is it for?
  • Competition: Dell XPS 13, Asus and Acer's ultrabooks
  • Would you buy?
• Thoughts on Apple Watch
  • Pricing
  • Would you buy?
  • Which one?
  • Competition: Fitbit, Pebble
• What's the best smartphone in the market?

• Sorry for the background hiss, couldn't get rid of it completely.

What to prepare:

• Dhruv's take
• Ravi's take

Algorithms:

• Linked lists, stacks and queues, sorting, trees and search, hash tables, graphs, strings, dynamic programming
• Textbooks: CLRS, Algorithms by Sedgewick
• Sedgewick's Algorithms's courses on Coursera.
• Cracking the Coding Interview
• Programming Interviews Exposed
• LeetCode

When to prepare:

• Dhruv's take
• Ravi's take

How to prepare:

• Solving on whiteboards
• Attitude
• Resume and projects

This is Part 1 on our two-part podcast on Programming Interviews. This week, we talk about how we went from hating programming interviews to understanding and appreciating them, and doing well.

• Our first experience with programming interviews at BITS Pilani in 2005-06.
• How our friend Sankar Tanguturi mastered the art of interviews, and taught us how to do the same.
• Our initial hatred for interviews
• Why should I study algorithms etc. to interview for jobs where I'll be doing something completely different? Ravi answers some FAQs.
• How much does luck matter in interviews?

Hopefully, we've answered the "why" in this episode. In the next one, we talk about "how" to prepare for programming interviews.

• Pawan Kalyan on Twitter.
• Why do celebrities use Twitter? Why not Facebook?
• Reach of Facebook vs. Twitter in India
• Can we use Twitter analytics as a metric for success?
• 2014 in tech
• Things Dhruv is looking forward to in 2015
  • Apple Watch
  • Rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning
  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • Virtual Reality (VR)