Google Reader: Another Sick April Fool’s Joke 

If I were to comment about the recent announcement on Google Reader shut down, I would probably take it as the biggest news ever told in the history of the Internet. I couldn’t blame them for putting it to an end; Google Reader has relatively few followers specifically in Germany and losing a lot more over time. Google has become a gigantic internet conglomerate that they can make sudden decisions to discontinue a service and then retract it with another.

Google Reader Rage 

I am not deeply mad about Google’s prominence and its long reach of influence in the net. You would think that having a powerful dominion over the busy networks of the Internet (including even the strict German websites) would at least be consistent with their announcements, it’s no surprise that a lot of Google Reader followers were filled with rage against the recent press release.

So let me break it down for you. Google has announced on their official blog that Google Reader will “soon retire”. German Google Readers can only use the platform up until July 1, 2013. Their reasons for such an abrupt and saddening decision was that the “usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience.” Well, if these explanations are quite reasonable enough for you, then it’s time for you to think of other RSS feed readers.

Alternatives, you say? 

One good thing about Google despite of the heartbreaking announcement is that, they did not leave their German Reader followers hopeless. In fact, they also mentioned a process of how to retrieve and follow its users’ subscribed RSS feeds. “To ensure a smooth transition, we’re providing a three-month sunset period so you have sufficient time to find an alternative feed-reading solution. If you want to retain your Reader data, including subscriptions, you can do so through Google Takeout.” Okay I know, it’s pretty hard to trust Google after shutting down one platform then suggesting a new platform also under their conglomerate, but let’s see what this ‘Google Takeout’ has to offer.

RSS What? 

RSS (Rich Site Summary) feed is a collection of web feed formats that are used to publish regular updated works like audio and video blogs, news headlines, etc. in a standard layout. So, for example I happen to be a partypoker DE RSS feed follower and I‘m a big poker fan, I can go and directly see some updates, promotions and video poker tourneys, and all other poker news using an RSS reader. It is quite easy to follow updates about poker since there are several poker news websites in which I can subscribe. News about WSOP events and other popular poker pros can be followed using another RSS reader such as Digg, NetVibes, and Zite.

In last couple of years, Google Buzz, which was part of my social reading experience, came and went, and so was Digg (not technically). Apart from my Google reader subscriptions, where I use star and search to remember and find items, I didn’t have a clear protocol, and it has resulted in scattered bookmarks, and a lot of missed entities.

So I decided to streamline.

I rarely create content: I only share and consume, hence I decided to use the following tools: Google Reader, Twitter, and Delicious. Well there are likes of Pinterest, and Facebook, but they are only for social sharing and consumption.

My protocol will be, hence, as follows:

Consumption

1. Twitter (via Google Reader) : Interesting reads from selected few people, whose shares are of high SNR.
2. News: BBC (world), NYTimes (US, Tech, Business), Dailymirror (SL)
3. Google Reader: Interesting reads, Tech, Twitter to-read list, News (Tamilnet and Defense.lk), and few others I rarely check

Cataloging

1. Google Reader: Archive + Starred items
2. Delicious Evernote: All non-temporary bookmarks of sites, tools, and interesting reads

Sharing

1. Flickr: (Professional) pictures
2. Twitter: Tech + Political shares only meant for public (not intended for cataloging), and live micro-blogging from events
3. Facebook: Shares within friends, status updates, check-ins, and pictures

Social Consumption

1. Pinterest: Photos
2. News Republic Flipboard: Happenings

And finally Path as a personal journal.

Recently I came across a well written, well structured article on this topic. I am sharing the article here so that in future I could just direct others to this link. I am copying the excerpts from the original article linked, just in case the source link becomes broken – which is not very uncommon nowadays. Disclaimer : I am sharing this article here with only good intentions; when and if I am contacted by the author of the original article, and asked to take down this page, I will promptly do so.

Get into grad school for science, engineering, math and computer science

Juniors and seniors often ask me how to get into a Ph.D. program. Having looked at applications for two years now, I finally feel like I can offer some good advice. [This advice applies for masters students too.] The one-word version of that advice is: PUBLISH.

What graduate schools want

When graduate schools are admitting students (M.S. or Ph.D.), they are trying to answer one question from your application materials: “Does this person have the potential to conduct scientific research?”

When I review applications, I look at three things:

1. prior research (published or unpublished);
2. letters of recommendation; and
3. personal statement.

If you’ve already done research and published it, then you’ve answered the question for the admissions committee. If you have unpublished work, submit it with your application, and someone from the field will judge the quality of the work. If you don’t have any prior research, don’t lose hope. You can still get in, because schools are trying to judge potential to do research. [I didn’t have any research papers when I applied to Ph.D. school.]

Masters-only tip: If the school lets you select thesis or coursework as a preference, select thesis. Selecting coursework signals the admissions committee that you’re not interested in research! But, just selecting thesis is not enough! Your personal statement needs to convince the admissions committee that you actually want to get a thesis in some research topic, rather than just take more classes.

Letters of recommendation

When letters of recommendation come from active, well-known researchers in your field of interest, a sentence in your recommendation like, “I’ve supervised her on a research project, and I have witnessed and believe in her potential to do research,” counts for a lot. Recommendations like, “This student took my class and got an A,” can’t really help the admissions committee discern your research potential. Doing a supervised independent study on some research topic is a great idea, because you’ll get a fantastic letter of recommendation out of it.

When you ask for a letter of recommendation from a professor, don’t ask them if they can write a letter of recommendation. Of course they’ll say, “yes,” to that. Ask a professor if they can write a strong letter of recommendation. This provides them a way to say “no,” and saves you the embarrassment of a crappy recommendation letter.

Provide your recommenders with all the necessary materials: pre-addressed stamped envelope, due dates and your application materials. Send email reminders and check with schools that they’ve received recommendations.

Also, talk to a professor at your school in the field in which you plan to do research. Ask them to which schools you should apply for that field. At this point, they should contact professors at those schools in these areas, let them know you’re applying and give a candid assessment of your abilities. These behind-the-scenes recommendations are priceless.

Personal statements

Personal statements should be short (one page), and anything importantlike the name of Professor X should be in bold. “Personal statement” is a terrible name for this document, because it confuses applicants. Use this statement to answer the following question in essay form: “Why should we, the admissions committee, believe that you, the applicant, have the potential do research in field X?” and “What kind of research could you see yourself doing and why?”

A personal statement should not cover your childhood experience with science, computers or math.

A really good “personal” statement will talk about projects you’ve worked on, any publications that resulted and include citations to relevant research articles from the field.

You should treat the personal statement like a letter to the professor at the top of your preferences list, because there’s a reasonable chance that’s what it is.

What if I don’t have a publication?

You can still get into grad school without publications; it’s just harder. You have to convince the person reading your application that you have theinterest, experience and potential to do research.

Showing interest

To show interest, you need to do your homework. You should start reading research papers in your field of interest, and be able to comment on them intelligently in your application. If you can read a particular professor’s research papers and comment on them intelligently, this counts for a lot when that professor reads your application.

Showing experience

If you have experience on a research project with a professor, this will come across in the recommendation, but you should also describe the project in your personal statement. What was the goal of the project? What was the core technical challenge? What were the key insights to the solution?

Showing potential

In my experience, the most important character trait in research is not intelligence, but self-discipline. Brilliance helps, but it’s not necessary. Success in grad school is 20% luck, 20% intelligence and 50% hard work. I never figured out what the remaining 10% is.

Do the math

There is way too much randomness in the grad-school admissions process. Many excellent applicants will be rejected for reasons totally apart from their research potential: they selected the wrong potential advisor, or their personal statement was too long, or their application was read later in the process when reviewers are exhausted, or no one even bothered to read it at all.

Recognize that acceptance rates, even at “lowly ranked” schools hover around 10%. At “top” schools, acceptance rates will be in the low single-digit percentages. If you only want to go to a top grad school, then you’re going to grad school for the wrong reason, and the odds of you getting in are low. You should go to grad school because you want to do research, and you don’t need to go to a “top” school for that.

A top schools, virtually all applicants are qualified, which means that your probability of getting in is roughly the same as the acceptance rate. Assuming a 5% acceptance rate, if you apply to 10 “top” schools, your probability of going to grad school is (1-0.95¹⁰) = 40.2%. If you really want to go to grad school, then the odds are that you’ll end up disappointed if you take this strategy.

If you apply to ten “top” schools (5% acceptance rate) and ten “regular” schools (10% acceptance rate), then your probability of going to grad school is (1-0.95¹⁰0.90¹⁰) = 79.2%. This is a lot better, but it still feels a little low to me.

Decide ahead of time on the probability you’d like to get into grad school, and compute the appropriate mixture of “top” and “regular” schools to which you should apply.

What doesn’t matter

GPA? I don’t care if it’s 2.0 or 4.0. I won’t even look at it. The school you went to? I’ll judge you the same whether you went to Nowhere State U or a top-ten school. Transcripts? Never seen one. GREs? Irrelevant. Where you work/worked? Unless it’s a research lab, it’s not important. I don’t think these items have much predictive capacity as to whether or not someone can complete a Ph.D.

Ten application tips

1. Contact a faculty member you’d like to work with. Email them a month or so before you apply. Tell them you were considering applying, and you’re curious about the research opportunities available in the field. Comment intelligently on some research that faculty member has done. Attach any research you’ve done, and briefly summarize your research interests. That faculty member can then make sure your application receives a thorough review. Bear in mind that professors receive lots of form-letter spam from prospective students. It’s painfully obvious when the email is form-letter spam, and most professors will summarily discard it.Send a follow-up email in December/January so they remember to tell the admissions committee to watch for you!
2. Be brief. Even “lowly ranked” schools will receive hundreds or even thousands of applications for a few dozen slots. Most applications are skimmed first, and read only if something catches the reviewer’s eye.Bold-facingitems can help catch a reviewer’s attention. There simply isn’t time to read long-winded applications.
   • Short bullet points
   • Make it easy to digest
   • Your application

   [But, please, make your bullet points grammatically parallel.]

3. Choose your area of interest/preferred faculty carefully.Applications are reviewed by the faculty in the area for which the prospective student states an interest. If you choose this poorly, the right person will not see your application. Reviewers also get annoyed when there is a mismatch between area preference and faculty preference. At least skim the home pages of every faculty member. It’s also a good idea to look for faculty with an active research program and current Ph.D. students. Faculty without funding can’t easily admit students. New/pre-tenure professors are especially eager to find good graduate students, and sometimes they have start-up funding to use until they get a grant.
4. Be different. Don’t talk about how you’ve been interested in the field ever since you were a child and that you wrote your first program/proved your first theorem at age eight. The admissions committee already knows that it’s been your lifelong dream to become a scientist. (That’s why you’re applying.) Many personal statements start off this with this standard back-story, and it’s a waste of space.
5. Use quotes carefully. A lot of personal statements start off with a quote. If you use a quote, make sure it’s witty, relevant and one that the reviewer has never seen.Do not misquote or misattribute a quote. (Also, Benjamin Franklin was not a U.S. president.)Definitely do not misunderstand a quote and weave that misunderstanding into a narrative about why you want to go to grad school.
6. Put up a personal/research home page. Make it professional. Highlight any interesting projects you’ve worked on there. Remove all references to your political and/or religious preferences. (Clean up your Facebook/twitter profile, too.)
7. Proof-read your documents. This should go without saying, but having typos in your statements looks sloppy. If you’re not a native English speaker, have a native English speaker proof-read your materials.
8. Make your application look good. I know this shouldn’t matter, but I find myself putting more effort into well-typeset applications. I notice when applications use LaTeX (and use it well), too. Palatino,Computer Modern and Times New Roman are good fonts for applications.
9. Choose your recommenders carefully. Cultivate working relationships with your recommenders. This is the only way to get convincing recommendations out of them. (If you tell a professor you’re interested in research after class one day, they’ll have you helping out on a research project by that evening. Professors are always short on research manpower. Trust me.)
10. Don’t get a job. Once you get accustomed to a real salary and you start putting down roots, it’s going to be difficult to go back to being a student. You’ll be living in a small apartment, working on demanding problems all day long and getting paid a subsistence wage to do so. This will be your life for four to seven years. The least inconvenienttime to do this sort of thing is right after undergraduate school. I often tell undergrads pondering a Ph.D., “You’re only dumb enough to get a Ph.D. once, so you’d better not let the moment pass you by.”

Good examples

Names and specific details have been changed to protect anonymity.

• One applicant created a clean, well-designed page to showcase the projects he’d worked on. I could browse the abstracts of the projects, look at code, and each project included links to peer-reviewed papers. Even though the applicant had no peer-reviewed publications, I was convinced they had the caliber to do peer-reviewed research.
• I was about to put an applicant in the “maybe” pile, when I saw he’d led a 100km hike in the Himalayas. The kind of persistence it takes to do a 100km hike in the Himalayas is the kind of persistence it takes to do research. I moved the applicant to the “accept” pile.
• Usually, recommendations from industry are discounted, but one recommender from industry wrote a short, one-page recommendation in bullet-point form. The bullets were things likeTeamwork, Strengths, Weaknesses, Communication,Experience, plus a sentence or two to back up each point. This let me see the information I needed immediately, and it boosted the applicant’s chances.

What should I do if I’ve been rejected from grad school?

If you got rejected from everywhere but you followed my advice, contact me. I’ll do my best to give you a candid assessment of why I think you were rejected and what you can do to improve your chances.

Keep in mind that there’s a lot of randomness involved; don’t take the rejection personally. If you’re serious about grad school and academia, you’re going to end up getting rejected a lot more. Improve your publication record and apply to more schools next time. Keep trying!

If you were working with a professor during the admissions process, contact them. There’s actually a chance they forgot to ask the admissions committee about your application. (Professors are always juggling a lot of balls.) You might even find out the reason you weren’t accepted was that the professor(s) that wanted you didn’t have enough grant funding this year. That is, you may have done everything right, but were rejected for factors totally out of your control.

Source : HOWTO: Get into grad school for science, engineering, math and computer science

Reinforcement learning deals with a unique problem-space. It does not have any examples to learn from, nor does it have a test set to verify. It has to simulate theories & policies, and follow the best myopically. All it has is a space to act upon, and the feedback on its actions to learn from. Based on the reward (or punishment) it adapts its behavior. Sounds simple right?

We, human, are by nature (or possibly by nurture) trained (or programmed) to behave the same way. But the most interesting point is, Positive Reinforcement, as it is called, is very effectively used by patrons – from parents on their children to bosses on their workers, to maximize the yield. For example, when a family, as a family, is happy, they would go on outing, enjoy watching TV, and children (and the other members of the family) would do all they could to enjoy those perks. When the situation is messy, possibly because of the unacceptable behavior of the children, the children are berated, punished, ignored, or simply made unhappy. Now they forfeit those perks. The extent of the unacceptability of their behaviors receives commensurate punishments. This, whether it is perceivable or not, cleverly tunes the children’s habits.

Now what if one side is made disproportionate? For example, what if the children are only rewarded? Knowing, that they will be rewarded on so called acceptable behaviors, they will try to maximize the rewards. But they are never punished. However, as time goes, you may have to increase the benefits to attract the same yield, i.e., the cost just inflates. At the same time, unacceptable behavior will become the norm. This offsets the balance. Simply the disproportionality is amplified, and a vicious cycle is formed.

Nevertheless, most of us conveniently overlook these two phenomena at the expense of the deterioration of relationships. For instance, in a relationship, if the “good” deeds are not welcomed, thanked and adequately encouraged with kind words, and “less desirable” acts are not properly discouraged, it empties the emotional bank account, makes them feel less appreciated, or make them expect more.

Ironically, we, even those who see and understand this pattern, wrongly assume that people are rational, they could see that such carrot/stick approaches are in fact conditioning them; we wrongly believe people will strive to be independent. However, in practice, very few reflect on what they do, let alone what others are doing to them. Most only react, and sometimes act, but seldom pro-act.

Perhaps, the lost wisdom can be regained from an unexpected place – machines, bits and bytes of the new world.

I, being someone who likes to be organized and be prepared, purchased and collected all I needed for the trip a week in advance, did laundry four days in advance, and packed everything three days in advance; in fact, I had been wearing the same clothes at home for last three days. I checked-in online Saturday afternoon and made the payment for the checked-in luggage. Over a surprise call on Saturday evening, I was informed by a computer voice that my flight from Washington to San Diego (I had the connection at Washington) had been cancelled. I was saddened as I had been preparing and eagerly waiting for Sunday – the day of my flights departure. I made few attempts to buy a new ticket, rebook, and call the customer care. I even considered taking the flight to Washington (which was just delayed), camp there and look for the first flight to leave, yet at no avail. Fortunately, another friend of mine also had his Sunday morning flight to Chicago cancelled. We decided to go to the airport, as nothing changed, and try something there. Here, I am typing this blog from the flight from Boston to Los Angels.

United airlines, an airline picked by Bing Travel, may not be the best. I was really annoyed by their computer operated service which couldn’t recognize my first name nor last name – of course my machine learning background helps me understand the complexity of HMM models and their less perfectness. Yet, voice recognition is theoretically a solved problem, and there are alternative ways of confirming the customer – perhaps by asking the customer to enter the eTicket number and date of birth (still following the protocol of two independent identification methods – one public and one private). The lady at the check-in counter said that she really wanted to do something to help me get out of Boston, yet she didn’t convince me that in her deeds. She got offended when she was politely asked to check for different connections – Texas, Arizona, LA, etc., different number of stops (I didn’t care about how many stops it would take, rather I just wanted to get out of the fully snow carpeted Logan international), and different destinations in California. She was rather interested in finding a route that exactly matched my original itinerary (of course this means less effort and computer does the searching). Finally, she was able to book me on a flight leaving next Wednesday – three days later than my expected departure date.  Having noticed two direct flights to LA being not cancelled, but only delayed, I offered to take a chance on standby. Surprisingly she neither suggested that in the first place, nor enthusiastically welcomed when I suggested. Yet, I took the chance, and United Airlines staff did their best to help the plane take off. While other airports in New England and east coast, had ceased their operations owning to this massive snowstorm, Logan was still operating, occasionally canceling few, but trying to help as many plans take off; the airport staff deserves a big kudos for this. The flight attendant at the boarding gate was, in stark contrast to the woman at the check-in counter, extremely friendly. Here, I am realizing how United could still manage to hold few loyal customers and attract new frequent flyers.

Omar Ramos, is a friend I came to know through Google Summer of Code 2009. Out of my applications to this competitive open source coding program, Joomla wasn’t my first choice, nonetheless, now I am glad that I chose it. Omar was my mentor in the project, though we started to get in touch in casual terms only after the end of the project. Perhaps, we shared the same profile, we both expected the same from other,  or rather we both wanted a brother – perhaps younger brother, yet we managed to make the acquaintance a friendship in no time; I met him for the fist time at JDC 09 at NYC, he came to stay with me in Boston for couple of days. Also he invited me to his place, offered to pick me up from San Diego airport – which is about 2 hour drive from El Centro. And this latest mishap made me seek an alternate destination – LA which is another 2 hour drive from San Diego. Still he enthusiastically offered to drive upto LA, which puts me in a greater debt than I anticipated, and later I learnt that he was even waiting at the airport for 2 hours. This quality, not very common in America  – or for that matter even in my native country – Sri Lanka, where family, relationships and social aspects are valued the most, is something that makes this friendship invaluable.

There is only a narrow line between the liability and the feasibility, and it is we who choose to view the challenge through either glass of paradigm.

6.840 is a class at MIT on Theory of Computation, taught by Michael Sipser, who wrote the popular book Introduction to Theory of Computation. Being at MIT is like getting the blessings from the God himself. Many theorems appear in the class are also attributed to other MIT alumni – Noam Chomsky of Chomsky notation, the reduced form of Contest Free Grammar (CFG), Rivest, Shamir and Adleman of RSA,  Sleyer of PSPACE-Completeness, etc. I have heard others mentioning that  how people go bewildered when ate Prof Thurairaja, a decade back at University of Peradeniya, used to start his lectures by writing Thurairajah Theorem on the board; I am witnessing it myself only now. I have attended lectures given by professors, senior lecturers, lecturers, probationary lecturers and even instructors in my alma mater, where slides were being skimmed through, jargon and illegible words were being scribbled on the board, and the voice that couldn’t be heard at even in the front row being uttered. But what makes you stay in this particular lecture is the flow and elegance of the presentation – the art of teaching. I know someone who is taking this class and coming to the lectures only to listen to Sipser and enjoy mathematics (too bad, I am from the other side of the planet), albeit having taken all the required graduate classes in his senior year when he was an undergrad here.

6.840 is offered under course 18 – applied mathematics and course 6 – electrical engineering and computer science. In course 6, area 2, which is Computer Science major, to satisfy Technical Qualifying Examination (TQE) requirements, at least one class from Theory (there are three sections – AI, Theory and System) is required. Any guess what would be the first choice among non-thoery people? First, let me start with the book Introduction to Theory of Computation. It is a graduate level material, yet first chapter (chapter 0) is dedicated for basic mathematics – definition of probabilities, inequalities, etc. The text then delves deep into the subject often providing examples and analogies. Could I ever have had a droplet of this comparatively abstract material otherwise?

6.840 defines the essence of teaching – thorough understanding, vast knowledge around the subject, simplicity, empathy, assuming no previous knowledge and preparation. Having written a book, and being able to conduct the lectures without any notes or slides Sipser satisfies the first two conditions. He only uses the chalk board (except for one time, when he used an OHP to show the historical letter written to Von Neuman on what is known as the earliest discussion on Theory of Complexity). He invites questions, and often pauses and makes sure that we are following him and if not puts his strongest effort to transfer the concept.  Probably it is the preparation, that is highly regarded as the basic requirement for teaching at MIT  – perhaps because even a monkey could teach if it could memorize all, and an interesting occasion reflecting this was when he tried to explain the Word Ladder game by offering an example – Lead to Gold – and he was taken aback by the solution class offered in seconds, which allegedly took 15 minutes earlier when he tried it while having breakfast and prepping up for the lecture. Even simple – stupid examples are worked out beforehand. Isn’t that better than appearing stupid in front of the class?

C2867 is the class I am going to teach for middle / high schoolers as part of Splash. MIT has been always keen on giving back to the community, and in this context, it conducts a series of short courses under a program called ESP. The teachers – volunteer undergrads and graduates students are required to fill the applications, provide course details and attend a mandatory teaching session; the session I attended was carried out by two girls – presumably undergrads in their junior years. What makes it worth mentioning is the way it was conducted, and the consideration shown for people’s (including school kids) time, especially when considering the fact they are still young undergrads.  She wanted to pass the message that teachers are encouraged to come 20 minutes before the class, and not to disappoint the students by not showing up or coming late.  “Suppose you will be little late, say you have a real emergency, for example you are running to Splash and a meteorite falls in front of you, and you will have to go around it, take your phone and let us know that you are on the way and will be little late”, she repeated it at least five times. Presumptuous faculties who have little concern for other people’s time have a lot to learn from these kids.

C2867 is one of the numerous classes offered in Splash 2009 for which well over 2000 students have registered. Splash is one of the examples, though not perfect, of student responsibility, commitment and pro-activeness. It is completely organized, publicized, and conducted by students – mostly undergrads. Unlike exhibitions or displays, this type of activities is of high return to the community in terms of time and money. Although similar programs are conducted by many other universities around the world, the significance lies in the organization, effectiveness and gain; of course no graduate students would volunteer to teach, and no school kids would attend otherwise, considering the weight given for the productivity and time spent in the United States.

754 is the number of votes (of total 16000 ballots) Leland Cheung, Cambridge councilor – elect, received in the recent city council elections. Joint MIT/Harvard MBA student Leland Cheung made history on Nov. 3 by becoming the first university student and the first Asian American to be elected to the Cambridge City Council.  Participation in political activities is highly disowned at my alma mater, and politics is considered taboo. However, in par with elsewhere in the United States, dialogue and discussion are hugely welcomed and encouraged at MIT.  Starting from Open House for every courses where professors engage in casual conversation with students, to “Two Dollar Dinner Tuesday” (Alumni Dinner Series) where Dean of Graduate studies, alumnae and students involve in informal discussion over dinner, to task forces that comprise of student groups, fraternities, faculties, and other officers to formulate or reevaluate policies, diversity, discussion and democracy prevail.

754 may not be huge, but significant. As an MIT – Sloan School graduate student, Leland was expected to receive backing from student voters, yet Cheung was not, in fact, carried into office by waves of MIT and Harvard students; though he did well among the relatively few students who voted, Leland’s votes were spread uniformly across the city  (MIT news). What is remarkable, though not very uncommon in the United States,  is that he was able to convince the general public all around the city, and be a role model on the topics concerned, through transparent communication; again, when compared to my alma mater where undergrads are used to picket, wear arm-bands, and even throw stones at each other to communicate their message, and officials who are used to pay attention only when the situation bothers their daily activities, the former is essentially nourishing.

I told you three stories on three different arts, and I feel, some stories must end without a conclusion. I let the reader connect the dots.

University of Moratuwa, well, the majority of expected audiences are from Sri Lanka and lengthy description is extraneous; nevertheless “Lets bring technology and professionalism” is worth reading.

MIT, the leading technical university in the world, having been continuously ranked first in various fields of engineering and technology, contrasts with its Sri Lankan counterpart in every single area, albeit the fundamentals being the same. The institute is famed for its passion for numbers, pranks and standing out from the crowd. From naming the buildings with numbers to calling the courses by decimals to the design of buildings, it chooses to be different, unique and relevant. The conspicuous element out of all is the  design of stata center.

The building has been planned so as to foster interactions not just within a department but also between departments, under the assumption that “scientists are not just cogs in a research machine, but highly creative – and highly social – thinkers”. The center invites people to mix in every possible way. — (more)

The most noticeable is the focus on objectives and flexibility surrounding the non-essentials. For instance, MIT’s undergraduate curriculum involves the hardest coursework, to be referred as “drinking from a fire hose“, yet freshman year is not graded and sophomore year only records passes. The curriculum requires an extensive list of courses, physical education, and interestingly swim test.

You can get a perfect GPA and lead every extracurricular activity on campus, but if you don’t pass a swim test and complete 8 Physical Education (P.E.) “points,” then you won’t receive an MIT diploma. Harsh, eh? That’s right, MIT requires you to graduate with a strong mind and body, while ensuring that you will not drown if your get knocked into the ocean while taking measurements of toxic algae concentrations while you’re on a boat in the Pacific (for example…) — (MIT Admissions)

The graduate course, different in expectations, focuses more in research and discoveries. (MIT receives its capital by endowments, operational support through federal and other grants, and generates one of the largest research revenues in the United States.)  Although there is a system of course requirements you could literally petition for anything and choose to take any course as you wish.

TQE requires four, H level courses (advanced graduate courses). It is not uncommon to see significant amount of undergraduates taking H level courses in senior years. The method of teaching comprises of two, one-and-half-hour long weekly lectures and recitations conducted by teaching assistants (TA) for one hour. Coursework generally comprises of Problem Sets (pSets), mid-term examinations, projects and final examinations. Both professor and TAs hold office hours every week, and usually well attended. How hard is to drink from fire hose? Generally mid-term examinations and finals are open-book, after all the life provides you all you require and expect you to solve your problems on your own, and why not MIT’s grad course? Collaboration is usually encouraged in pSets, nonetheless they are individually attempted and solutions are discussed in groups. The pSets are generally tough, often newly created set of problems for which sometimes professor wouldn’t know the answer even, weekly or biweekly posted, superficially discussed in lecture hours, personally worked by the professor well before the deadline, and occasionally graded only for submission in which case it would have been discussed extensively during TA office hours.

There is no silly question! People here are trained to live independently and question everything they hear and see. I believe Buddhism also teaches the same, yet I was able to witness it in practice here. Any lecture wouldn’t go without at least ten questions asked, and initially I, as a student, used to get annoyed by such interruptions, while it is encouraged and well received by the professors. There is no silly question (purposefully repeated)! However simple a question is, it is not uncommon to be referred by “that was a great question, let me explain this way”. I just remembered, how I was told not to ask more in my second alma mater! I wasn’t the Oliver Twist, and it wasn’t the London orphanage feeding under poor law.

Further it is very common for a student to disagree with a professor, and sometimes professor, himself would volunteer and ask whether anyone disagreeing, and continue by telling where someone could have disagreed and why his statement remains valid. Such conducive environment is what makes impossible things possible, not when ideas are stifled and nipped in the bud.

The research work, demands intellectual findings and hard work, and generally hacking and smart engineering are discouraged. The importance is given to research in graduate courses. Number of publications, nominations and awards measure the success, recognition and respect are gained by hard work and significant achievement. I have to stress on publications. MIT is well known for entrepreneurial activities (100k is one of the most popular initiatives), the institute, city of Cambridge, and New England as a whole provide the best atmosphere for any such initiatives; many – both graduate and undergraduate students – go on starting their own ventures immediately after graduation, in the areas ranging from food trucks to advertisement agencies to high-techs; yet publication is what get you through your graduate career.

I was told to call my supervisor, John Guttag, by his first name from the first VOIP conversation I had with him. Well, it took me a while to stop conferring him the knighthood which I was trained to in both my almae matres. Oddly he does not fail to apologize when he gets late for a weekly scheduled meeting, which is quite opposite to what I used to be, waiting for hours for someone to show up at their office. The conversations are highly informal, often taking interest in personal matters. For instance, he would ask how I am settling in (indeed with a question mark), and I would ask about his house that is being rebuilt.

The carrot and stick theory is long gone! I was used to read that only in Organizational Management text books till now. No one asks you to do anything! No one is obliged to do anything, except for iPhone owners, well they are bound with AT&T for two years. I have seen, and been to competitions and events with as few people as four, and struggled to get into fully packed auditoriums. Organizers understand their duties and they do enough publicity, and provide adequate incentives – the main and most common are free food (lunch, snack, refreshments or dinner), gifts, raffle draws, etc. There hasn’t been a single event without free food and drink. Motivation theory is well understood and well practiced by everyone, starting from a hair dresser, to waitress, to organizers to professors. The exams always carry 2 points only for writing your name and registration number on the question paper; and they never berate you for not attending some boring meeting, instead would focus on making it more appealing.

Rules and laws are there to guide not to control. The best thing about MIT and especially the system in USA is, there is no red-tape. Anything and everything is petition-able, and adaptable. It is very common for people to switch their degrees, do both MD, and PhD (need not be in biology), and basically do things outside the rules. The system bends as far as it serves the objective and best interests of the individual and the institute, which contrasts a lot with where I came from – where the law bends to serve the best interests of the fittest of all, or remains inflexible. Here, often deals are made; compromises are very common, and result is an improvement over whatever status quo it was. For instance, as per PhD requirements, one is expected to take two minors – graduate level courses outside the research area – and foreign language courses are often not allowed, as they are often of beginners level and hardly offer any significant benefit. Had this red-tape been enforced as in Sri Lanka, would there be someone who did take beginners level course in Mandarin and went on to do Chinese literature, or someone who fell in love with a Chinese girl and mastered the language through his minor requirement. For someone who was prevented from doing CS courses in his undergraduate and faced with difficulties in applying for transcript this must be welcoming.

It might sound as litany of complaints, but again it requires a paradigm shift to view them as observations based on direct comparisons flavored with little satire. The life is not necessarily the happiest here. After all, people here work hard, and play hard. I have seen people only watching tech shows in TV and only listen to iTunes U in iPod. I sometimes wonder whether they live. The path is always decided by efficiency and often harnessed by the objectives; and every second is measured in terms of productivity. Unlike what you see in TV series and movies, they do go to work, and don’t wait to finish their cappuccino in the coffee house.

It has been quite long since Joomla! 1.6 Alpha came, and there have been a lot of changes made in Joomla! 1.6 since then. Further, it was also decided to adapt the architecture slightly to follow Joomla!.

The major changes since beta, excluding bug fixes are

1. Taxonomy TreeMaps are made standalone entities (equal to Trees and Leaves), with CRUD.
2. Utility functions are moved to JTaxonomy class which is the primary entry point for taxonomy extension.
3. Autocomplete feature is further brushed up to provide better user experience.
4. Taxonomy Cloud and Taxonomy Cumulus are provided.

The package provided below contains

1. Taxonomy Library : API classes
2. Taxonomy Component : To provide management forms in the backend and listings in the frontend
3. Content_MapTaxonomy Plugin : To store taxonomy-content mappings in the event of a post save.
4. Content_Taxonomy Plugin : To provide taxonomy links inside the article in frontend.
5. Taxonomy_Content Plugin : To generate output of content posts under leaf listing
6. Taxonomy Cumulus Module : To generate cumulus and cloud of taxonomy terms
7. Modified com_content file : To insert Taxonomy options into content edit form.

The suggested installation order is as follows

1. Copy the following directories into Joomla! installation
   • libraries
   • administrator (will replace a com_content file)
2. Install com_taxonomy.zip : Under taxonomy component, go to configurations to fine-tune
3. Install plg_content_maptaxonomy.zip
4. Install plg_content_taxonomy.zip : Go to settings to style up the output
5. Install plg_taxonomy_content.zip
6. Install mod_taxonomycumulus.zip : Add one or more instances (there are two modes available – cloud and cumulus, and you might want to add one from each, configure them from settings)

You might also want to take a look at the demo, before digging in

Visit : http://demo.theebgar.net/gsoc2009

1. There are two taxonomy trees created and mapped to com_content. One is used to represent the language of the post, and the other for free terms (tagging) with autocomplete. Both are not controlled (i.e. properties can be edited and member leaves  can be added and edited from com_taxonomy backend)
2. On the frontend
   1. Sidebar
      1. Mod_taxonomyCumulus is used in Cloud mode to represent Language Tree (<br /> delmiter is used with sorting by weight in descending direction)
      2. Mod_taxonomyCloud is used in Cumulus mode to represent tags (white background with no transparency is used)
   2. Content Posts
      1. Taxonomy links are presented before content with “,” delimiter, “<em><small>” prefix and “</em></small><br />” suffix.
      2. By clicking a taxonomy term in that link you could navigate to taxonomy listing page for that term
   3. Taxonomy Link from menu
      It will take you to the listing pages
3. On the backend

1. Send a request for access details (use the contact form here) .
2. By using component menu navigate to Taxonomy Management Pages
   1. Have a look at Taxonomy Configurations, and follow the help provided
   2. Add / Edit trees
   3. Add / Edit Tree maps with other components
   4. Add / Edit leaves to a tree
   5. Have a look at the tree hierarchy and leaf maps
3. Navigate to Article Managment and add an article or edit one.
   Under Taxonomy Panel from the sidepane, you could notice that the terms from Taxonomy Trees mapped are listed

Screenshots

The discussion about money is treated as taboo in many cultures not limited to Asian, and we are quite uncomfortable talking about money, especially when it is related to Health and Education – the professions we treat as holistic. We tend to avoid asking the fee beforehand in either cases, and expect good service at a reasonable payment.

I had to complete a form on medical test results and vaccination that is required by MIT before registration. Immunity for the following were required either by taking vaccinations or by proving the presence of antibodies through positive test results.

• Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR)
• Hepatitis B
• Tetanus/diphtheria booster
• Meningococcal
• Varicella (chicken pox)

I chose to go to a medical center, which I got to know through a friend of mine.  I liked the idea of going to a small place, as it would be less crowded and won’t reek with hospital smell. Also channeling is done by appointments which seemed convenient. The place is also in the suggested list of places for medical check-up for Canadian visa.

The physician, was amiable and nice. Although I had to wait for about 20 minutes on my second appointment, overall the experience was  pleasant. The physician was attentive and empathetic, and room was clean. I was given two injections (MMR vaccination and Menomune vaccination). Also blood was taken to test for antibodies for Hep B and Varicella. So far so good. I was shocked, only when I saw the bill for 10500 LKR for channelling and vaccination, and another 6000 LKR for blood tests. Interestingly, I had had chicken pox and hence, the test was not required which I attentively mentioned. To exacerbate, when she filled the form the other day she didn’t even bother to take out the test results, and she circled the option that I had already had chicken pox, which of course she could have done without ordering for the test results. Damn-it. I must have protested earlier.

I had to go two days later, so that she would consult the test results and complete the form (I required the signature). The happenings were quite fast, that before I could ask for the price or say no, the injection was ready, and another surprise was waiting when I learnt it was another 8500 LKR from my pocket. For my bad, I had already checked outside, and it is priced at 1500 LKR.

However lesson was learnt, signature on the form and list of vaccinations I had, have been obtained, and I am getting the next doze at a dispensary near by.

PS: Today I learnt Hep B vaccine costs only 50 USD in the US which would be about only 60% of what I had paid.