What I think about

Season of KDE 2011 - I'm in !!

2011-05-15T22:08:00.004+05:30

It feels great to be a part of Planet KDE! :)

I had submitted a proposal titled "Clone Tool for digiKam image editor" for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2011. Unfortunately, my proposal was not accepted. The results of GSoC and details of Season of KDE (SoK) 2011 came in together. I was still interested in working on digiKam so I planned to apply for SoK and spoke to some digiKam contributors. Marcel Wiesweg agreed to mentor me on a project - Face Recognition in digiKam.

I have been involved in some open-source projects only limited to use, evangelizing and bug reporting, but it will be my first time to actually contribute as a developer. In the coming months, I have lots of hacking to do. I shall post more on this in a while.

Analog Devices placement experience

2010-12-28T16:35:00.008+05:30

[ REMOVED DUE TO COMPANY POLICIES ] SORRY !!

Summer of 2010

2010-06-26T20:55:00.008+05:30

So the Summer of 2010 is almost over and it’s time for me to head back to college for the final year of my Bachelors. Time passes so soon...Here is a flashback of how I spent this summer break.

I have a passion for technology and wanted to take up some challenging research work in my area of interest this summer. I applied for the UGC Summer Internship Program 2010 at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) under the Electrical Engineering Department and was among the 20 students in India to be selected for it. I worked under Prof. A.G. Ramakrishnan at the Machine Intelligence and Language Enginnering (MILE) Lab and was guided by one of his PhD. student, Thotreingam Kasar. My project was on Camera Based Document Analysis and Recognition, to be more specific, the topic was “Robust Text Detection and Extraction in Scenic Colour Images”.

I am very busy currently but would try to include the technical details of the project in the coming posts as I get time..

Why you should play the lottery

2009-12-30T18:30:00.002+05:30

If you know anything at all about probability theory, you know that playing the lottery is a bad idea -- your chances of winning are very low. Or more precisely, if the lottery ticket costs $10, then your expected winnings are less than $10. Even so, I'm going to convince you that it is mathematically optimal for you to play the lottery.

Imagine that all you have is $1000 in cash. That's it. This is your whole livelihood. Would you bet it all on a coin flip? If you win, you get $2000; if you lose, you lose everything! Of course you wouldn't. You would rather spend that money on food for the next few days, while you are looking for a job.

Imagine instead that you are a millionaire, and you enjoy playing poker. Would you agree to play poker with your friends for $1000? Let's say they are of a similar skill level as you are, and they are fun people to hang around. Will you play? Sure. Maybe. Why not? It's only $1000. It's only 0.1% of your net worth. Your expected winnings are about $0 (breaking even), and the fun you will have playing is definitely worth more than that.

The point I am trying to make is that the first $1000 in your bank account is worth much more to you than your most recently added $1000. The value of money, to you, decreases the more money you have. Mathematicians call this "utility". If you buy something for $20, then you want that thing more than you want the $20. That thing has higher utility for you. The person selling you the thing wants the $20 more than he wants the thing. The couch has lower utility for him. Both sides win (increase their total utility).

Coming back to the money, it seems that the more money you have, the less is the utility of $1000 to you. In fact, things are a bit more non-linear. Imagine if you had $X in your bank account, for various values of X from $0 up to $1 million. What would your quality of life be? With $0, it would suck. Let's call that zero quality of life. With $1 million, life would be pretty sweet. Let's call that 100 units of quality. There is some non-linear, increasing function that maps money in the bank to quality of life. If you had nothing, and somebody gave you $X, the blue curve shows what your quality of life would become.

There are some bumps around $10,000 (the price of a car) and $100,000 (the price of a down payment on a house). This function is not concave.

Now imagine you already have $10,000 in your bank account. How much would your life improve if somebody gave you $10? Very little. $100? Still very little. $1,000? A bit. $1 million? It would go all the way up to 100 units. The red curve shows your new quality of life after receiving $X once you already have $10,000.

So what does this have to do with playing the lottery? Let's say a lottery ticket costs $10, and it gives you a small chance to win $1 million. That chance is almost certainly smaller than 1/100,000; otherwise, the lottery organizers have made a terrible mistake. Let's say the chance is half that -- 1/200,000. Should you play the lottery?

In terms of maximizing your wealth, no, you shouldn't. Your expected winnings are -$5 (negative $5). But what about quality of life? That's a lot more important than money! It depends on how much money you have. Let's say it is $10,000. What is your expected gain in quality of life? If you lose, you lose $10, which is worth almost nothing. If you win, you can buy a house. Your quality of life jumps all the way up to above 100. It sounds like you should play! In fact, it makes sense to play whenever you find yourself in one of the convex parts of the utility function that is curved enough to compensate for the negative expected value of the lottery.

In simple terms, if you don't mind risking $10 to win an amount of money that is larger than you would be able to earn at work, then sometimes it makes financial sense to play the lottery... :)

A test of common sense

2009-12-21T18:52:00.006+05:30

Everybody has gut reactions. Have a look at the following two yes/no questions and tell me whether your first impulse is to say yes or no. I'm curious if anyone can "feel" the right answer to both questions, without having to think about it.

Question #1: I give you a fair 6-sided die. You inspect and weigh it and agree that it is fair. You roll it three times, and it shows the number 6 every time. I bet Rs.100 that it's going to be 6 again. Would you bet Rs.400 against me? (If it comes up 6, you lose Rs.400; if not, you win Rs.100.)

Question #2: Award-winning research has shown that 4 out of 5 math students at the University of California in Sunnydale wear white socks. We walk into a UC Sunnydale math class and look at the sock colour of 10 students. They are all white. I bet Rs.400 that the next student we check will also be wearing white socks. Would you bet Rs.100 against me? (If they are white, you lose Rs.100; if not, you win Rs.400.)

While we are in a betting mood, how much would you bet that your answers are correct? Probability is hard...

Post your answers as comments to this post and test your common sense.. :)

Edit: I have posted the answers to the questions as comments to this post..

Cricinfo Rocks...

2009-12-16T23:04:00.005+05:30

For all the cricket loving net savvy junta, Cricinfo is like God!! The wikipedia of cricket; first thing you would turn to if you are talking about cricket. Along with their live scores and awesome commentary, the thing which makes me a fan of Cricinfo is the quality of articles published on their site. Some of the articles published could be rated as classics in the true sense of the beautiful description, the elan, the charm which is present in the writing of the greatest writers. There are many articles worth saving (used to save them as Firefox bookmaks), but eventually lost them during Windows re-installation.

This is an abstract from one of the article which justified that Andrew Strauss is better placed than his predecessors to develop the winning culture his side so needs. The way the writer describes it is just awesome.. :)

"Durability counts among his (referring to Strauss) strong points, and it is an important quality in a captain. According to some, cricket captains merely walk out in smart blazers for the toss and are otherwise as powerless as traffic policemen in Kolkata. In fact, they take a hundred small decisions every day, must be able to make up their minds quickly and to live with the consequences. Before long, mental stamina becomes a factor. Happily, Strauss does not seem to be the tormented sort, forever agonizing over yesterday's mistake and reluctant to take tomorrow's decision. Nor does he appear to regard himself as a master tactician; merely as a common-sense leader able to absorb the blows and remain on track. There is no agitation in him. He may lose a match or his wicket. A proud competitor, he is not pleased by these turns of events but does not panic. It is not about him."

Another abstract of a fabulous article describing Sehwag's explosive batting as crimes against bowling humanity published recently..

"I speculated in my first World Cricket Podcast exactly what bowlers must feel when attempting to combat Sehwag on a good batting pitch. Suffice it to say that if this innings continues long into day three, the International Court of Human Rights may become involved, and the phenomenal Indian opener may find himself charged with crimes against bowling humanity.
For all the splendor Sehwag has once again given to the cricket-watching world, all record of this innings must be surreptitiously destroyed. What if impressionable young bowlers were to stumble upon evidence of the kind of abuse they may endure? What right-thinking parent would want their precious little baby bowler to grow up in such a heartless universe? Even bowling machines might refuse to bowl."

Comic : Being AXEd !!

2009-12-11T20:57:00.003+05:30

Comic : College Placement Season !!

2009-12-11T12:25:00.008+05:30

People have been asking me why have I suddenly disappeared from the blogging circle entirely. I actually have - my last post was something like two and a half months back!
I was busy all this time with some random stuff, but now I am back. Hope you all enjoy the post...

You can find more of these here

Binary

2009-08-18T17:35:00.000+05:30

This is my position right now. I so wanted to be in this position and I was very happy initially. And now I am so angry at myself that I was unable to think that this would also be the most undesirable scenario. Its just like 1 and 0, the net result being zero. I just hope that this time just flies by and that 0 toggles to 1 again very quickly :).

PS : No comments !!!

10 Worst Tech Predictions

2009-07-03T15:54:00.007+05:30

Most of us love reading technology forecasts. It keeps us in sync with the times to come. Really? No, if the tech predictions below are anything to go by.
Made by tech czars and some of the biggest names in their fields, these predictions have gone way off the mark. In fact, many read like a `joke' today.

Here are 10 tech predictions that have gone awry (big time) :

1) "Ipod will die next year"
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph in February 2005, Sir Alan Michael Sugar, the founder of Amstrad, said: "Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput."
Incidentally, at the time Sugar's Amstrad and Apple were reportedly neck-and-neck in the personal computer race.
As for iPod, In October, Apple set a record for iPod sales outside of the always lucrative holiday quarter. The company sold more than 11 million iPods, an 8 per cent jump in unit growth with a 3 per cent rise in revenue over the year-ago quarter.

2) "YouTube will not go far"
There's just not that many videos I want to watch," said Steve Chen, a co-founder of YouTube, in March 2005. At the time YouTube featured about 50 videos. Just two years later, on November 13 2006, YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in Google stock.
Recently, Collins Stewart LLC analyst Sandeep Aggarwal estimated that the video site will generate $180 million to $200 million in revenue this year. And, Aggarwal predicts YouTube's revenue will double next year to about $400 million.

3) "No need for a computer at home"
"(There's) no need for a computer in the home," these are the words of Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corp made in 1977.
Incidentally, he was not the first one to predict such a thing. Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM reportedly said in 1943, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
In the late 1990s, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison called PC "a ridiculous device," said today, arguing that while information appliances won't obviate the need for PCs, the latter have hidden costs, create more labour for corporate information technology departments and don't make sense for many users with scaled-down PC needs.

4) "Who needs more than 640 kB?"
In 1981, Bill Gates allegedly said that nobody would ever need more than 640 kilobytes of memory on their personal computer.
However, in an interview to Bloomberg Businees News in 1996, Gates refuted the quote. Here's an excerpt of what he said when asked about the (in)famous quote, "I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.
"The need for memory increases as computers get more potent and software gets more powerful. In fact, every couple of years the amount of memory address space needed to run whatever software is mainstream at the time just about doubles. This is well-known."
"When IBM introduced its PC in 1981, many people attacked Microsoft for its role. These critics said that 8-bit computers, which had 64K of address space, would last forever. They said we were wastefully throwing out great 8-bit programming by moving the world toward 16-bit computers."
"We at Microsoft disagreed. We knew that even 16-bit computers, which had 640K of available address space, would be adequate for only four or five years...." Meanwhile, I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.

5) "Television won't last"
Here's something for all those couch potatoes there. "TV won't last because people would soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night," said Darryl Zanuck in 1946. Zanuck is an Academy Award-winning producer, writer, actor, director, and studio executive who played a major part in the Hollywood.
In 1926, Lee De Forest, an American inventor with over 180 patents to his credit, said about TV, "While theoretically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming."

6) "There will never be a bigger plane built"
In 1933, after the first flight of the Boeing 247, a plane that could hold ten people, a proud Boeing engineer reportedly said, "There will never be a bigger plane built."
Similarly in 1904, Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, said "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."

7) "Spam will be solved"
The problem of spam e-mail messages will be gone within two years, Bill Gates promised in January 2004.
Speaking at a session of the World Economic Forum, Gates, the chairman of the Microsoft Corporation, said that the company was working on three ways to enable e-mail users to keep spam out of their computers.
The first two, he said, would involve having computers reply automatically to any email messages from senders not known to that computer -- that is, not in the mail list of the email programme installed on the computer -- with a request to solve a problem that could be handled by a person but not by a computer.
The third way, which Gates said was likely to arrive later but be the long-term solution, would require that email messages sent by strangers come with postage attached, the equivalent of a postage stamp.

8) "eBay will be huge in China"
In February 2005, eBay CEO Meg Whitman, said, "We are on a tear to be the undisputed winner in China." Come, December 2006, eBay announces that it would close its operations in China and become the junior partner to Tom Online, a Chinese Internet portal and wireless firm.
With this eBay became another US firms that offloaded its China Internet investments to local partners. CEO Whitman reportedly spent some $100 million in 2005 on the site, only to lose ground to Alibaba, Yahoo's partner in China.

9) "Telephone is inherently of no value"
In 1962, Dennis Gabor, British physicist and author of Inventing the Future wrote, "Transmission of documents via telephone wires is possible in principle, but the apparatus required is so expensive that it will never become a practical proposition.
Similarly in an internal memo in 1879 Western Union Co said, "telephone" has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."

10) "Photocopiers are niche"
"The world potential market for copying machines is 5,000 at most," IBM told the eventual founders of Xerox in 1959.
According to Wikipedia, by 1961 Xerox had almost $60 million in revenue, and this value had leapt to $500 million by 1965.
In 1957, the editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, predicted, "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."

"Talent is Overrated" versus "Outliers"

2009-06-28T17:21:00.006+05:30

Recently I read two books presenting ideas on the same topic of methods to be successful - the first titled "Talent is Overrated" by Geoff Colvin and the other being "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. I just wanted to express my opinions about how both of these have very different approaches to the same issue. Please note that these are just the reflections of my perceptions about both the books.

"Talent is Overrated" is an inspirational book that puts exceptional performance into perspective. It presents a solid case that great performance does not come primarily from innate talent, or even hard work, as it is supposed by most people. The author asserts on the point of 'deliberate practice' and presents supporting evidence in a convincing manner. The meat of the book explains the fact that it matters what kind of practice, not just how long and how much sweat is spilled. The ideas in the book free the reader from the bondage of conventional wisdom of talent or hard work myths.

The second book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell is basically a theory that assumes that really successful talented people get where they are because they just put the hours in. The author looks at the Beatles, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell and some others, all from different areas of work and investigates their backgrounds. The guess is that you need to do something for 10,000 hours to get good at it. The Beatles had performed for that length of time before they became an overnight success :D

Now after reading both of them, I would actually suggest the Geoff Colvin book "Talent is Overrated", which offers a different perspective on the same problem of the techniques of being more effective and successful. In a nutshell, Gladwell makes policy recommendations and Colvin makes personal ones. Colvin's book is more focussed about the problem of how to become a world-class talent in any field. However the conclusion isn't merely to put in 10,000 hours, but to adopt a technique called 'deliberate practice'. The simple idea of putting in 10k hours relies on such a ton of assumptions. It works more because it makes a bold, quantiative statement that feeds on our hopes and resonates with or pre-conceptions. It fails as a scientific statement. It doesn't do any precise predictions and is easily falsified. What does success mean? Being acknowledged by others or succeeding on a personal level? And isn't being acknowledged for doing something differently fundamentally different as being acknowledged for doing something uniquely of your own? What about all the people, who spend 10,000 hours on something and don't get successful? And wouldn't you expect to have lots of minor sucesses during the 10,000 hours rather than 10,000 hours of nothing and then sudden breakthrough as it is somewhat implied in this book?

What do you think about this?

Does patience contradict ambitions?

2009-06-22T18:03:00.002+05:30

I have been thinking upon this question for a long time now and I am writing this post to just express my feelings about this topic. Just read through it and later you can present your own views.

To be ambitious is a good thing, it gives your life a direction to proceed in and also keeps you motivated. Patience is good too, it makes you more efficient and productive. But are they parallel independent tracks leading to your success? I don't think so. When boundaries between being ambitious and being impatient begin to blur, you know that you are in deep soup.

I want to achieve whatever I have aimed at as soon as I could. For instance, consider the case of my research. I want to get good results and be known as a successful researcher but I want to achieve this quickly. I have ambitions and I work hard for what I want. When I am fully determined to get there, I even tend to forget my sleep and overcome whatever other feelings I have. I have seen researchers taking 5 precious years of their life to solve a single problem (..that problem might have taken some 3 years to be defined and another 2 years to solve). I do not want to work on only one problem for such a long time of my life. I want to work on, may be, 5 problems, may be, from 5 different areas.

The modern industry also does not love NITians (...or IITians for that matter), only because we are impatient. They do not look for a flash of brilliance in you, but are rather more concerned about your faithfulness and continuity. Ambitions restrict you from being loyal to somebody who is not ambitious. Some of my NITian friends in the corporate world are not happy with where they stand. I know they are ambitious but they are impatient. Some of them want to be rich, but quickly. So, they keep on changing jobs running around for a better paid job! You see the contradiction?

I feel being an NITian has developed the quality of being ambitious in me and I am proud of it. For me atleast, ambitions stay way ahead of patience. What do you feel?

Comments are welcome...

Mathematical SuperBrain - Digits of pi

2009-06-10T17:10:00.009+05:30

Recently I just came across an interesting problem on SPOJ - Sphere Online Judge (...for those who don't have an idea of what this is, it is a site where programmers submit their codes to the problems there and they are then ranked among all the participating programmers worldwide). The problem was to write a code to generate as many digits of the famous mathematical constant "pi" as possible. I am a novice programmer so I started browsing the net to get a rough idea of it. I learnt the fact that 50000000 digits of pi after the decimal point have been found accurately till date.
Pi is a "transcendental number". It is a never-ending, patternless sequence of digits. Each digit appears with equal frequency. Here are the first few digits:

Pi = 3. 1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 06286208998628034825 3421170679 8214808651 3282306647 0938446095 5058223172 5359408128 4811174502

It was then that I read an interesting concept which I readily agreed to "Somewhere inside the digits of pi is a representation for all of us -- the atomic coordinates of all our atoms, our genetic code, all our thoughts, all our memories. Given this fact, all of us are alive, and hopefully happy, in pi. Pi makes us live forever. We all lead virtual lives in pi. We are immortal." (Note that this is not yet proved and researchers are working on this based on Quantum Immortality).

This means that we exist in pi, as if in a Matrix. This means that romance is never dead. Somewhere you are running through fields of wheat, holding hands with someone you love, as the sun sets -- all in the digits of pi. You need not fear death or yearn for the woman you once loved but could never have. You have her in pi where you are happy and you live forever.

If the digits of pi include every possible finite sequence, then in principle a hypothetical super-brain...I mean really super- computer could "crank out" all of the permutations and thus produce a copy of everything that has ever existed. From the technological point of view, a pi based algorithm might allow for some unbelievably efficient data compression. If we wanted to copy the Encyclopedia Britannica or something else for that matter, you could just jump to the appropriate digits in pi. Imagine a brain interfaced with a "Pi Machine" such that it could translate your thoughts into pi digits and then make your fantasies a reality?

Just give a thought to this one...Comments are welcome !!

Its going great !!

2009-06-04T17:23:00.004+05:30

So I haven't blogged now for 2-3 days...But you should realize that I'm no Big B or King Khan or some other celebrity to blog everyday with posts having titles like day-1, day-2, etc....

Although I spent most of my time roaming around Kolkata, watching serials and movies on my comp and playing FIFA 08 this week, I have also been researching in the middle of all this. Five days back, I read and understood Bezier curves and surfaces from the book "Curves and Surfaces for Computer Graphics - by David Salomon". Its a very good book and also follows a programming approach with codes written in PASCAL. Pavi, a friend from my college who is also working on a project at ISI here explained me the codes, which I understood well. I then coded the Bezier curve for six control points in MATLAB using a better algorithm than the one used in the example posted on the Mathworks site by Nguyen Quoc Duan from Vietnam. The algorithm that I used was based on the 'forward-difference method' in combination with the Taylor series representation. This reduces number of calculations significantly and each point on the curve is calculated by three additions and three assignments only (no multiplications and no table lookups). SN sir was quite impressed by my work. He also suggested that I should code a more dynamic program that takes the input of the number and location of control points from the designer and produces the Bezier curve for that many points as the output.

I also coded for Bezier surfaces. This was much more difficult due to the increased parameters causing the Bezier polynomial to become more complex. I also communicated with two researchers of the Chachun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, China, who have worked on a nearly similar topic in the past. I got to learn a few things about three-dimensional graphics, transformations and perspectives and interactive computer graphics from them.

I have also downloaded some research papers related to this topic and am reading through them to understand the various algorithms used for designing interactive curves and surfaces in graphics and about their performance evaluation. The next immediate task is - 3D surface modeling of the external body of the a car in MATLAB using Bezier surfaces. I went through numerous car models on the internet and felt that it would be the easiest to design the surface of the yet to be launched BMW Z4 car model. The start is the most difficult part as deciding the number of surfaces and finding the control points for design is the major task in coding this. Once the control points for each of the surfaces are found, it is very easy to model the surfaces. I have to read a lot about application of various algorithms for unified surface smoothing in automobile body shape modeling design before I actually start the work. The coming weeks are going to be quite busy ones....

Listening : Aadat - Jal
Reading: Customized Reflection Lines for Surface Interrogation in Car Body Design (Research paper)
Mood : Optimistic
Thinking : Lots of work to do from now on!!

Research at ISI Kolkata

2009-06-01T14:53:00.005+05:30

Let me introduce myself. I am Amey A.P. Dharwadker, pursuing my B.Tech in Electronics & Communication Engineering at NIT Trichy. I have just completed my second year and have come here to get myself focussed on some research work this summer.

May 20: I am finally at the "Bhartiya Saankhikeey Sansthan, Kolkata", popularly known as Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata. I have joined ISI for my summer project under the Machine Intelligence Unit (MIU). Needless to say, its an excellent place to give a start to your research work as it is considered among the best research institutions in India in all fields ranging from operations research to country planning and quantitative economics to microelectronics and computing technologies.

I am currently staying at my friend - Nilabja's place in Kamarhati, about 15 minutes away from ISI. I am quite happy since the time I have come here. I had mentioned my topic of interest as "Geometric Image Representation and Image Processing" to my mentor, Dr. Sambhunath Biswas (referred to further as SN sir). I had learnt some basics of image segmentation, descriptors and multi-resolution image processing before meeting my mentor. He asked me some basic questions on image processing and also enquired about my mathematical background. He later suggested me to slightly modify my topic to "Interactive Three-Dimensional Computer Graphics", which I gladly did. I also discussed the prospects of the topic and told him that I had a little knowledge of image segmentation but nothing about computer graphics. He said it was not a problem and informed me that the exact topic for the project would be "Effective designing of Interactive Curves and Surfaces using various mathematical formulations".

I had no idea about computer graphics, but felt it was a good topic to work with, based on the introduction of it given to me by my mentor. He has also given me his book titled "Bezier and Splines in Image Processing and Machine Vision" and another book titled "Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics - by William Newman and Robert Sproull" for further reference. I was given a week's time to understand "Bezier method of curve and surface plotting" and to write a code for plotting various curves and surfaces from their control points (anyone hardly knows that Pierre Bezier, of the French firm Regie Renault, pioneered the use of computer modeling of surfaces in automobile design. Since then, this method is widely used in automobile and aircraft design). SN sir asked me if I knew PASCAL language, which I readily disagreed. He then asked me if I could code the same in C/C++ language, but I insisted that I was more comfortable with MATLAB. He told me to get started with the work as soon as possible.

Next day, I had to complete the formalities for getting access to the library and computer center. So here is where frustration started creeping in me. The librarian told me to get a letter from my mentor stating that I will be doing my summer project under his guidance from May-July '09 and I may be given access to library and computer lab facility for the smooth running of my project. I went to my mentor that afternoon itself and got the letter from him. I then showed the letter to the librarian who then issued me a temporary library card for only 30 days. I then went to the CSSC (Computer and Statistical Service Center) with the same letter (...as I was told by the librarian) to get the computer lab facility. I showed the letter in the CSSC office and they told me to go and show the same in the Dean's office. It was 4 p.m. then and there was nobody in the office. The next day - 22nd May, I went to the Dean's office only to learn that I had to produce a letter from the Training Officer of my parent institution, NIT Trichy signed by my mentor SN sir stating that he has accepted me for the summer project. I had sent that letter to SN sir from college and it was still with him. Without wasting any time further, I went to SN sir's room in the MIU building. I came to know from the office that he had already left and I could meet him next on Monday itself. On Monday, i took the letter from SN sir and submitted in the Dean's office to get my joining letter. Then I filled another form for the lab facility and submitted it in the CSSC office along with a copy of my joining letter. Finally after five days, I got the computer lab facility two days back and so I am here, happily blogging and chatting for 3-4 hours...

I'm still waiting

2009-05-29T16:17:00.002+05:30

I had written this poem recently while travelling...Its one of my first
ones so please post your comments...

In remembrance of a friend...

Sitting alone in the dark of the night,
I'm reminded of a friend ever so bright...
That pushes me down the memory lane,
And all it gives me is pain, pain and more pain...

Reminded am I of those colorful days that we shared,
The midnight teas and chats that we dared...
Those were the best days of my otherwise dark life,
Those were the days of friendship and no strife..

Life seemed so beautiful with you around,
Life turned to heaven, sorrows were nowhere to be found...
Like a teacher you changed my life forever,
but how was i to know that happiness was meant for me never...

Inexplicably you turned your back to me midway through,
I was left wondering whether its a bad dream
or is it for true???
Devastated was I, my world tore apart
How stupid was I, thought that will never ever part...

Days, months and years passed,
I kept waiting, still hopeful...
Hopeful that we will someday re-unite by fate
Hopeful that we will be the same old pals, my mate....

The painful wait kept getting longer and longer...
but you my friend were nowhere to be found,
The painful wait kept getting longer and longer...
those sweet memories still exist in my heart and all around...
But still hopeful am I, that you will re-surface to ease my pain,
But still hopeful am I, that defying all odds, we will meet again...

Impure Love, Impure Mathematics

2009-05-28T16:06:00.006+05:30

Now that I am at the Indian Statistical Unit (ISI), Kolkata, its all mathematics around me...
This is an excerpt I came across on the net today...

Once upon a time (1/T) pretty little Polly Nomial was strolling across a field of vectors when she came to the edge of a sigularly large matrix.
Now Polly was convergent and hor mother had made it an absolute condition that she must never enter such an array without her brackets on. Polly, however, who had changed her variables that morning and was feeling particularly badly behaved, ignored this condition on the grounds that it was insufficient and made her way in amongst the complex elements.
Rows and columns enveloped her on all sides. Tangents approached her surface. She became tensor and tensor. Quite suddenly, three branches of a hyperbola touched her at a single point. She oscillated violently, lost all sense of directrix and went completely divergent. As she reached a turning point she tripped over a square root which was protruding from the erf and plunged heading down a steep gradient. When she was differentiated once more, she found herself, apparently alone, in a non-euclidean space.
She was being watched however. That smooth operator, Curly PI, was lurking inner product. As his eyes devoured her curvilinear coordinates, a singular expression crossed his face. Was she still convergent, he wondered. He decided to integrate improperly at once.
Hearing a vulgar fraction behind her, Polly turned around and saw Curly PI approaching with his power series extrapolated. She could see at once, by his degenerate conic and his dissipative terms that he was bent on no good.
'Eureka', she gasped.
'Ho, ho', he said, 'What a symmetric little polynomial you are. I can see you're bubbling over with secs.'
'Calm yourself, my dear', said our suave operator. 'your fears are purely imaginary'.
' I...I...', she thought, 'perhaps he's homogeneous then'.
'What order are you', the brute demanded.
'Nineteen', replied Polly.
Curly leered. 'I suppose you've never been operated on yet', he asked.
'Of course, not!', Polly cried indignantly. 'I'm absolutely convergent'.
'Come, come', said Curly. 'Let's off to a decimal place I know and I'll take you to the limit'.
'Never', gasped Polly.
'Exchlf', he swore, using the vilest oath he knew. His patience was gone. Coshing her over the coefficient with a log until she was powerless, Curly removed her discontinuities. He stared at her significant places and began smoothing her points of inflexion. Poor Polly. All was up. She felt his hand tending to her asymptotic limit. Her convergence would soon be gone for ever.
There was no mercy, for Curly was a heavy-side operator. He integrated by parts. He integrated by partial fractions. The complex beast even went all the way around and did a contour integration. What an indignity. To be multiply connected on operating until he was absolutely and completely orthogonal.
He was so happy for having integrated convergent Polly. But .... she was right there, still convergent, smiling with all the fun she had. Curly PI was amazed to see Polly's convergence still true for all levels of integration. 'Is this convergence a dummy convergence? Did I fail?', thinking he faints. And ... Polly was on her way to find another one ....... Sigma, here he comes ....
'Ho, ho', he said, 'What a symmetric little polynomial you are. I can see you're bubbling over with secs.'
'Calm yourself, my dear', said our suave operator. 'your fears are purely imaginary'.
' I...I...', she thought, 'perhaps he's homogeneous then'.
'What order are you', the brute demanded.
'Twenty', replied Polly.
Curly leered. 'I suppose you've never been operated on yet', he asked.
'Of course, not!', Polly cried indignantly. 'I'm absolutely convergent'.
'Come, come', said Curly. 'Let's off to a decimal place I know and I'll take you to the limit'.
'Never', gasped Polly.
'Exchlf', he swore, using the vilest oath he knew .................
On one of such evenings, when Polly got home, her mother noticed that she had been truncated in several places. But it was too late to differentiate now. As the months went by, Polly increased monotonically. Finally, she generated a small but pathological function which left surds all over the place until she was driven to distraction.
The moral of our story is this. If you want to keep your expression convergent, never allow them a single degree of freedom. If you allow freedom, keep your function bounded.

We all may be characters of this story !!! People have to realize who Polly is, who Curly PI is and who Sigma is !!! Curly PI and Sigma needn't worry, one day, Polly will meet someone who will integrate her without limits.

Sharing the Finest

2009-04-29T17:51:00.007+05:30

What happens when a Pakistani blogger says "Mumbai attacks.. Pakistan? I don't think so!!"

About 1000+ people descend on his blog to beat him up virtually. Read here.

Here's the choicest comment:

"Who said Pakistan is not involved in Mumbai attacks? Pakistan role is there in every terrorists attack happend in this world. All Pakistanis are terrorists. If i had a given the chance, I Would prefer to bomd the entire pak. No more pakistan in the world. It’s gone. Even Obama wants to hit the pak, because it is epic center for all terrorist activities. What kind of idiots u r? behaving like sadists. No goal nothing. Killing the innocents is the great thing. There is something fundamental wrong in the Islam. U need to correct it."

Slumdog Millionaire, Indo-British movies and Oscars

2009-03-15T21:17:00.003+05:30

You might feel that this topic should have been posted a few weeks back but as you mighted have noticed, I am posting after a long break of two-and-half months. Actually, I have been busy all these days leaving no time for blogging and another reason for this hibernation period has been the ban of 'Blogspot' in our college (I don't know the reason for this yet).

The four Golden Globe winner, Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire"swept the Oscars, winning eight awards. I loved the movie. The first part of it was extremely good and actually has a very Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay kind of touch to it. The second half of the movie is a little less intense if you know what I mean. Overall, it's a good watch for sure. Dev Patel plays the main protagonist and has done an amazing job. The movie takes audiences to the poorest sections of India and shows a level of poverty and human misery that's almost beyond our imaginations and yet so pervasive that people seem to take it in, as a consistent fact. The movie gives education as to how people live their lives in India. The story is about Jamal and his elder bossy brother Salim, from their childhood to adulthood. Their life in the slums of Mumbai and their hard events in life from getting an autograph of Amitabh Bachchan, losing their mother in Hindu-Muslim riots to the exploitative begging mafia teaching them lessons. As a matter of luck, destiny or a mere co-incidence Jamal gets to participate in "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire", and he has the answers of the questions asked through his life's happenings.

This movie swept through the Oscars, and yet, the only rejoicing I see in Indian newspapers is at A R Rahman's Oscars. Our issues with the movie apart, the question is if we even believe it is an Indian movie.

Is "Slumdog Millionaire" a Hollywood movie, a British movie, or an Indian one? I watched the news on BBC the other day and found them referring to the movie as a British movie - Danny Boyle, the director, is British after all. Hollywood treats Slumdog as an American movie, entering it in the Oscars under the main category instead of 'Foreign film' which is what other movies set in India usually end up in.

What makes a movie Indian? Is it an Indian movie if the director is Indian, if the producer is, if the cast is Indian or if the movie is set in India? I'd say a movie is certainly Indian if it is set in India. In the case of Slumdog, the cast is also either Indian or of Indian origin. So then why do we consider Slumdog a British movie? Does the director's nationality alone determine the where the movie belongs to? On that basis, then, should we consider Elizabeth to be an Indian movie because it was directed by Shekhar Kapur? Does the producer's nationality make a difference? Saawariya was co-produced by Sony Pictures Entertainment, but that does not make it any less Indian in our eyes. So why do we hesitate to embrace Slumdog Millionaire? Granted, most of the crew is British. But even then, Slumdog Millionaire is at best an Indo-British movie, not a British movie. Gandhi, on that basis, was also Indo-British, and interestingly, the first Indian Oscar (Bhanu Athaiya) came from Gandhi.

Many of us believe there are many Bollywood movies that are far better than Slumdog Millionaire, yet none of these received any Oscars. Obviously, this was because all these movies competed in the "Best Foreign Film" category, and not in the mainstream category, where you can compete for many more Oscars. The lesson for Indian filmmakers should be - sell the North American distribution rights to a US studio that will make a push for the movie at the Oscars. We know that the Oscars are not just about having a good product but also about how well you market it to the judges.

But the million dollar question remains - why do Indians care so much for the Oscars anyway? The Oscars are, at their core, just an awards ceremeony for Hollywood movies, never mind their nod to foreign films with a single category. Why does Bollywood need Hollywood's approval?

Bollywood (and Tamil and Telugu) movies, with their song and dance routines have their own international appeal in the Middle East and Africa and parts of Europe. We've all heard anecdotes of Raj Kapoor's popularity in Russia and of Rajnikanth's in Japan. If Hollywood epitomizes the West, Indian movies epitomize the East. Our movie industry is just as big (or, in terms of the sheer number of movies annually, bigger) than Hollywood. In many parts of the world, it is even more popular than any Hollywood movie.

And yet, we seem to crave for approval from the Oscars. I cannot understand why....

Engineer versus management

2009-01-31T12:55:00.001+05:30

Enjoy this encounter of an engineer with a person in the management field...

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She reduced altitude and spotted a man below. She descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me sir, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago but I don't know where I am".

The man below replied, "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. Yoy're between 42 and 43 degrees north latitude and between 62 and 63 degrees longitude."

"You must be an engineer", said the lady balloonist.
"I am", replied the man. "But how did you know?", he asked.

"Well", answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically right, but I've no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me at all. If anything you've delayed my trip even more."

The man below responded, "You must be in management."
"I am", replied the lady balloonist. "But how did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "You don't know where you are, or where you're going. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of air within. You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you, to solve your problems."

World's dumbest quiz answers...

2009-01-10T15:40:00.006+05:30

Question: What was Gandhi's first name?
Contestant's answer: Goosey Goosey.

Warning to all those know-alls who shout at the television screen when contestants offer dumb answers to blindingly obvious questions - one day that could be you.
From regional radio shows to Who Wants To be a Millionaire? and University Challenge, people make fools of themselves - as an internet site found in collating some of the worst howlers.

Here are leading contenders for the "Dumb Down" gold medal:

Presenter: What happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963?
Contestant: I don't know, I wasn't watching it then.

Presenter: Which American actor is married to Nicole Kidman?
Contestant: Forrest Gump.

Presenter: In which country is Mount Everest?
Contestant: Er, it's not in Scotland is it?

Presenter: Name a film starring Bob Hoskins that is also the name of a famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci.
Contestant: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Presenter: In which European city was the first opera house opened in 1637?
Contestant: Sydney.

Presenter: How long did the Six-Day War between Egypt and Israel last?
Contestant: (after long pause) Fourteen days,

Presenter: Where did the D-Day landings take place?
Contestant: (after pause) Pearl Harbor?

Presenter: What is the currency in India?
Contestant: Ramadan.

Presenter: Johnny Weissmuller died on this day. Which jungle-swinging character clad only in a loin cloth did he play?
Contestant: Jesus

26/11 Mumbai Attacks - Scrambled Thoughts...

2008-12-23T01:21:00.006+05:30

26/11 - The brutal reality of the global 'jihad' coming to India has had a very deep psychological impact on all the Indians. More than anything else, 26/11 has exposed the way we are being governed. Seemingly, amidst all the politician bashing and anger and hatred, the broader perspective has not being lost. The need of the hour is "to rebuild the nation"....
I would like to present some thoughts about this attack. These are some of my own and some from around the blogosphere...

Speculations:

Why can't we get someone better equipped to handle such an emergency to step in, instead of the excuse for an Home Minister that we have?

Why are more than half of the commandos (I mean those from the groups formed for anti - terror action) providing security to 30 politicians rather than the entire population of the country?

Why do these commandos not have a separate wing in all major cities of the country in case of an emergency situation? Why do they have to fly from Delhi to Mumbai (Note: They were ready by midnight, but could make it to the terror-scene only in the morning) in such a case of high-intensity terror attack demanding their immediate action?

What the hell is happening to our tax money if it's not being spent on guns that don't jam or bullet-proof vests that are an apology for the term. I mean, the Maharashtra police look as helpless as the bystanders with their ridiculous service revolvers and helmets.

How can one injured terrorist at the Taj, without any hostages, keep off a hundred commandos for over a day?

--------X--------

What I find shocking is that this should have been expected and prevented, but it wasn't and everyone in power seems to be surprised by it all. In the last few months there have been serial, perfectly coordinated, bomb blasts in Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, New Delhi and Assam, taking over 200 lives. If the government had done something of note, Mumbai 26/11 needn't have happened.
Note: High specific warning inputs of these attacks were provided much earlier to the actual carnage.

--------X--------

So what exactly is this "intelligence failure" thing? I mean, every time something like a bomb going off or some more Bangladeshi insurgency happens, we get this matter-of-fact reply. I mean, it is an intelligence failure, because if you knew this was supposed to happen and yet did nothing about it, it would be called collusion. Have they ever used “intelligence” and “it worked” in the same sentence?

--------X--------

If ever proof was needed about the media's stupidity:

"Commandos are landing on the Nariman Building. They seem to be tip-toeing down. The terrorists inside the building don't know about this. The commandos are communicating to each other through hand signals. Of the 6 commandos, 2 seem to be moving towards the left wall. Surprise is the only weapon they have now....
This is being brought to you live and exclusive by NDTV!!!"

and insensitivity

"How do you feel?", "What will you do if your husband doesn't come out?", "Do you think terrorists should be hunted down?", "What was going through your mind when you were at the
terrorists' gun-point?", "You have not received any phone call as yet from your relative trapped in the hotel with the terrorists, what do you assume from this?" , etc..etc....

--------X--------

Watching the western news channels, you'd be forgiven if you thought you lived in a different world.

Their maps have India in colour A, Pakistan in colour B, and Kashmir in colour A+B. Kashmir is in India, dammit!

Terrorism in India finally gets more than the two sound bytes, since 'westerners' have now been targeted.

--------X--------

What's the urgent need for Sonia, Advani, Manmohan, and co to visit Mumbai right now? When Mumbai's police forces and logistics are already stretched to the limit.
Thoroughly pissed off when I read this:

"Sources said though the plane carrying NSG Commandos was ready by midnight, it could not take off due to the delayed arrival of a VIP, who wanted to accompany them to Mumbai, at the Delhi airport. Worse, the Commandos had to wait for a vehicle at the Mumbai airport until morning."

Why?

--------X--------

In other news, Barkha Dutt is being nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for coining the phrase "India's 9/11".

Microsoft Internet Explorer - Hacker's new tool ??

2008-12-22T15:13:00.002+05:30

Microsoft has issued a warning on its browser, Internet Explorer. The company says that a flaw in the browser allows cyber criminals to hack into computers, take control and use it however they wish.

The problem, first revealed last week, allows criminals to hijack computers and steal passwords if the user visits an infected website. As many as 10,000 sites have already been compromised to take advantage of the flaw, according to anti-virus software producer Trend Micro.

Microsoft says it will issue a security patch from Dec. 24th night onwards. Analysts suggest users switch browsers till the fault is rectified.

"It's a very serious threat, it affects all versions of Internet Explorer on all versions of Microsoft Windows and as I say, because there is no patch available, there is no mitigation available from Microsoft for that. What people should do to protect themselves, if they can, they should avoid using Internet Explorer and switch to an alternative browser," says Trend Micro's Senior Security Adviser, Rik Ferguson.

IIM-A : The toughest in the world

2008-08-17T18:23:00.003+05:30

How about this? The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad is said to be the toughest to get into, tougher than even Harvard Business or Columbia, reports Economist.

And IIM-A is ranked 5th best in the world. Inspite of all the credits, the average starting salary is around $ 43k compared to $ 100k of Harvard. Well...for India’s cost of living, that's more than a decent salary though.

College off to a start

2008-07-21T17:14:00.002+05:30

Well, semester holidays are up and I m here...back to college. Upon reaching, firstly I had to check up with my accomodation. I had been alloted the JADE hostel as expected. I actually had very little time to settle down as I reached only the day before the college started; but at the end I felt I managed it quite well.

It was time to get into my department (Electronics and Communication Engineering) and I was all set to take up this challenge.

"We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve."

I want to face this creative challenge and sweep away all the obstacles by giving in my best and ultimately enjoy the expanding joy of achievement.

In the last semester I did not put in all my efforts and that's why I was disappointed with myself. I did not pay attention in class (slept during lectures), just copied and submitted assignments without putting in any efforts, got addicted to playing Counter-Strike hidingly in Octagon, did time-pass surfing the net and watched lot of movies when in the hostel. The result was that I ended up with 8.91....with B and C grades appearing in my grade sheet for the first time.

This semester I gotta change all this and need to get more serious about it. I strongly believe in the saying, "Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves will always find opportunities enough; and if they do no find them, they will make them." After all, it is the question of survival among the numerous big guns in my department...