Waves

Microsoft Research (MSR) India conducted TechVista yesterday, a symposium by MSR to showcase some of the hottest research that’s been happening. The talks were interesting and so were the posters presented by various students from top notch colleges, some of whose research is sponsored by Microsoft.

After the usual keynote, the real talk began by 10.45 AM. The talk was about the “Future of Computing” by Dr. John Hopcroft. It was a very insightful talk with details about ‘the cloud’ that I could relate to; and also about information storing and retrieval in digital form. The next talk was by Dr. Richard Szeliski about “Weaving the World’s Photos”. This talk was more about Photosynth and the technology and algorithms that go behind it. The talk was simply awesome; especially the place when they mentioned about the SIFT and RANSAC algorithms. SIFT determines similar points in 2 photos taken from different angles while RANSAC is able to stitch those points together and form a 3D model of the image. Considering the fact there are 1000s of photos online for a popular place (E.g. Taj Mahal), with photos taken from different angles, the SIFT and RANSAC algorithms brings about the 3D model of the place. Then these points are optimized and the resulting images are stitched together. When pictures are more detailed and where users have tagged those details, these pictures are used when users zoom in and zoom out of the 3D model. It also removes all the “noise” from the photographs and gives an almost seamless 3D experience.

The next talk I attended was by Dr. Shafi Goldwasser about program obfuscation and one-time programs. I could related to this talk because of my very recent experiment 😀 and paid full attention to this talk. I was smiling when one of her slides contained the last paragraph of this blog post from YUI blog. Many points in her slide were eye-opening such as ROKs and the slides that said where obfuscation fails.

It was lunch now. Somehow, most of these conferences mangle up lunch so badly that we want to give out a blood curdling yell. As soon as the morning session talks were over, myself and a few guys walked over to the Professors and were asking them a few doubts. By the time we went for lunch, most of the good dishes were over. So were the desserts 🙁

The talk immediately after lunch was some marketing blah blah about MSR that was putting me to sound sleep. I woke up and went to the poster presentations to check out what the Ph.D students had done. Some of the posters were really cool! I liked the ones on “Understanding the dynamics behind evolution of stable peer-to-peer networks” by Bivas Mitra from IIT-KGP, “Secure Distributed Computation and Communication” by Arpita and Ashish from IITM and PULRP by Deepthi and Kannan from IITB. It was about an hour by the time I finished looking through the posters. With my sleep vanished, I headed to main hall again to check out the next talk.

This talk was about “Computational Camers” by Dr. Shree K Nayar. It was just awesome! When I was college, I did a paper on Digital Image Processing and almost cried because of the complex equations 🙂 All of those were coming back in my head when this talk was going on. May be if I had known earlier, I would have applied for MSR as soon as I had passed out.

With this talk getting over, one of my friends who was a finalist of my batch’s MSAPP had come to the venue. Just as myself, Dhaval and Subhamoy were getting intro’d to him, we delved deep into quantum and relative physics, with a bit of astronomy thrown in. That twisted my brain in some crazy ways. Our discussion happened for more than 2 hours and I learnt a lot more from this discussion than from the ones that were happening inside at this time.

Oh! while I was talking to Subhamoy, he casually mentioned this story. His mobile had fallen in water & when he switched it on, it got short circuited. So, he removed the panels, took the mobile circuit to this lab, found the short circuits and resoldered everything again in their proper places. He is still using that same phone. THAT WAS AWESOME!

All-in-all, it was a day spent very well 😀 I enjoyed every moment to the core.

Few days ago, I was chatting with a guy in my office. It goes without saying that the guy is far more experienced than me. Myself and my team mate were showing a prototype UI & this conversation happened. Here’s how it went:

Me: Please check this functionality & let us know if you have questions.

Guy: Keeps his left hand on his chin, turns his head slightly, squints at the monitor, pointing his right hand at the webpage & without checking an ounce of functionality, says … The UI doesn’t look good. Make changes to it.

Me: Okay… We are working on it.

Guy: Suddenly stares at me with a blank expression & says … Hey don’t use “div” tag.

Me: (I’m obviously confused) … Why not?

Guy: Stares again and says … Major browsers don’t support it well !!

That hit me – like a brick – on the head and I was dazed for a second. Team mate and myself burst out laughing and walked out of the room 😀

Oh! did I mention that it was supposed to be a “technical” discussion?

Its been about 2 and a half months since I started going to the Kalari classes and I’m still going. Stamina has improved by a good extent and I’m able to note the difference between now and then. I have also started losing fear of sharp weapons such as daggers and vett aruvals. Overall, its been a very nice time every alternate morning for two hours at YMCA Nandanam.

So, what’s been the main driving factor to get me to join Kalari apart from other fitness activities such as gym, yoga etc.?

1. Yoga and gym are a few days activities at the teacher’s place, which means I have to practice it on my own afterwards. That requires tremendous mental toughness & moreover, altering your schedule to fit in yoga or gym in place of sleep is a tough. Hence, I needed something which would take a long time to master but at the same time I needed to learn the techniques fast enough. Kalari fit this bill easily. For full-time Kalari practitioners, it takes about 13 years to master it. For me, it will take even more, considering that fact that I practice it for just 6-10 hours a week. So, I can learn it for a decade slowly and surely. You also need a master at most times to correct you always. Many programmes disconnect you after the 10 day ritual. For e.g. in Kalari, you need to do a combination of punches, kicks and jumps. First you have to learn to do it. Then, you have to learn to do it well. Then, you have to improve your speed of doing it & fourthly, you have to perfect it & you need the master’s help in all these phases. Otherwise, it cannot be done.
2. I have this tendency to ask lot of questions during the early days of learning something & I needed a master who will answer those patiently 🙂 Fortunately for me, the master under whom I’m learning now, is very patient and answers in detail about whatever questions I ask, even though they are stupid/silly for most of the time.
3. I needed a flexible schedule. 10 day programmes are useless here. For a programme to be flexible, it has to happen over a period of time, so that you can always catch up. Here, we have flexible timings ;-). So, if I miss a class or two because of office or anything else, I can catch up during Saturday or Sunday.
4. I needed a team. Jogging alone or doing yoga alone will seem awesome for a few days. But not for long. You will get bored soon. With Kalari, it doesn’t happen. Three of us (myself and 2 of my school friends) joined & every class is exciting. A fourth person joined & soon, we started practicing in groups of two. During weekends, we have a few experienced guys coming in, who have learned & practiced Kalari for 5-6 years. With them around, it will be awesome!

P.S. I have honoured Google Chrome by using writing this post on Chrome 😉 hehehe…

Kalari a.k.a Kalaripayattu is a form of traditional martial art that is believed to have originated in Kerala and then spread slowly across the world. Legend says it that, when Saint Parasurama (an incarnation of Lord Vishnu) threw the axe into the Arabian sea, the water receeded until the point of the axe and Kerala was born. To protect this land, Parasurama taught Kalari to 21 saints across the state who have been spreading their knowledge through dedicated disciples since then.

I have been learning Kalari since the last 2 weeks. I have attended five classes so far & I must say that its absolutely great. The best part of learning Kalari is that its fun. And the most basic lesson you get to learn is how to control your mind and get it to a meditative state, where you don’t have to “do” anything and everything happens automatically. Well, you have to be there to understand what I mean 🙂

There are essentially tons of other ways to keep yourself fit and this is one of those amazing pieces that very little people get to learn, very very few get to expertise level and even fewer become true masters. I found an interesting website when I was searching for Kalari videos. The website is http://www.kalari.in/. Go visit it and definitely check out their videos section. Its truly amazing!

 

Simple dinners are awesome. One such dinner was what I had today. My mom used to make all the varieties of podis like paruppu podi (dal powder – roughly speaking), karuvepalai podi etc. on a time to time basis and we used to devour them. Podi sadham is very famous in my home. We used to mix rice & podi along with gingely oil a.k.a nallenai & then eat that mixture. Gingely oil can also be replaced with ghee.

Today’s spread was very simple. We had piping hot boiled rice, few podis, avakka oorga (mango pickle) and then butter milk to finish off.

First we have a very small serving of the mango pickle near the corner of the plate. Then, a few rounds of piping hot rice is served & a spoonful or two of ghee or gingely oil. The aroma that starts wafting now … OMG !! its awesome! And on top of this, you have to put two or three teaspoons of podi, mix well and before you start eating a morsel, touch the avakka oorga with the tip of your index finger (meaning – konjam oorga thottuko) & then eat 😀 Now, close your eyes and relish the moment. The mixture of piping hot rice, podi, oorga and ghee will make you go crazy.

After a few rounds of this combo, comes more sadham or rice that is eaten with butter milk (making butter milk with perfect taste and proper thickness is a skill in itself). For the best effect, mix a small quantity of rice with lots of butter milk e.g. 1 portion of rice with 2 portions of butter milk. After you have mixed this well, add a few drops of the mango flavoured oil, taken from the avakka oorga container. Mix this well and oru kattu kattu !!

Enjoy 🙂

One of my juniors in college named Satish has written this small wonderful piece on Ruby (programming language).

Ruby makes a programmer smile
even when he’s using while
all the if’ and else’ and do’
reduces the work you do
kernel methods work like charm
conventions make work a form
all the while you reap the fruits
everyone gives java the boots!

Cool ! Ain’t it? 🙂

I had a left a few important files on my USB drive last weekend and was looking for the drive everywhere; but couldn’t find it. Suddenly, I remembered that it was in one of the trousers worn over the weekend. But then, that trouser was completely washed twice, dried and even ironed as of now. Still not sure as to whether the USB drive will be present, I checked the pockets of the trouser and voila! It was there.

The connector looked like it had got rusted. But not sure as to whether to use this, I connected it to this very computer and the blue LED started blinking 😀 . The drive was still functional. Amazing! It survived two rounds of washing, rinsing, drying and then ironing. It is a 1GB Transcend drive that I purchased about one and half years back.

Nice USB stick! Nice Company!

In singara Chennai 🙂 dharboose (aka watermelon) is an amazing fruit that the whole city looks forward to in the month of March-April-May. So it was this one fine afternoon I was driving back home after roaming around the city for a lot of Govt. related tasks. Throat went absolutely dry. Front and back portions of the oesophagus looked as if they were going to stick to each other. Some more time outside … and I would have surely collapsed with hunger & thirst. That’s when we came across a nice stall on G.N.Chetty Road. If you go through G.N.Chetty Road, you will notice that outside the walls of the Ramakrishna Mission School ground, there is a huge fruit shop which sell the seasonal fruits. So, even if you don’t know what fruits are good for this season, a visit to this place will prove useful 😉

So there I was … hungry and thirsty. For 5 bucks, he cut across a huge slice from a big melon, its juice flowing out & its fine red flesh beckoning me to take a bite at it :D. As soon as the 1st piece went inside, it was an awesome feeling on the throat. I could feel the oesophagus expanding to accomodate the red juicy melon & contracting again. It felt amazing. The cooling effect that it caused enroute to the stomach was something superb that you have to experience with peace of mind. Otherwise, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you will miss it. Followed by this, to wash out your semi-dry throat there can be nothing better than the good-old, healthy & natural ilaneer (aka tender coconut). Ilaneer is available at just about every place in the city during all seasons. So even if you are unable to feel and eat dharboose, try drinking ilaneer on a hot afternoon. Pick the one which has lot of ‘vazhukkai’. It will conveniently keep you away from the deadly combination of hunger & thirst surely for the next hour or two.

If you are thirsty on the road, instead of going for that bottle of Coke or Slice, go for ilaneer or for fruit juices. It’s good for health and at the same time, will quench your thirst.

Quite some time back, BSNL – the largest telecom provider in India – started out with a small feature. The feature was to send the corresponding month’s telephone bill by email. They also started out with another feature where we can pay the bills online. Both of them working properly is out of question!

Since the last 2 months, I have been receiving a peculiar bill by email :-). The pending amount for the bill reads as “-1”.  Check the screenshot below of last month’s bill. I’m surprised by how such a blunder could be committed and no one checks it. The printed bill comes properly though.

Yay! so…. as the title of this post suggests, I’m moving to Hyderabad to attend Sun Tech Days. This is the 4th time I’m attending the event & I must say that it is a perfectly managed event with great sessions and hands-on-labs. There are some interesting labs this time; notably the ones on Java ME.

That aside, from the agenda, the sessions do not look as great as they were last time. But we actually do not know until we attend them. I’m planning to attend the ones on netbeans, mobility and a few SOA related stuff. Get the agenda here. If wifi is available at the venue, I will try to live blog the event here using my brand new device 😀

The event is happening tomorrow morning at 9am. For more details, check out this link. If you are coming, do drop by and say a hi 🙂