Oh, by the Way

Bloody show-off !

2011-10-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday I was at a concert. You'd think I'm writing about yet another concert. But this one was special indeed. Not 'cos it was one special band. But 'cos it was many. 8 hours of music. 12 in the afternoon to 10 in the night. Some big names. Some I was hearing for the first time. Almost all of it, awesome.

- Devendra Banhart

- Beck

- Norah Jones with The Little Willies

- Mumford & Sons

- Carlos Santana

- Eddie Vedder

- Foo Fighters

- Tony Bennett

- Dave Matthews

- Arcade Fire

- Neil Young

I wish I could show you some nice pictures from that day, but alas, they didn't let me take my camera inside. RS did a nice write-up and a video of one of the songs.

And of course, there is absolutely no reason I'm posting this on the day Metallica is performing in India for the first time. And I'm not going to be there. :-P

Look who's doing the Blues !

2011-09-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

I'll see him play live at a Blues festival this weekend. There's a bunch of other good people too. One of them being Buckethead. This is the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in SanFran !

Awesome pictures shall follow.

Blog-Instant

2011-08-03T10:47:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I started blogging was because I started working in the corporate world! The necessary, the mundane, the 'such-is-life's of life hit me. I needed a place to get away from it all. And I started writing, and enjoyed it. The irony, however, lies in the fact that it is life, work and other related 'such-is-life's that keep me from blogging for days.

Why Work and Life you ask ?

Well Life....it turns pale sometimes. You really can't do much about that. And I don't like the negativity to flow onto here.

Why Work ? Is that a trick question !?!?

I promised to myself in the last post before this that I would post more often. And I haven't managed to write anything in days. Bummer !

So here it goes, new style I adapt. No long posts. Short bulleted-lists of thoughts on my mind. One liners on stuff that make me smile, things that make me ponder, stuff that make me frown. Maybe even 140 characters per thought..... What the heck, Twitter, I'm your slave... :-)

Till of course, the thoughts turn into day-dreams and I have a _long_ post. \m/

So here you go,

- My group photo-blog, Reason-11, has been getting some love off late.

- I've been reading about Tin Pan Alley.

- I want you to play this in another tab while you read this. Well, Google, when do I get to play background music for my readers ??

- The hiring in the Valley, I read, is like good ol' 1999. Hmmn !

- I've got a bike, You can ride it if you like!

- Adobe releasing a HTML-5 authoring tool while Apple and its fanboi's cry "Flash is going to kill the world, Flash is going to kill the world", is very cool.

- August is the month things turn beautiful.

- I recently visited the Stanford Campus with a fancy-ass camera. Here are the steals.

- Here are a few more from the city I live in, Mountain View and of course, nearby 'Frisco.

- Which also reminds me, Tied-House in downtown Mountain View. Home-made beer. Good shit.

- Finally, I went for a Robben Ford blues evening. Indescribably beautiful guitar solos.

Three Dot Five

2011-07-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

The first blog-post I wrote was in Jan of 08. And since then I have piled up two hundred and twenty posts. Which comes down to around a post every 5 or 6 days. Not super impressive, considering I had started off with the goal of one a day ! But what the hell. Aren't most things in life all about high expectations, mild failures and celebrations nevertheless ?

< Trumpets and drum-roll !!! > So here's celebrating Birthday-3.5 with something new and special. A very own domain name... \m/.... Yes, I moved my blog from sagspace.blogspot.com to blog.sagnikdhar.com. And of course, I moved my personal website from its older link to www.sagnikdhar.com. < /Trumpets and drum-roll !!! >

Cheers to a long awaited wish fulfilled and to the self-promise of more frequent posts! And for anyone who cares, I've updated my Pandora channels list on the right sidebar. The top 6 are the most recently baked.... :-).

Badge up !

2011-07-18T14:31:00.001-07:00

Google digs data. In every sense of the verb. Take Google news. The world generates stories everyday, or should I say every hour. Of every kind. Products like Google News and others, run tons of analysis software on these articles. They have records of which news tags receive the highest views and which news article is being spoken about the most online. Everything. And they have this data, almost on a per-person granularity. Many know this, many don't. But everyone enjoys it when Google News dishes you articles which always seem to kindle your interest. Wait, I can almost hear the nerds (in black-rimmed glasses) say, 'Ya ya, we get it, they have an awesome recommendation system ! What else ?'.

Now this is not what I found interesting. They've taken these numbers from a 'back-end analysis engine' and made it cool. 'How ?', you'd ask. Everytime you read articles about a particular topic (say Cricket), you earn points for it. These points accumulate and becomes a Cricket-badge on your account. You could have as many badges as you want. And the more you read about cricket, your badge turns from Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and finally Ultimate. Its almost like a medal of honour for the knowledge gained about a particular topic. And as I sense the privacy-purists turning red, let me mention, all your Badges are private to you. No one gets to know about your Platinum knowledge of Lady Gaga. But of course, you can explicitly make public one of your badges. And maybe even spark some interesting conversations with fellow amigos.

Needless to say, your news feed was always customized according to the reading history. Tags are used for that and I'm sure you see how Google already had all of the infrastructure for this. Nothing new in that. Almost every other news service uses tags. But this new feature called Badges, without almost any technical additions, engages many more users. It plays with their minds and makes an everyday mundane activity more fun. I've always felt there was this strong psychological aspect to software.

Finally, they also let you create a Badge (instead of Google News giving you one) on any topic to get news feed on that topic. To make things fun, when you start using Badges, they offer to create you an 'Apple' badge.... :-P

And for such things, Google is awesome. Unlike some other things, which sadly is chipping off the awesomeness.

Happy 4th ye all !

2011-07-04T10:34:00.000-07:00

The future of music ?

2011-06-30T16:01:00.000-07:00

Waddup !

2011-05-23T23:32:00.001-07:00

Sitcom: The League

Song: The Golden Age by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour

Book: The California driver's manual

Annoyance: Sniffy nose

Laziness: Missing the Maker Faire

Un-laziness: Going to the Ala-a-carte and art fair on Castro

Suddenness: Cold summer evenings in the Bay

Movie: POTC, On Stranger Tides

Dish: Thai Panang curry with white rice

Indulgence: A sofa !

Awesomeness: Biscoff Lotus cookies at Pier 39!

Bummer: Working on Memorial Day. Oh, well...
(Edit: Catching up with old friends on Memorial Day. Yay !!)

To a great poet !

2011-05-09T16:40:00.000-07:00

While Google's homepage today reminded me of the birthday of a great author, I was talking to a friend last evening about why is there no doodle (atleast on the Google India homepage) for Tagore's birthday.

Here's to celebrating someone who's work has probably redesigned Bengali literature in ways more than one. In Kolkata, 9th (or sometimes 8th, depending on which day is the 25th day of the first month of the Bengali calendar) of May is celebrated as Rabindra Jayanti to mark the birthday of the poet.

A few people complained and for a short period of time, they put this up...

Comic head start !

2011-04-24T20:47:00.001-07:00

Always helps at the start of a whole new week !

(Thank you Jorge Cham and WillowGarage for the image !)

For Water

2011-04-21T21:10:00.051-07:00

Here's a little thing. Earth Day is around the corner. I'm not sure exactly when, but is that important ? I'd rather use it as an excuse to help out folks at this non-profit org called Charity:Water. Its an awesome bunch of people with a more awesome cause. I got a chance to spend some time with them last summer and do a bit. Maybe you can do better !

Here's their Earth Day video,

And here's their pitch for making you watch their Earth Day video (err was I supposed to put the pitch before the video ?!?! Ah, I got you to watch it anyway. Thank you for that. ),

- For a friend with little time... Today millions of people will spend 3 HOURS walking to collect water. Do you have 3 minutes to watch a video on why? - For a friend who wants the facts... 1 in 8 people lives without clean water. - For a friend who plays sports... 1 in 8 people spend 3 hours a day collecting their drinking water (and it's likely to make them sick!). What if your gym routine was a water walk? - For a friend who needs an example... Can you imagine having to give your child dirty water? Millions of women don't have a choice. Find out why in 3 minutes. - For a friend who likes Kristen Bell... charity: water teamed up with Kristen Bell to show how water changes everything

Cheers !

Only telling

2011-04-14T15:36:00.001-07:00

So I went for a Stanford talk yesterday where Marc Levoy spoke about the FrankenCamera and Andrew Ng about Deep Learning. Fascinating stuff. But the striking commonality I noticed between these two speakers and the others was their entrepreneurial spirit. For the profs, it wasn't a customary.. Ok, this is what my lab students have been up to over the last year.. these are the research problems we are solving, this could have a bunch of applications and here are a few results we have published. It was much more than that.

Almost half of the talks were spent trying to justify what real-life problem was being solved in the longer run. Why do you really need to solve this problem now and why later would mean trouble. During this, they were also marketing their research, which I feel is very important. A very small fraction of research (from primarily what I see in AI, mainly Computer Vision) actually go and face the real sunlight. Publishing your state-of-the-art method in a top-notch conference just doesn't cut it. Of course, it might be a good first step, but thats really not enough. The simple reason being, you are alone not enough to make a difference. You have to get your work through to other people so that it grows. You can't write a paper and expect people to look up conference proceedings and read your paper. Except maybe, if you are David Lowe writing the SIFT paper. But not all papers make it that big, do they ? Also if your papers do get cited, it would mainly be from other researchers. What about the other engineers, product managers, VCs or any other person who could build on your work in some productive way ?

I also wouldn't think selling my research paper is enough. More could be done. You don't expect these non-researchy people to sit and read 8 pages of LNCS-formatted text and equations when their schedules are already choc-a-bloc. Use 5 min lightning talks (or videos of it) to explain your work(with a demo) maybe. Publish your sources on your website as a re-usable 'as-is' package. Interact more online, maybe sell your stuff to influential bloggers so that they write about it or maybe write your own Squidoo and give glimpses of your ideas. Try pushing your ideas as features to companies who write software. I'm sure this list could be expanded. Market it as if it were a real product. Nothing beats the validation process of a real product. And when it does make it to a product, advertise the fact. From then on, rinse effectively and repeat. The advertising-push and your crowd-pull is of-course complementary.

Very few really big things happened single-handedly. Torvalds didn't write the entire Linux kernel as it is today. He saw the brilliance of Unix and initiated a process which would make it more accessible to the developer community and in the longer run get used, tested and lauded in various different computing scenarios. Hell, even House, who is portrayed as super-brilliant, needs to bounce ideas off his troika. You need to make sure people actually make sense of your work !

A very little of the talks were spent describing the actual implementation specifics or the equations. Well, as a speaker, if you have done your bit to get the right person's attention, you can take it for granted that he would make it a point to go read your paper or contact you and get the technical details.

Not only do these small measures up your contribution-quotient a lot more, it greatly increases your chances of getting collaborative assistance on what you are working on as compared to expecting the same via pure blue-sky research. And thats probably one of the reasons why the CS department at Stanford is ahead of the game.

Just my two cents !

The aftermath of thought

2011-04-03T23:39:00.003-07:00

I know of a lot of people who really put in a lot of thought into how their personal blog looks. These blogs are not trying to sell anything to you. Nor are these people pagerank-hungry and after your mouse-clicks. The only thing you would see as important in these blogs is content. But still people spend time on how the page looks and what you have on your sidebar. And it makes sense because a personal blog is, like I said before too, personal. It is not something you do out of a necessity. You could have done without it. But it exists because you wanted it to. And spending time on how it looks is definitely worthwhile, if not a necessity.

Scene 2. In comes a suave young man with a gun in hand and a purpose on his mind. He shoots down all the hours you spent making your blog look like what it does. Done with everything, he looks at you and says, "So is this how you wanted to make your blog look ?"

Google a few days ago came up with different views for blogs hosted on Blogger. They call them Flipcart, Mosaic, Sidebar, Snapshot and Timeslide. A brilliant montage of functionality, aesthetics and purpose. I am impressed.

A couple of years back I would talk about a lot (almost every) of Google's new features in my blog. A passer-by might have even seen shades of blind love. But then Google's feature announcements and releases grew exponentially. And coincidentally, I couldn't see sense in all of their moves. But Blogger's new Views are really good. In the face of Wordpress, Tumblr, Posterous and Squidoo, this is good stuff.

Having spent some time with the views, Flipcart is probably the best of them functionality-wise. Especially the clustering feature (according to Date, Label and Author) seems quite useful (especially for a multi-author blog). But having said that, the Mosaic view would be my favorite. A very nice ensemble of text snippets and image crops from my various posts over time, woven together in an abstract jigsaw pattern. This View takes the cake for readability, design and that special touch. Also finally Infinite-Scrolling. It was something Blogger didn't have and every other blog-management system probably seemed to. So thank you for that.

Feeling connected

2011-03-19T15:40:00.001-07:00

I've been spending quite a bit of money buying furniture and other (necessary!) stuff for my new apartment. Having lived on-campus at Stony Brook, all, but my table-lamp, fitted in exactly 3 suitcases. So when it came to buying a router for the apartment, I went for a really cheap one. I thought, all I need at the end of the road is a (mostly single user) wireless network for a 1-bedroom apartment. That could be expected off a low-end router too. I've been using it for a couple of weeks now, and I have had absolutely no problem. Except. Wait for it ... the initial startup. It was one experience not to be forgotten.

Before I go on, this is not a rant about the company (Though I will very carefully not mention the company name :P). But seriously, I love you for saving me at least 15 bucks. And neither is this about their tech-support guys. I mean, I called them at about 6 in the evening. Back in India, it must have been 6 in the morning. Sorry about that. My bad. I mean, the guy must have been awake all night. I get it. Goof-ups happen. Not blaming you for it. This post is just a record of an experience I had. If not for anything ... for the fun of it !

So back to where I was. I was trying to set up the router. The box said, connect your router to the computer. Feed it with some electricity. Install the software that comes on the cd in the pack. And you can give your network a name and passwd. And you're good to go. So I tried the following steps. It didn't work. Nothing happened. Nothing glowed except the green power button on the router. I tried fiddling around a little and then I called the helpline. A very inviting Indian voice picks up. Seems quite happy to hear that there is an Indian on the other end too. More so, my guess is the guy could even have been a bengali, cos he seemed delighted to hear that I'm a 'Sagnik'. I'm like, good for me. Feels nice that I pleased someone. But let's move on now. He tells me to re-do the entire process once again. Fair enough. But when that didn't work, he suggests I re-do the process with a different order of steps. I reluctantly say, but this is not the order mentioned in the _Instructions_. Very calmly he ignores my comment and keeps talking. A few more tries later, the router's 'Internet' light glows. Elated I tell him, "Hey I think the router is now connected". He replies back, "See I told you, this was the order of steps". I was like... ?!?!?! This was like the Nth try.

Step two. Getting it to wirelessly connect to my laptop. Of course, it doesn't work right away. He tells me to login to the router configuration page and make some changes. Then try something. Then make some more changes. The usual. But the funny bit was, after every change, he goes, 'Ok, close the config page now'. After a couple of times, I ask him, 'You mean I should logout of the config page right ?'. To my shock he tells me (in very polite english), "No Sir, you can take your mouse cursor to the top right of the browser window and click on the cross symbol. The logging in / logging out is of no use." I'm like... !?!?! I ask myself, does that mean my router config page does not have a password ??? Or even worse, any password works ! At this point, I tried not to think too much. I mean there is only so much I can take. He kept trying various things out. At one point, frustrated, he says, "Ufff. I think I have to call my senior technician". Strangely I felt like smiling then. This whole thing was turning out to be quite an amusement. The guy tells me, lets try one last time. Lets disconnect everything. Disconnect the router from the wall socket. The modem from the router. Switch off the computer. Etc. And in between each of these steps, he would say, 'Ok now lets wait for 30 seconds'. And we would wait for 30 long seconds. Utter silence. Not a word. During one of these silences, I almost felt like saying, 'Cmon, enough, not like the electrons are gonna walk back home and take a quick nap and get back'. But I did not laugh. Maybe there is some science behind these 30 second intervals which I'm not aware of. And more importantly, my wireless connectivity was in his hands.

Anyway after more of such amusement, everything was set up. Honestly, I have no clue how it worked. Or what he did. I mean, each of the individual steps made sense. But not the order in which he did them in. Actually wait, he tried almost every possible order and one of them worked. So I asked him, if I have to power off the router and take it to another room and power it on again, would it readily work ? Or are there chances of another adventure ? I mean, I seriously wanted to move it to the other room and not keep it where it was. Don't look at me like I was troubling the poor chap ! But to my amusement, he tells me, 'Sir it will readily work. You will not have to do anything special. But please do not move it now. Do it at a later date.'. I smiled, thanked him for all his help and hung up. :-)

I did unplug the router, move it to the other room and plug it back in, right then. It worked and hasn't given any problems hence. I sat back on my chair, a glass of water-melon juice in hand, opened the Router config page and called my wireless network, GreatGigInTheSky !

Normalcy !

2011-03-10T16:53:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since I posted something here. I'm not completely sure why I stopped. To be honest, I don't think there was just one reason. Work load and a crazy schedule was definitely one of the reasons. The last time I blogged, I was in my last semester at Stony Brook. I was writing cover letters and ‘I-love-the-work-you-do’ emails to various companies, flying (mostly to the west coast) to interview with them, had a conference deadline to meet, was writing my thesis, taking a Compilers course from an evil overlord (tempted to hyperlink), keeping up a social face (no, not on Facebook! )... etc. Twenty-hour days were the norm.

But there were other reasons as well. Not only was there a ton of things to do, I was sucking at the them too. I was sending my paper to a conference after it was rejected at the previous one. And for complex reasons better not discussed here, I wasn’t completely sure why the paper was rejected in the first place. Which also meant, I wasn’t sure whether the current version, with its changes, would make it. And as for the job search, it was not like as if I was writing emails to companies (with subject line “I’m your new-hire, bitch!”), and my inbox would be flooded with offer letters. I was looking for something that would align with my research interests and help me in a potential PhD app in the future. Which also for some reason meant I could end up taking a ( much! ) lesser paying offer and not getting to live in Manhattan. And my love-life could do with a beer or two also. Sadness!

My mind was messed up. For the above, and a few more things. And I don’t like writing posts, when the negativity in the mind would somehow creep in to them. I mean, aren’t there enough blog posts where the writers go gnaw gnaw gnaw (again, tempted to hyperlink) about the troubles in their lives. The pipes are clogged, sugar pie. Enough. I would prefer to have happy remembrances, at least on the internet.

As for now, yes, the thesis of my research got accepted and published (at least for posterity sake, if not anything else). My first-author paper got accepted at CVPR ‘11. Another (super awesome) paper I (very minimally) contributed to, also got accepted at the same conference.. \m/... I finally ended up with a position at Honda Research Institute. I would be lying if I said it was my dream job, but definitely the best in the given circumstances. And, oh yes, I also moved to this pretty little place called Mountain View in California. (Lots) more on that later. And finally, the best bit. I got myself this beauty.

Now I should be back to writing a lot more. The past has cleaned up, but there are newer worries that niggle the mind every now and then. But isn’t that how its supposed to be ?

For the love of Red ?

2010-10-22T13:25:00.003-07:00

Gloom is something I just forgot. Knock on wood.

Imagining white elephants

2010-10-17T12:12:00.000-07:00

Late night submission deadline on a Friday. No sleep for almost 48 hours. Numbingly comfortable sleep and a late morning on Saturday. I get up, open the various news feed on my browser tabs, the usual. Wait. Except for one thing. One article reads, 'India plans to write its own OS'. Indians known for their intellectual prowess, are putting their brains into coming up with their own distro. That too fifty of the topmost in computer science in the country have been hired by the government to do this. Reason, to handle technical security issues. Here I quote, "The only way to protect it is to have a home-grown system, the complete architecture ... source code is with you and then nobody knows what's that..." . Seriously? Haven't you heard of a closed system called Windoze? This is like childishness where you say I wont play with you cos I cant beat you at it. Sadness ! Also some questions which immediately arise, do you start from scratch ? How many eras does it taken then ? Or from a *nix flavor ? And then its just like another flavor of open-source Linux. And how exactly does a closed 'open-source' system sound? People have reacted negatively to the extent of laughing it off as nonsensical. Waiting to hear more on this.

Seventy is swell

2010-10-08T10:35:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday, Mr. Lennon !!! Today is a special day. For more reasons than one.

And here is my John Lennon moment.

Preachy post

2010-10-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

A lot of people get annoyed when someone writes a preachy post. Any post which tells you how to run (/mind) your business, or how you should plan your work-day to increase efficiency and also how you should handle your beaming-about-Gaga girlfriend, is considered as preachy. But come to think of it, a preachy post is not that easy to write. A friend who I recently forwarded a very inspiring blog-post told me, "You know what, an inspiring post always kills the main idea, the sense of inspiration". No one really likes it when you tell them what to do or how to do it. If they appear to be listening to you with scrutiny, they are just sleeping with their eyes open. Honest.

Having said that, a blog which preaches, is all about self-improvement and completely non-personal is this. I have been reading this since forever. And it is honest, straightforward and has a surprisingly unique style.

Seth Godin is God.

The Fall

2010-09-30T09:34:00.001-07:00

Gentle breeze stronger grew,

Sometimes splendid, sometimes anew.

Of seasonal shyness, the colored leaves fell,

while the boy ran in fervent despair.

Some, he grasped with joyful glee.

The rest, they say, to vapour flee.

Of humanness, beyond repair.

Dylan Blues

2010-09-25T08:38:00.004-07:00

Sometime in the early 60s, a 21 year old wrote a folk song. Nine questions, which have had life changing consequences. So many, even he probably couldn't foresee.

How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?

How many seas must a white dove sail, before she sleeps in the sand?

How many times must the cannon balls fly, before they're forever banned?

How many times must a man look up, before he can see the sky?

How many ears must one man have, before he can hear people cry?

How many deaths will it take till he knows, that too many people have died?

How many years can a mountain exist, before it's washed to the sea?

How many years can some people exist, before they're allowed to be free?

How many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just doesn't see?

To him, these were just a bunch of questions he asked, in defiance to what was happening in the world around at that time. And he confessed, he didn't know the answers. But he was convinced, that the answers were blowing in the wind. Maybe on a piece of paper that flew floated around, or as a message overheard. Maybe as a view disguised as scenery, or as a happy-go-lucky jingle on the radio. To the rest of the world, these were personal insights, public messages, creative backdrops and of course, if you are a Douglas Adams fan, you are familiar with the first question.

Why did I suddenly get reminded of this? In contemplation, maybe, or provoked to. I don't know.

(Photo source: http://www.solcomhouse.com/images/BobDylan.jpg)

Not a random rant

2010-09-23T15:37:00.010-07:00

A bit about documentation. When you are filing your project reports, letters, bills, your favorite Fox newspaper cutouts, do not use a stapler to group them. Please. Do not use anything which can rust, or degrade or needs attention in the future. Please. Even if you have to use a stapler, dont just go clink clink just because you like the sound of it.

Also, do not put two staple pins right beside each other, thinking that one solitary pin will die out of loneliness and decide to set free the important pages of your document. If it does have to open up, both the pins will or otherwise, niether of them wont

Why such grave concerns ? Because someone in the future will have to take them off, to protect your document and the environment. If you are famous, some grad student will have to do this painful work. If you are not famous, your mother will have to do it. Both of whom have done you no harm. So in true Edward Tufte style, I say, Every time you plant an extra staple pin, I kill a kitten !!!

Period.

In Florida, for the best Oranges.

2010-09-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

Before I forget, snaps from the awesome Florida trip. I met up with two school friends and we drove along the eastern coast of Florida. 6 days of insanity.

The route: Gainsville - Daytona -St Augustines - Miami - KeyWest - Miami - Orlando - Gainsville.

Lickerish

2010-09-19T07:51:00.004-07:00

The place:
Pasta Pasta

The dish:
"Baked Chicken Breast:
Breaded Chicken Breast Topped With Ricotta Cheese mixed with Sun Dried Tomatoes, Spinach And Mozzarella Served With Linguine And Plum Tomato Sauce"

The wine:
Cabernet Sauvignon (J Lohr, Paso Robles, California)

The feeling:
You live only once.

Dylan Dylan Dylan

2010-09-15T15:57:00.002-07:00

Google google google !!! :-)

The morning after

2010-09-10T21:24:00.001-07:00

Love, they say is like a fish. It tastes awesome, but you got to deal with the bones too. Last night I had no qualms about it though.

I was having dinner at an acquaintance's place. I hardly knew them well enough. Mom's friends. She told me, these people knew her for quite a while and wanted to meet her son. I have seen that happen quite a few times before, something typically bengali if I may add. And I was more than happy, anticipating the awesome feast.

The dinner was an authentic bengali one. And boy, was it good. It started with the casual Aloo Jhoori Bhaja (potato fry) and Peyaji (Onion fritters). Deep fried and slightly on the spicier side. Did someone ever say, food tastes good only when it is not healthy. That done, I was served rice and a vegetable preparation called Shukto. The Shukto, bitter in a characteristic way is supposed to cleanse the palate for the main course to come. Which also meant, the real deal was yet to come. Pulao, Dal, Ilisher Bhaja, Narkol Ilish (both preparations of the famous Hilsa fish), Kosha Mangsho (Mutton Curry) and Potol Aloor Torkari. Oh wait, how can I forget the Beguni (Deep fried brinjal slices). It was regal stuff. Need I say more. The to and fro movement of the serving spatula was almost hypnotizing. And the thing with bengali hosts is they don't let you eat as much as you want to. You have to eat as much as they want to. Irrespective of whether you are a big eater or someone with a small appetite, you eat all that they serve. And mom is not a big eater. I was happily eating portions of her share also. I thought, if I keep up to that, I can get her share of the sweet dishes at the end too. When the dessert tray came, it had two plates filled with Sandesh and Rosogollas and a bowl each of Mishti Doi (Sweet Curd). I was on cloud nine. But before I could do anything, mom told them that she was already full and would not even touch the plate of sweets. She forced them to take her plate away even before they could place it on the table. I gave her a second of my 'wait till we get back home' look and diverted my concentration towards more important things.

We went back home, a small distance, in a hand-pulled rickshaw which gurgled through the narrow bylanes. The bumps on the road, not too uncomfortable and was probably just good enough to digest the heavy meal. The night was silent except for the mellow chatter of street-side post-dinner conversations. And an occasional loud tv ad jingle from one of the houses. Such blissful evenings are one of the things I miss for not being back home.

(This post was written a little more than an year back, during the little while I spent in Kolkata, before coming to Long Island.)

Hair

2010-09-04T22:37:00.004-07:00

So I had a bad haircut. Some douchebag went chop chop at the speed of light and then tried making amends when he was finally able to hear me yelling. However, people around me are reacting like a lawn-mower crashed into my head. Don't worry, I shall live. But coincidence and the internet brought me to this. And this is not a barber story. It is a musical performance people pay to see. Read with me.

The Electric Chaircut is an interactive, electro-sonic, hair cut performance. Volunteers request what they would like and are taped to my chair. Their eyes and mouth are taped closed to symbolize our fetishism of appearance. I cut the hair with various implements, all amplified. Scissors and clippers wired to effects pedals, slung round my waist, are blasted through an amplifier strapped to my back. I whack at the hair in a seemingly random pattern and a cacophony of trance like sounds play to the audience. When I am finished I peel away the tape and show them the new look I have created. In my work I am alluding to our willingness to participate in what Michel Foucault called conditioning of the body. I am also exploring the dichotomy between image and emotion; how we look, as opposed to how we feel.

Intense words. This bit of text is from the artist Electric Chaircut's About page. This performance happens to be one of the many events at an island fair I might be visiting tomorrow. And this theatrical performance is not yet another crazy one-off attention-seeking tryst. This happens to be something which the artist has been performing for ages. The world continues to surprise me.

Enjoy some pictures from the site's gallery. :)

Для вас, Любовь

2010-09-04T05:56:00.010-07:00

Wrapped in Russian, just in case you get peeved with public display of affection.. :-)

While the birds chirp

2010-09-03T07:29:00.001-07:00

Reason-11 is back. For more reasons than one. It had stopped because we got all busy with our own lives, and things were being done with half a heart. R-11 was started for three great friends in different parts of the world to keep in touch beyond the boundaries of ordinary online communication tools. The communication might not be as frequent though, but the posts will be. The posts on Reason-11 are all about what's happening in our lives, shown through not-so-obvious photographs. For instance if one of us is celebrating his birthday, he won't really put up a picture of him having dinner with his some chick he hooked up with that evening. Or at least I hope so... :-p . As a matter of fact, we make it a point to not put up pictures of ourselves. There are exceptions though. The photographs are abstract, and the messages conveyed a tad bit more. But that is something I like. How much of the abstractness makes sense to someone seeing it would depend on how well he/she knows the three of us. If you know me closely, you'll know why some of my posts have an inclination towards music. However if you have never met any of us, you still have a nice montage of pretty pictures.

This is a post I had written when we started Reason-11.

Thanks a lot to a friend who reminded us that it is high time we started posting to R-11 again.

Of life and its musings

2010-08-29T17:42:00.012-07:00

Just got back from a week vacationing in Florida. School friends, endless highways, the pristine ocean water, the crazy beach, beautiful women and the even more beautiful mojitos. Life couldn't have been better. Pictures, stories, bloopers and tell-alls to follow.

Sitting here in my apartment in Stony Brook, I feel uncannily confused. Three months away neither qualifies as too long, nor does it qualify as too short. You sense the familiarity all around, but there is a disturbing sense of longing for the places you were in, the times you spent, over the last few months. Even when you know fully well that they were temporary. It's when habit triumphs over reason. You try looking for what didn't change, the commonalities, some person, something you did, some thought, but don't find anything mostly. I tried too, but couldn't go beyond the disappointment. Ended up sleeping it, soaking my thoughts in Peruvian Skies.

Which also reminds me, I was listening to my Dream Theater channel on Pandora after a while, and boy, did it dish out some awesome numbers. Imagine if someone goes and searches the Maiden, Sepultura, Kamelot and Floyd archives for songs which sound like DT !!! I ended up putting up all my Pandora channels, like it was there before. Turn your eyes right and they are all yours. :)

Some photographs from the last few days...

- Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

- Boston, once again

- The Circle Line Cruise around Manhattan

- Sting at the Metropolitan Opera

Superhero time

2010-07-29T21:03:00.001-07:00

Just another day at work...

The Sixth of July, 2010

2010-07-06T23:28:00.000-07:00

A letter from the Beatles mailing list I am subscribed to,

Dear All You Melting Meetuppers:

I hope everyone is being (three) cool cats in this heatwave. This day in history is oh-so-auspicious as it marks ..... "The Day John Met Paul".... (cue the angels singing). Here are some ways to commemorate the 53rd anniversary and thank the powers that be for such a meeting.

** See the book.
** See the special picture.
** Awesome Flickr stream of some really really young Beatles.
** Listen to the Podcast... seriously this is a re-creation!

So.... lucky us because John met Paul !

Speaking of other historic events - tomorrow is our very own Ringo's 70th Birthday ! To celebrate, Ringo wants everyone to say "Peace and Love" at noon, July 7th. Additionally, I'm sure some fans will congregate at Strawberry Fields in the later part of the day. Also, July 7th is the "Ringo and the All Starrs Concert" at Radio City Music Hall. We'll just "Peace and Love" him there :-) if he asks.

This is how I would like to remember 6th July 2010. And not for anything else. Anything at all.

Ode to a rainy day

2010-06-24T16:36:00.004-07:00

The other day I was looking out for a Sunday evening place to listen to some music and sip my lazy drink. Sunday evenings I tend to stay away from the noise and the rush. Greenwich Village in lower east New York City sounded like the place where I would get my peace and calm. Also I had never seen the Village, so the novelty of yet another new place in NYC gave me a quiet thrill. I reached the place, a good thirty minutes before six, when the music was going to start. A low entrance led me to its dark interiors. The bar called Fifty-Five didn't have the glitz and the brightness of the city. The place was lit very low, almost dark, and the stream of tiny festival lights around the periphery of the ceiling seemed unusually bright. Like a massive tiara of pale white stones around its head.

Thirty minutes to the first song, the place didn't have a single soul in there. I half-thought that the event was cancelled. The only waitress walked towards me, her smile spoke of the years she has probably done this, to every person walking in. I enquired about the performance, while looking at the two guitars kept upright at the other corner of the room. She told me I have another twenty seven minutes till the music begins. I decided to walk out and look around the place.

Greenwich Village, at first glance reminded me of South Calcutta. Not the hustle and bustle of Lake Market or the black-n-yellow dotted line of auto-rickshaws zipping along Rash-Behari avenue. This was like the by-lanes adjacent to Southern Avenue, where the rays of the sun played hide and seek behind the dense dark green canopy of the trees. This was where there are small flattish puddles on the road. The rainwater in them slowly slipped into your flip flops as you walked along, and cooled the hollow of your feet. This was where the buildings still escaped being converted into tall balcony-less boxes meant to fit in as many people as possible. They still retained their brick laden walls decorated with curved edges and intricately filigreed corners. By now my mind was so filled with Calcutta that I imagined the missing pieces also. I could see middle-aged women exchanging notes from one balcony to another, about their daily chores, at the top of their voices. I could also see school kids carefully piling up stones vertically into a wicket, their faces filled with the anticipation of the evening's cricket match. This was where I have lived for a greater period of my life.

I walked around the place a little more, memories of Calcutta flipping by, one after another. I felt disturbed that these places that I remember of, from years back, may not be the same anymore. I feared that I have not been able to observe the changes as it has happened and now the stark difference will scream back at me. Like meeting an old acquaintance after a long time, I feared that it would not be able to recognize me at all. The music at the bar filled the rest of the evening. The empty tables were now packed with people. Everyone around seemed happy and rather noisy. I tried not to think too much about Calcutta. I stared at the light reflecting off the crystal-red wine glasses. For once, a New York City bar didn't seem too crowded.

These are the pictures from that day.

Colors, bright and dark

2010-06-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

Hello world. Its been a while.

When someone who posts often stops writing, people tend to ask, what happened ? Well, I was busy for one, but being busy enough to not post a single post is like an excuse a girl gives when she wants to keep you thinking. I was writing, quite a bit, especially since I am staying alone right now and I do get a lot of free time towards the end of the day. But not all of that was really something I could share with everyone. Or maybe that's not the reason, 'cos I do plan to post some of those articles in the next few days. I am slightly confused, but something I know for sure is that writing is still a deep love.

Life has changed a lot since the last time I actually wrote something on this blog. I am now interning in NYC and I stay in the Upper West side of Manhattan. A nice and rather empty apartment on the 18th floor of one of the student dorms at Columbia University. Breathtaking views, a personal kitchen, Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City and a doe-eyed touch lamp are the things I am excited about in life right now.

The city, as expected, has millions of things to offer. I personally feel, a summer is too less to live it all. I have been up to a lot of stuff. Listening to live music, quiet picturesque waterfronts, watching soccer in random pubs, sun-gazing at Central Park or just dreaming about her, while she sleeps far far away, (oh yes, she sleeps a lot !!!) are probably some of the things I can list. But then again, lists are boring. They would even make New York seem mundane. I'll share my experiences all over the summer, in small bits, in hurried but awfully descriptive posts. As for now, here are some pictures,

- Columbia University, my apartment and glances around the place.

- Central Park on a fine Sunday afternoon.

- Killing time at Port Jefferson, near Stony Brook.

- Also, sneakily posting snaps from the Eric Clapton concert I went in February.

(Honestly, I couldn't find the snaps for some time :P )

Shall be back soon. Till then, go Argentina !!!

(If the vertical colors of this page remind you of the Argentinian jersey, and you think my choice of color and soccer team are coincidental, let me tell you, it's not. The white and blue stripes was one of the things on my mind when I chose this template.) :-)

Can't Wait !

2010-06-06T08:18:00.003-07:00

Nice song. Nicer game. TV Screen, here I come. Good to be meeting you after four years !!!

:-P

Buttons. Beatles.

2010-04-30T01:33:00.002-07:00

Seventeen. Awesome and rare ones. Beatles Forever.

Reprieve

2010-04-25T10:22:00.003-07:00

I had heard bits and pieces of Ani DiFranco a long back. I don't remember where though. Beautiful voice. But somehow with the web offering you so much music, she slipped away somewhere. This was till I saw a poster of her's at a cafe a few days back and decided to make a channel on Pandora. Ani DiFranco is very different from the usual stuff I listen to. She has a very fast voice yet very natural and soothing. She almost runs away with her songs, maybe pauses once in a while, only to break into laughter in the middle of a number. The lyrics are very brash and outspoken to the extent that you almost pay no attention to what she is saying. But you realize by the end of it, that there was melody and you were enjoying it. There was also something she wanted to say, and by now, you kinda know what it was. The loud strumming of the guitar complements her voice as good as Charlie Chaplin's derby hat suits him. And then there are a few slow songs, more beautiful than the louder ones. Very soulful yet filled with a clear hint of Blues. Brilliant stuff.

Another guitarist i've been listening to is, Robben Ford. Mainly his work under the name, Robben Ford and the Blue Line. Now this is a clear case of my immense love for Joe Sat, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai and the likes. And if you like these people, you now know how Ford is. Psychedelic guitar riffs, almost always more prominent than the vocals. Long stretched out songs that go on forever and you still wish it never ended. Stuff that keeps me going when things go really ugly and help me spring back. I wish I could name songs I really like, but that would take a while cos i've really just started to listen and it take a while before some songs really leave an aftertaste. As for now, listening to Dont let me be misunderstood can only make think of my longing to go to New Orleans and sample such music live. For music of the days gone by, all I have is more respect everyday. However one thing I can say though is, the more I listen to these artists, the more I like the chronological listing of Mayer's girlfriends. Dont be mistaken, mind-blowing stuff there too !!!

These are the Pandora channels I was talking about, Ani DiFranco , Robben Ford and the Blue Line .

Quick Response

2010-04-18T15:59:00.000-07:00

That's my personal QR-Code. Its the nice new bar-code way to encode personal information (or anything else you want to share) and tag it to places people would look for that information. To retrieve information, you could scan these codes with a plain bar-code reader on your cell phone. These things are everywhere nowadays.

Taking nature's bait

2010-04-16T07:30:00.005-07:00

I looked at the slow whirl of water that originated from a small bubble that hit the surface. My hands tightened. It was time to be cautious. Or so I thought. Was it there ? Was it not ? Nothing ensued. False alarm.

I went back to enjoying the sunset. The view from where I sat was glorious. The tall trees let in light enough, and not more. It was early spring and the green all around was painted with pleasant hues. Very selectively though. Not dense outgrowths of flowers. But drops and splashes of yellow, pink and blue. I quite liked the entire picture. I looked at my friend and he passed me the can of beers we had brought along. Weekday afternoons are usually spent in the midst of all the cacophony on campus. This, in contrast, was serene, quiet and so pleasant. We chatted along for a while, talking about how we should spend more time outdoors, go camping somewhere maybe. And ... there was a tug. My hands tightened once again. This time it was not a hunch. I could feel it. I looked at the water. I started rolling the rope as expectation filled me. I waited till only a few seconds later when the rope snapped. The hook had got stuck into something at the bottom. That is all I could manage after two hours of concentration and intenseness. But my mind was refreshed enough for a fresh start.

Welcome to the beautiful world of fishing !!!

For the melody

2010-04-05T11:08:00.002-07:00

It's never easy. Not every evening is smiles and conversations. But the music still plays along.

Random rhymes

2010-03-29T13:40:00.003-07:00

People ape,

I gape.

In shimmering lights and tabloid names,

they mould, I see the funny shape.

I look at your gleeful rhymes,

All sugar-coated and red.

Alas, they sound like pedestrian chimes,

Not again, I beg, I dread.

She stared at the sun, beside the lake,

But hardly realised, the sunset's fake.

Brightness isn't where the flash is now,

It is where the flash was then.

They steal our name,

And hopelessly stare at fame.

Oh blistering barnacles,

Run for your lives, you puny rascals.

In crimson petals, I saw them hide,

Staring at the last glimmer of hope,

They never realised that that beside,

everything got done away by the sea-water full of soap.

People still ape.

I smile. But still I gape.

:-)

Conspiring to succeed

2010-03-27T10:22:00.001-07:00

The spring break is here. And unlike my usual desperation to look out for chances to travel, here I am on the couch, laptop for company, a slow soft drink in my hand and the restless perseverance of deadlines on my mind. Lets see how it goes.

I do plan to catch up on some reading though. Contemplating between Kafka and Fry. I have always wanted to read Kafka's The Metamorphosis with all the attention it deserves, but then I guess I'll once again end up disappearing into the subtleness of the wry humor that Stephen Fry characterises so well.

Happy vacationing to the bag-packers !!!

ReBlogging !

2010-03-19T19:20:00.002-07:00

I interviewed with a company today which does some neat Computer Vision stuff. Not too many products, a start-up like atmosphere, technically challenging and fun at the same time. Lets hope I can make it till the end. But some cooler stuff that I came up with was a non-technical article by one of the technical guys in the company. I don't usually copy-paste other people's write-ups like this, but this article on God, Beer and Life is too much fun...

" I don't need to scratch my head and search my soul to figure out whether God created the universe. I was there. I saw the whole thing. God didn't create the universe. Well, He did, but not intentionally. God just wanted a beer. But you can't just create a beer floating in the middle of the void -- there's nothing satisfying about it. It would be like a book written by an illiterate person -- sure, he could put lots of black squiggles onto a bundle of pages that would vaguely look like a book, but it wouldn't mean anything.

So for a proper beer, God pretty much had to make up physics. I'm not just talking about the refinements needed to get it to foam just right -- I'm talking about the whole deal. After you drink some, there should be less left over, not more. Drinking a beer should not make you turn into beer yourself. Beers should not be smarter than the drinker. Well, not the first few, at least. The state of drinking beer needs to contrast with something, so the state of not drinking beer must also exist. In fact, that's where most of the world came from, because having the world exist in only two states (currently drinking beer/currently not drinking beer) just seemed too lame to a clever guy like God. Same idea for water and other liquids -- if He can drink beer, He really ought to be able to drink not-beer, just so He can say He chose the beer instead.

And then there's the whole question of origins. A beer is so much less interesting if it creates itself or just spontaneously comes into existence. A truly full-bodied beer needs a background, a character, a story. God went a little crazy with that, inventing those 'human' things with enough cleverness to invent stuff, curiousity to try things out, and a desperate need to get sloshed, smashed, trashed, and basically totally drucking funk. And all that cleverness and curiousity necessitated science. And dinosaur fossils. And religion. (God got a real kick when he realized he'd have to invent religion, I remember. Of course, he wasn't exactly sober by that time...)

Oh, and you know that bit about "...and on the 7th day He rested?" Purely an excuse to keep us from bothering Him during His hangover. We're still on the 7th day, see. I'm not even sure if He thought far enough ahead to make an 8th day. He was having some trouble with the notion of Time, and I recall Him saying something like "aw, screw it. Nobody's going to be drinking any beer at the speed of light anyway. I'll see you later -- I'm gonna go get wasted." "

This is the entire article. And you could read more of him here.

Random commutativity

2010-03-18T18:02:00.000-07:00

"I have a weird nearest neighbor who loves to play around with her kernel. I also have a weird kernel which loves to play around with its nearest neighbors...." :-P

So I pondered on a bright summer evening, when the world outside was all-a-bloom and I was stuck in the insides of a glum windowless laboratory !!!

Beyond color histograms

2010-03-14T06:31:00.004-07:00

Happy Holi guys !!!

More images...

Beyond getting coffee

2010-03-13T09:51:00.002-08:00

Summer is approaching and before you see your life blooming with the colors of the season, you need an internship. Such are the pre-conditions of grad-life !!!

Some, I see, giving more interviews than the classes they attend per week. Others, the confident ones, give an interview or two and sitting undisturbed. These are the ones who believe that it is the company which needs you more than you needing the company. A belief, which I feel is one of the most important things to the job you are really looking for. But then thats not what I want to talk about here.

From my early days in MSRIT, I have dipped my feet in various things. Computational biology, Distributed Systems, Operating Systems, Machine Learning. To be honest, I was not fluent enough with the areas to decide on what I really wanted to work on. I approached professors and asked them if they were working on something and if I could add to that. Thats how I ended up compressing Genomic sequences, something which I had no clue or interest in, and getting a first paper. Nice feeling, I might add. When we were looking for internships during our final semester at MSRIT, we hardly had a choice of what we wanted to work on. Finally, at HP, I did some work on Virtualization and making USB devices transparent over remote connections. This had me dabbling with device drivers and systems code. Though we were off to a bad start, we ended up quite well actually. The publication which came out of it got us a best paper award.

At Nokia, I was working on the Flash browser plugin for the phone. The work fringed on the lines of middleware development to graphics rendering and a lot of Linux scripting. I spent a lot of time with the browser and plugin architecture and ended up writing some code to fix a couple of bugs on the Firefox bug-list. Sometimes I actually enjoyed playing with the Firefox code more than the work I was paid for. Inspired by a friend, I got a chance to look at peer-to-peer protocols and ended up publishing a paper which dealt with potential improvements to Gnutella. All this might seem like a bit of self admiration but what it really has done is confused my potential employers. :)

At Stony Brook, I got really involved in Computer Vision. I feel that the work that I am doing right now is really the thing I want to be involved in for a good period of time. I could go on explaining why I feel this way but that would take yet another post. Here's something for starters though. I also realized that there are choices to be made and sacrifices to be decided on. Most of my resume brings me out as someone who has considerable experience in Systems. And I have enjoyed the work I have done too. At some point of time, I was completely sure that all I wanted to do is write code that would go into a kernel or loiter around in some of the outer layers. But I don't feel motivated enough to work in that area anymore. In computer vision, I find the right amount of algorithms, a set of interesting problems to be solved and that subtle opportunity of applying my creative senses too. I have always looked for it in most things technical, that I have attempted.

Vision, being a very nascent area of development still, it is mainly the companies' research divisions which work on it, publish papers, and maybe, once in a while, something with commercial viability comes up. Its tough for students starting out though, to get to work in these places. There is always hope but. I however recently found a very nice list of start-ups which do some amazing work in this area. I feel these are good places to work in and get your hands really dirty before you make some earth-breaking slashdot-worthy contributions to this world. :)

I was recently part of an interesting discussion which debated about how looking at pixels for patterns is a thing of the past and we need to look at higher level information in images to get more useful information. The reasons given out were quite valid. In spite of that, I still feel I have my share of staring to do. At pixels, of pixels and with pixels. After all, there are so many pixels, and there is so little time.

Making up

2010-03-08T04:51:00.002-08:00

After a week's indecisions about whether I should move to another blogging tool, I decided not to. I do not want to spread the boringness of discussing the various issues I faced and why I decided to live on with Blogger. Though I did find out that the reason behind the previous template's crash wasn't a Blogger issue. The template's creator had plain taken it off his site. So here I am back with what I had. Peace.

All that gibberish aside, I'm back to writing posts. In the course of the last week, I lost out on 3 posts that sprung up in my mind and disappeared, all because of the mess. And don't tell me that I should have written it down somewhere because it doesn't work like that.

Other than that, life's been ok. Not the most satisfying last few days. I've been chasing lost causes and eying the wrong eye-candy. But life's not all that glum. I got a taste of nice ol' native Long Island spirit on two consecutive nights, and while I was smiling about it with a friend, something awesome happened. Cryptic, I know. More, soon.

Also wanted to to write about, where did Reason-11 go ?

Breaking up

2010-03-02T05:18:00.002-08:00

My new template, handcrafted with homemade spices, crashed. There is only so much manual changes, blogger's CSS can take. Or maybe I messed up something. I do web design with the reluctance of a tortoise. Anyway, I'm moving away from Blogger, for good. Need some time to pack the boxes. Will holler when the new place is up !!!

Leaving you guys with a conversational pearl, one of many, that is so often sprinkled onto our conversations, when I catch up with this great friend from yesteryears.

Me: Hey, I finally got a call from M$.

Friend: Dude, don't go. Somebody has to be on the other side.

:-P

In the effervescence

2010-02-22T17:50:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine, a really special friend of mine just got her paper selected to a IEEE conference in India. A first of many, I'm sure. I had to write an exclusive congratulatory post for this. The hard work has finally paid off. Welcome to strange world of research !!!

;-)

And not to forget..

2010-02-13T13:33:00.002-08:00

Jeff Beck doing the cover of 'Cause we've ended as lovers.

Reminds me of the "C-Street Band" at Java City on Church Street, Bangalore. I used to love Saturday evenings there, soothing the mind with their characteristic Blues. But i've never really got myself to write a complete post about it. Not that I haven't tried, but whatever I did scribble down, seemed incomplete and not enough. Guess some things are left for pure first person experiences.

Few must-listens from Beck's guitar,

- Stratus

- Beck's Bolero

- Somewhere over the rainbow

- Scatterbrain

- And of course, the one above.

Few more days

2010-02-13T07:45:00.002-08:00

This beautiful photograph was taken from here.

Hot miss

2010-02-09T12:08:00.000-08:00

Every year 10th Jan NYC hosts the annual No-Pants Subway Ride !!! Sadly I couldn't go this time cos I was spending the Sunday at the museum. Next year, for sure. As for now, enjoy the video and the post-title (of which I couldn't resist on punning.. :-p ).

Facing the truth

2010-02-07T08:46:00.002-08:00

To a little more visualization.

These are the 17 Chernoff Faces for the last 17 photographs I took.

Data is most often multi-dimensional. You can't express the current weather or state of your mind using one word or one number, can you ? You might say its sunny, with slow winds from the east, and a 30% probability of rain. These multiple features describing the state of the weather are like the dimensions of a vector. These vectors describing something, often tend to be of more than 5 dimensions, going up to 200 dimensions or even more. The problem now is, how do we visualize this vector. The human brain can only perceive upto 3 dimensions (as a plane) and sometimes 4(as a hyperplane).

One clever way of representing multi-dimensional data is using a Chernoff Face. The width of the face, the size of the eyes, the curve of the lips and other such features are controlled by the various dimensions of the data you want to visualize.

I'm doing some work on trying to measure aesthetics in images computationally. Needless to say, I calculate features of an image which make it aesthetically superior and represent them in the form of multi-dimensional vectors. It seemed quite apt to me to visualize this data in the form of faces. The above faces represent the aesthetic quality of the last 17 photos I clicked on my N95. As of now the vectors are randomly mapped. Now the next thing I would want to do on yet another JD-induced Saturday night is, map the image features to the face features in such a way that nice photos would produce a smiling or happy face, while my ex-roomie's blurry photos would produce sad or angry faces.... :-p . And voila, I would get my laptop to emote to images I click !!!

Did someone say computers are nothing more than dead silicon wafers wired up to mindlessly spit out numbers ? I always knew mine was a tad bit emotional !!!

Turning a page

2010-02-04T23:22:00.007-08:00

I'm not sure how to explain the change. Its not like I grew out of the old look. It was nice. But even nice things must change. The new look is mellow and understated. And she likes it. I'm at peace.

Moving on, the semester has started and I'm taking 3 courses,

- Intro to Computer Vision (Now I will finally know how to computationally detect shadows on the ground :P)

- Machine Learning (This is where all the magic of any AI process gets explained !!)

- Computer Architecture (Stony Brook's fave subject, everyone has to take it. Sigh.)

The projects from the 3 courses I took last sem, are the only three things I remember of it and hence it goes without saying, I'm looking forward to doing some interesting stuff this time too.

Also, there is an outburst of subjects this time which sound or seem like subjects related to Computer Vision , primary being Visualization. Ironical is the fact that these two subject are hardly similar. To illustrate a little better, Visualization is what Edward Tufte does, so well, while Vision is finding out those 1000 words when you hear someone saying, "An image is worth a 1000 words" . I have also been asked about why didn't I take Computer Graphics last time. On the other hand, I really wanted to take Computational Geometry this time and a friend asked, "Whyeee". Little said, Comp Geom can be used to describe most of the models that one uses in Vision. Anyway, my professor in one of his classes drew this very articulate graph which clears out a lot of the confusion. Worth putting it up here. Thanks prof !!!

Such is life !!!

Winter musings

2010-01-31T17:39:00.009-08:00

- Indian lunch buffets.

- Splashes of European culture at Port Jefferson.

- Pimped up my webpage.

- A new on-campus job.

- String Quartet covers of some of my fave rock songs.

- Presented a technical poster summarizing what I intend to concentrate on for my thesis.

- A friend's awesome prawn delicacies.

- Jamie Murray

- The day at MOMA, which my prawn-friend regrets missing out on so bad. :-p

- Sausage experiments.

- Soccer

- Clapton dreaming while staring at the past.

- "Tonights the night" - Dexter

- Reminiscing the good old Stewie humor with Family Guy's take on Star Wars. Hilarious.

- Yet another poster.

All of this can be seen, up close and personal, right here. :)

11 West 53rd Street

2010-01-16T11:03:00.010-08:00

Last Sunday I was at the Museum of Modern Art in the city. Even before I stepped in, I was quite prepared to get blown away by the place. Different forms of art. The unique, the melodramatic, the surprising and the classic. But what really happened was quite different. I found myself lost.

The museum was at its usual on a snow-free Sunday. Packed. While trying to find out the sections on Photography I got lost in galleries titled Furnitures, Paintings and Modern Art. There were places where I stood and read write-ups about the artist and their work. A habit I have cultivated on my lonely escapades to the art galleries in Bangalore. Quite as an accident, I might add. Coming from a city like Kolkata, I found Bangalore's galleries lacking in quantity. Yes, I said quantity, not quality. I used to visit the same place more than once and ended up reading the lonely leaflets where budding artists scribbled to their heart's content. As a school-boy, I remember being surprised by how people could study Art as a subject. Owing to mom, she is an architect, I picked up a sense of realizing aesthetics quite early. Colors, proportions, directionality and contrast elevation came naturally to me as I saw her at work, at ease. But I still couldn't figure out how students read endless pages of history about an artist or their painting. Art to me was meant to be seen, felt or created. It was on these lonely Sunday afternoons in Bangalore that I saw paintings through the eyes of the artist and out came a sense understanding and fascination for the work that I cannot describe in words.

Talking about quantity, MoMA is huge. You can glide through the galleries absorbing the sense of creativity of art in general. Or sit in front of an unique piece of furniture and spend an hour about what went through the artist's mind while designing it. The way things are presented at this museum has a special novelty of its own. It shows how the most simple and mundane thing, when done up with thought and attention, stands out. I did remember to take a few photographs. At some points though, I was too absorbed to even remember. While few works of art just made my camera feel awkward and shy. They were best left untouched.

Before I end, I must mention, for my love of it, the atrium and its skylight. As you bob in and out of galleries, there are openings on the walls which give you a sneak peak into the center of the building. Other than curious gazes, these openings let in light in various angles from different sides of the building. The interplay of shadow at various times of the day is a treat to the eyes. And if umbras and penumbras are not your thing, there is a skeleton of a huge dinosaur in between all of this, for you to admire. The American fascination for these reptiles is at times funny. :)

And, guess who also was here around the same time ?

Here are some pictures from that day. Had also visited Bryant park and the NBC-experience store on the way to the museum. And here are a few more from a recent trip to the ski-slopes of the Blue Mountains near Philadelphia and to the glitz of casinos in Atlantic City.

Next stop: ICP in the city.

The devil allegory

2010-01-14T23:12:00.004-08:00

The devil wears black.

The devil is a nerd. She hides in the shadow of her laptop.

The devil has impeccable sense of location and direction. :p

The devil reads the subject of emails and deletes them. She just guesses the rest of the body.

The devil desires Jack.

The devil has secret links with Japanese wrestlers. :p

The devil often eyes portions of the Linux kernel.

The devil also has eyes for marshmellows.

The devil makes the perfect blood-red Ice Tea.

The devil veils herself in the garb of a cute penguin.

Happy Birthday devil-woman !!!

Aviator dreams

2009-12-31T12:26:00.001-08:00

And that ladies and gentlemen, is how you fly...into the new year...

Have a great year ahead !!!

Words

2009-12-27T07:04:00.000-08:00

I crave the pain to write,

On lithe words and bleeding arms,

With the deafening music beyond my ears.

The red of my eyes looking at you,

Like dead, like bloom.

Like never before.

I crave the pain to write,

The lucid prose I saw in my words.

The magic music that there was.

In the rays that rose behind,

I tried to make sense of life.

I crave the pain to write,

A few more words maybe.

Sung in the silence of this world.

Yes, the blood turned dark.

And coagulated too.

The pain did cease though.

On the roofs of uncertainty

2009-12-25T06:10:00.003-08:00

On day 1 I drank a few glasses of Jack Daniel's with friends at The Bench.

On day 2, I drank Glenfiddich. One glass. Silk.

On day 3, I got lucky with Bourbon. Feels nice. Oh I forgot, I also watched Rocket-Singh with the Bourbon.. :P ... I can't describe the feeling, but I'm pretty sure, this is what Armstrong meant when he said, I have now reached the moon !!!

Also, in between all this, I enjoyed some more snow. Took a quick chilly bus ride to Philly. Enjoyed a 24" pizza between the 5 of us. Drove to Pocono. Ski-ed my ass out. Crashed into a pole, while hoping the pretty instructor standing beside it would prevent me from it. The only reason I could not hear the thud and the crackle was because it was drowned by the roar of the laughter all around. With the ski-gear on, I was all on fours, probably the most awkward one ever. So much for a smile and some four-play. :-P

More soon. Merry Christmas or Happy festivities to whatever your persuasion is !!

The title of this post is of course, inspired by a famous Floyd number, Poles Apart. The song has been playing in my head for a while now.

Blizzard play

2009-12-19T23:49:00.001-08:00

The season's first heavy snow... post exam craziness !!!

Such is life!

2009-12-18T18:33:00.004-08:00

My first semester at Stony Brook just came to an end. A marathon 3.5 months of work, work, craziness and more work. Looking back, I feel nice.

I shall summarise it in 140 words, twitter-style...

Samuel Adams, Network Security, Philly, Illumination, Patchy Skies, Dunkin-Donuts, Bloomberg, Thesis, Stony Brook, Free Food, Paul Thorne, TUIO, Python, SecondLife, American soil, Know-More, NewYork-NewYork, Reason-11, Jameson, Affie, Pancakes, SSN, Chapin Mailroom, Strawberry Fields, Computation Biology, The Dome, Ummmn!, RNA Secondary Structures, String Quartets, Radiance, Computer Vision, Joan Osbourne, Linear Algebra, Liberty Bell, Weight Matrix, American Professors, Awesome Friends, Friends' whose name begins with a silent 'p'.. :P, Posterous, Squeak, White Bus to SAC, Gotcha!, Eigen Faces, Apache, Boston,Frozen Parathas, John Harvards brewery, HoneyGlazed Ham slices, Daylight-saving, Jersey City, Perez Sky Model, Snow, MIT, Fiducials, Wolfie, abs(), TLT MediaLabs, Hershey's kisses, Aha!, LIRR, Great-Value Choco Cookies, Smith Haven Mall, Edward Tufte, 731 Lexington Avenue, Inference Detection, Matlab, Below Zero Temperatures, Central Park, Princeton University, Harvard Square, All-Nighters, Oh-MS!, Latex, Blog-Art, Dollars.

Looking forward to some sound sleep, catching up on some reading, Dexter and meeting up old friends. More later. Cheers.

Feeling blue !!!

2009-12-16T15:11:00.001-08:00

18th February '07 I thought was the most exciting day of my life. I stood in a endless queue for almost 3 hours and then got to see Roger Waters live. 18th February '10, I might be going for yet another live concert. And the least I can say, is I am excited.

I might be listening to Eric Clapton.

He will be playing at the Madison Square Gardens with Jeff Beck of Clapton-Beck-Page fame. Epic stuff !!!

Anuj, are you listening ?

Lost in translation

2009-12-14T16:54:00.001-08:00

Came across this, in a friend's Facebook album. A classic example of a literal translation of Bengali to English doesn't get better than this. Right from the title, 'Do or do not list'... :-P...which probably means things which we should do and things which we should not, at this beach resort 5 hours off Kolkata.

For people who understand both the languages, laugh on. For the rest, just make your own explanation up for something like, 'Don't drink nakedly in the sea beach' !!!

If you don't agree with the interpretations of some of them, dont quarl or else, I shall send you for amusement ride !!!

Phew. Such comic relief, curtsy the manager's fluency !!!

:-P

Intellectual Property

2009-12-11T08:01:00.002-08:00

Now do I read this correct, Patent no. 7617530 ?

M$ has gone ahead and patented 'sudo'. This is what sudo does. This is a command close to every Ubuntu user's heart. This is more than intellectual property. This is emotional property.

More comments on this later. Let me first run to the Patent office and get a patent for chicken wings.

Of photographs and the art of computer programming

2009-12-04T09:00:00.006-08:00

More often than not I have asked myself, `Is there a story behind the photograph I am looking at ?'. I feel the ideas conveyed, subtly, talk volumes about the uniqueness of a photograph. Sometimes it even overshadows the technical brilliance of it all.

Talking about stories told in photographs, I was quite pleased to see Pictory. A site which grows mainly from the contributions of people mailing in their clicks, this is a beautiful montage of photographic perfection as well as neophytic uniqueness. Take a peek .

This is also another idea I had in mind when we first thought about Reason-11. I was hesitant though, to share it. Would we really be able to project well enough in the photos, the tales woven in our minds when we actually clicked them? Maybe we will. Maybe we wont. Some days back, we uploaded a bunch of pics, we called it `The Radiance series', where we have tried to express words with light. Baby steps !!

Diverting far far away from all of that, here is a brilliant Donald Knuth interview I came across. `01 good a read', irrespective of whether you understand my compliment or not....

:-P

Grad Tales

2009-11-19T00:01:00.002-08:00

Thank you XKCD for making me see fun in graphs...

Life

2009-11-13T16:11:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy: http://xkcd.com/303/

Six string soothings

2009-11-12T00:26:00.006-08:00

Cant wait to be pleasantly delighted by the music of Joan Osbourne and the rest, this Saturday at the theatre on campus.

Its been a while since I have heard some decent live music and this is quite the opportunity I was waiting for. Except of course for the couple of classical music performances that I went for, which were brilliant in their own way. But nothing like some old school Rock and Blues, just the way I like it.

Actually more than Joan Osborne, I am looking forward to the very interesting music of the lesser known Paul Thorn. I've heard him a few times on online radio channels and I think I really like it.

People who know me well would also know that I love to brag about my brushes with live music. Yes, this is my 10th and I'm excited. :-)

In other news, here are a few pics from a day I spent alone wandering the roads of New York City and some more from a friend's crazy birthday party back at my apartment.

(The poster above has been taken from here.)

Times

2009-11-07T21:09:00.002-08:00

Life at times seems quiet and serene.

There are lots of people around you. So is a lot of noise and talk. You can't seem to hear it though. Its a mad rush of people moving around you, their words seem more like actions. Actions, which are not supposed to make any sense without the words, but seem to have an uncanny symphony to it. Slightly confusing it is. The slightest noise seems to affect your attention. And then at times like this, the noises are nothing more than just... noises. Curiosity smiles at how the mind works.

These are interesting times. You are trying to plan something in your head. Something which is more than just mere looking into the future a few days. Something a lot more special, in a way. People around you stop by, only to laugh at you, maybe. But you know, what you are working on is much beyond their understanding. It would be wise of them to just sit back and watch. When will people realize?

This careful captivation reminds me of a time in the past. The spring of '03. February to be more precise. The beauty of the events, each independent of the other, yet in a complete concert, was a pleasure to live through. These are not just mere memories. They give you a sense of hope. Something that you try to find in people around. Foolish, actually.

These are times I look forward to.

Excitement

2009-11-02T22:10:00.001-08:00

Strawberry Fields, Central Park, New York - Beautiful

In the light of things

2009-10-25T17:40:00.006-07:00

So a few days back I was formally introduced to Computer Vision.

From what I understand, Computer Vision is the effort to build a system that visualizes things and gains knowledge from it. The hope, finally, is to make it work as good as a human being, if not better. Looking around the state of technology today, Vision has a lot of open problems to solve and answer. For me, it holds an extra inch of importance because it constitutes 6 credits of my Fall semester, the other six being equally divided between Computational Biology and Network Security.

For a more visual idea about Computer Vision, this is nice.

Before a grad school takes you in, it expects you to know enough about what your forte is. Which area do you really want to direct your efforts in. Well, we know there are exceptions to the rule. But then one needs to solve these equations in their head soon enough. And believe me, it's not easy. There are tons of things to think about. Technical interests, professors, school, career-wise sense, money, funding, time, mathematical capability, personal interests and more.

And if you are like me, fickle-minded and imaginative (in a not so good way), you are in for a tough time. Also I spend, well, too much time 'dipping my feet' in the water. Having said all that, it might actually sound funny to say that I am currently quite interested in Computer Vision. How I reached to that conclusion could be the subject of further ridicule, but then it hardly matters.

I can relate, to quite an extent, to the problems Vision solves. Brain-storming a algorithm, described in terms of numbers, symbols and equations, does excite the mind, but it ceases to do so once your equations match up. In the little Vision that I have had exposure to, my sense of fulfillment has gone beyond the point of saying 'Eureka !'. A lot of credit also goes to the fact that most systems in vision have, to say the least, very visual results and hence it becomes easy for anyone to interpret that.

I remember mentioning to a friend a few days back, "I tend to understand the high-level abstractions of solutions to Vision problems and I also understand the math and the number-play that goes on behind the stage, but I fail to connect the two together well enough." From then to now, I have at least realized that Vision does great in converting an image to numbers, manipulate them, infer from them and put the newer numbers back to the image as if nothing has happened. The results which come out, sometimes, almost seem like magic. And who wouldn't want to know how magic works ?

A lot of my interest stems from the course on Vision I have taken this semester. I was quite surprised when the Professor said, there will be no exams, I will be giving a few introductory talks and then we will be discussing 2 papers each class and finally you guys do a class project. I was like, huh, does that even work ? 2 paper per class on something I have no clue about ? No exams ? But then, much to my surprise, I would say I have learnt a lot in this class. And of course, how can I forget the weekly research group lunches we have. Here too, we discuss papers and also contradict ourselves, suggest solutions, out-do previous ones. And there is nice food to carry us through it. Well at least now I realise what people meant when they said they had a healthy dialogue !!! :-P

On to bigger and better things in Computer Vision.

Hope again

2009-10-20T21:47:00.004-07:00

Chanced upon the silently piercing music of Hope Sandoval. Wikipedia quite interestingly describes her genre as 'shoegazer'. The lady is as beautiful as her music, if not even more.

Was actually quite surprised that no one's ever mentioned her to me before, considering she has been around for quite a while.

Looking forward to listening a lot more of her !!!

Reason-11 again

2009-10-17T12:42:00.006-07:00

Back with a revamped Photoblog as promised. Primary reasons for changing was the inability to display images in bigger sizes on Blogger and the unavailability of a few other photo-friendly features. This is where we had left off.

Posterous, the new blog client we use, introduces a new concept of blogging where you just need to mail your post to Posterous and they upload it along with any kind of modification and touch-ups required to make it look internet-cool. The idea they want to throw across, I guess, is that a blog-post could be just as painless as one of the million emails that you send everyday.

At the cost of sounding too opinionated, I think this is like trying to make a simple thing simpler. Not a reason for which I would choose to use their services.

I do like other things though. For starters, the way they zoom the images when you click on them. Also, nice Web-2.0-ish look.

Posterous does take away from us a few things Blogger had made so easy. The template is not so easily modifiable. The fonts can't be changed. We cant add javascript to the templates. Multi-author posting is not so easy. And they make a mess of things when crossposting.

The good part about the not so good parts are that they have nothing to do with photographs. We can do with the inconveniences regarding other things as long as they make our photos look nice. And the silver lining about it, the guys at Posterous are an energetic bunch of guys, so we can hope for good things to come.

As for Reason-11, we are still very young as photographers trying to learn more than we can possibly know. You'll probably realize this when you flip across the snaps. When we take a look at our archives, we see a few glitches. But in them we also see a shameless arrogance which says that the next post is going to be perfect.

On a recent discussion with Rupsa about Reason-11, the other day, she mentions, "Our's look nicer. It shows the mistakes and a natural learning curve. The rest of the online photo albums are so goddamn perfect. Bleh."

Happy Diwali people !!!

Glimpses

2009-10-09T23:14:00.003-07:00

Finally uploaded all my snaps from the last 45 days. Though I still feel there are still a few here and there which I'll end up bumping into later.

- Bits and pieces of the campus
- New friends and people around
- Adventures in the kitchen
- The apartment
- West Meadow - one of the beaches near campus

And also,

- The Bangalore I miss sometimes.

A rant on the bits that matter

2009-10-09T17:12:00.002-07:00

A couple of programming must-dos that I have picked up over the last month and a half, after coming back to school. Some made me say, 'oh really'. Some seemed like familiar re-iterations, but that only showed how important they are. I'm actually more happier to be reminded of these.

- Reading code is as important as writing code. Sometimes its actually more important.

- Real programmers often use a dictionary to name their variables.

- Modularise. High chances your program wont go anywhere without it.

- Be very possesive about the code you write.

- If your copy-pasting code in your program, there is something wrong with the design.

- Be harsh on bad habits. Talking about modules again, just because your code is a small 100 line script, don't say, I can do without functions here.

- Its not about how fast you write your code, its about how long people use it.

- Remember what Joshua Bloch said, "It’s easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code."

- Reading wikipedia tells you how it works. Reading a research paper tells you that too and also how the researcher's thinking evolved into this nice idea. Its crucial how we know how to use these both these.

- A smart programmer knows his math well.

More October Second

2009-10-02T17:26:00.001-07:00

Someone on Twitter:

@Gandhi: I want to follow you..but you'r not on Twitter... :-P

Music: "No Surprises" - Radiohead

October Second

2009-10-01T20:38:00.003-07:00

Happy Birthday Mr Gandhi !!! To everything that you have done for the country. Its only ironical that me and a few of my friends miss this day most when we are out of the country and hence do not get the day off from our regular chores.

Image courtesy: http://www.searchgadchiroli.org/GANDHI.gif

The girl from yesteryear

2009-09-26T17:10:00.002-07:00

Across the road or maybe further still,

In the peace of love or the rush

of her eyes.

In the beauty of her smile,

Or in the uncertainty of her mind,

Lives a girl from yesteryear.

Through the after-taste of music from the night before,

She walks the cold morning. The music is still there,

Now from the chime of her bangles though.

Twenty-four, not a less, not a more,

She screams, and vanishes slow.

From here to her, a few miles or some more,

She lives in the glitz and pretends to like it too

She looks at me and we talk for a while.

The warmth of familiarity and her smile.

The east coast sun stares on.

Wrapped in a shawl of a grown-up life,

Shines on a crazy diamond.

Ashthami plans !

2009-09-26T10:09:00.003-07:00

Well, well, well.

- Assignment: Image Classification using a Bag of Words for images.

- Indian food at the Garba party.. :-P

- Bryant Park quartet at the Staller Centre.

- EPL highlights for the weekend's matches.

- Script to fix the "Who killed my static IP ?" bug for the Ubuntu 8.10 server in the lab.

- Maybe some ping-pong in the afternoon too !

:-)

But it rained

2009-09-21T17:33:00.006-07:00

So a lot of charities and NGOs out there actually do a lot of good work. There is a problem though, if one notices carefully. A large no. of these initiatives fizz out pretty soon. Lot of good starts. Lot of people noticing them initially. But where do they disappear ? Well, a core part of running a non-profit is about getting a dedicated work-force. People, who don't really bother too much about earning big money and are not afraid of jumping into something that might not work out. Which brings us to the real problem, how exactly do you promote a Charity ?

I do not really know the perfect answer to the question but I do follow the work of a particular set of people who call themselves Charity: Water. As far as the presentation bit is concerned atleast, they have really got it right. The site in its entirety really brings out their purpose and why one should really give their cause a moment's thought. The least I could do is talk about them and spread the word. I would like to contribute to something like this someday.

As for now, me and my friends had this trivial idea of uploading water snaps on Reason-11. Some are up, more to come. Its our little way of trying to point your cursor to the cause !

Grad-cart

2009-09-20T22:58:00.006-07:00

List for Sunday shopping at the supermarket:

- Top Ramen (Super saver pack)
- Thai Mae-Ploy sweet chilli sauce (makes any dish seem tasty)
- Frozen Paranthas
- Someone to do my assignments !!
- Cookies (5 packets)
- Precooked pancakes (I-want-to-hug-the-store-manager discount packs)
- Halloween pumpkin lamp / Budweiser six-pack (Damn why do I have to choose !!)
- Honey-glazed ham slices
- Dvd of Jennifer's Body maybe... :(
- Life also, maybe ?!?

Back home. Hungry. Need lunch, but too tired to cook. Solution, Maggi Pizza. Recipe:

- Warm the maggi from yesterday.
- Mix it with the Paw Bhaji gravy from last Wednesday, and heat for some time.
- Put it on top of Pita bread (acts as pizza base)
- Serve with beverage of your choice.

Time

2009-09-14T17:32:00.003-07:00

So, when do you say you are good at it ?

Someone tells you, there is a web-app which needs to be developed using Ajax or some other cool-sounding web tools that exist today. He asks you, can I count on you for this ? You've dabbled with Ajax a bit, written some spaghetti code maybe. But can you really say you can do it right away ? Well, even if you have no experience in something, its not going to be rocket-science to get the hang of it. Also, neither is it going to be really easy to get yourself to write useful code, just like that.

What really counts is, how many days does it take you to be fluent in something. The question initially asked was wrong or maybe, to be polite (Came from a superior !), was wrongly phrased. The question actually is about the time. Do a quick silent check in your mind, add two extra days as buffer, just in case its a happy Saturday night and the hangover kills your Sunday, and there you go.

"I need X days to start working on whatever application you want me to work on."

That gets you one up straight off !

Wikipedia has a cousin

2009-09-11T18:58:00.005-07:00

And its brilliant. And I didn't know about it. Click. And you'll see a simple webpage with a beautiful photograph. Enter anything on the top-right search box and discover for yourself what the site has to offer. Simply put, it is a collaborative effort to create a giant database of the most apt pictures of anything that you can possibly think about. What makes it different from Flickr or Picasa is, someone might have taken an awesome snap of Times Square when he went there with his family, and has gone ahead and labelled it as "Sunday with Bunty and Juggu". He might have tagged it as 'Summer of 09' and 'Family', but somehow missed out on the tag 'NYC'. The point here is, we don't really verify that our online albums' tags are exhaustive when we upload images. And the result, image searches are not complete.

I also like the interface. Quite inviting.

Somewhere beyond the sea

2009-09-05T06:54:00.008-07:00

Most people take a while to decide on and contemplate about a decision. They take advice from people who have been in their shoes. These people will tell you option A is better than B or B is better than C. But no one tells you, once we are done with this conversation, decide on an option and start working on it right away. It might sound redundant but a many of us actually still keep thinking in our heads. Did I do it right ? How about a change of plans...

Choices are something we cant avoid. And from the ones I have taken, let me tell you, some choices are better than others, but there is nothing like a best choice. And then there is determination, which is all yours. No one can make a difference in how you say, hell or high water, i'm going to make it happen.

Also, repercussions. How many of times have you heard, if I select this career path my job chances decreases by 5%. Well, let me tell you, so does your competition maybe. There are many ways of looking at it. What really matters is, whether there is any chance at all. That might just be enough. I know people who design stuff with wire and glass for a living. A friend's bro just left his plush advertising job and started a company which organises treks. If these guys went by numbers, their decisions wouldn't have made sense. A webblog which talks about life and struggle is on the most frequently visited tabs of many browsers. Simple ideas played with passion, thats what these success stories are all about. These guys didn't bother about what is the success ratio of what they were taking up. For some, a success ratio didn't quite exist.

The idea is to start something with a lot of enthusiasm, which most of us do, and then stay put. Dont waste time re-thinking stuff. Spend it listening to some Bobby Darin instead.

Reason-11

2009-08-30T18:03:00.008-07:00

On a cloudy summer's Sunday morning, a few days ago, I left Bangalore, after spending a little more than 6 years in the city. A few days later, I was to leave Kolkata too. The city I have spent my youngest years in. It felt weird how almost everything around me would change. How I wont see these places for a long long time. Neither will I meet these people I was so used to meeting so often. So many typically Indian situations would tend to seem unusual the next time I'm back home. So many things that I was used to and had become so much a part of life. Thinking about such things, the zillion rationalisations kept aside, there were instances when I did feel quite melancholic.

Of course instant messaging, calling cards, skype, photos on Picasa and tweets do make life abroad a little less difficult, but then the abundance of these communication tools make them a tad mundane. So me and two of my closest friends came up with our own version of something to keep connected through...Reason-11 .

We've created our own photoblog where we post images from our lives on a regular basis, each one of us. The photographs are intentionally not too personal, more to do with the places we live in or visit and more generally about life. The fact the two of my friends stay in Bangalore and Kolkata makes it perfect cos I love the after-taste of these cities living on through their snaps. Reason-11 is not just about sharing photos over Picasa or Flickr. Very often, a series of photos uploaded by different people tend to complement each other and the blog ultimately turns into a piece of art in its entirety. Of course, the fact that we don't have explicit plans on where this will go leads to endless possibilities.

We had kept this to ourselves for a few days, but then I could not resist sharing it with everyone else. Of course, we plan to evolve this in the best way possible. Looking back, after a few years would be wonderful if not more. Also, if you happen to know one of the three in the gang or better still, the whole gang, your welcome to share a snap. Just mail it to any of us and if it does not contain anything we can't share with one and all, it will be put up.... :-) .... And appropriate goody bags will be mailed to you as appreciation... :-P

Road-trippin !!!

2009-08-24T19:18:00.007-07:00

Route: Stony Brook -> NYC -> Edison, New Jersey -> Philadelphia -> NYC -> Stony Brook
Duration: 3 days

Snaps: Philly - NYC - Jersey
Also some in and around Stony Brook.

- Traveled by car, bus and train made the trip a nice and crazy one.
- Traveling on a shoe-string budget reminded me of college days in Bangalore.
- Philly was a nice mix of the historic and the present with skyscrapers rising in between museums and monuments.
- New York was madness, the sunday afternoon crowd was of the size of a small country's population.
- Jersey was more quiet and nice, really warm the Indian family we visited.
- The roads were awesome, only leaves you wanting for more.

I would write a lot more if only I didn't have to cook, read up on courses to select, look for on-campus jobs, try not missing soccer, understand AT&T's calling plans, be familiar with directions on campus, say a hi to people online and work on a nice little photo-blog that I'm working on with a few friends (More on that later).

School

2009-08-20T21:43:00.003-07:00

Home for the next 2 years...

First blood

2009-08-19T04:02:00.004-07:00

Well. A few days, a few observations.

- No one's in a hurry, unless they really are in a hurry.
- Cars actually stop at every crossing if they see a pedestrian, and they insist that you cross the road first.
- Honking is considered insulting.
- The weather in NY right now is exactly like the Bangalore weather, so the transition was easy.
- In the afternoons, it gets really hot. And now i'm not talking about the weather. :-)
- Soccer feels good in every corner of the world.
- Nice t-shirt at the mall. Oops, "Made in India".
- The buses on campus play awesome music. They run LI radio channels.
- House and Hip-hop has still not yet started haunting me.
- The food on campus is surprisingly sucky.
- Nokia isn't as visible as in India. I'm going to stick to it though.

Notes from AI-101

2009-08-17T14:01:00.008-07:00

1915 IST 14th Aug: Sad Air India crew. The lady at the counter tells me that she has never heard about the rule that first time students are allowed 3 bags instead of 2. Sigh.

2000 IST 14th Aug: Leaving for Delhi. Sitting beside two girls going back to NY after a trip to India. Shopping notes being exchanged in vivid details. Overheard, "I got these Rajasthani earrings down to 250 from 500. Can you beat that bargain ?"

2145 IST 14th Aug: Sad dinner. Bored already. Imagine another 16 hours on the next flight. Hoping for a little more legroom and a better in-flight entertainment system on the international flight.

2200 IST 14th Aug: Why is Amereeka so far away ???

2300 IST 14th Aug: Some food finally. What is it? Chinese food with fancy pineapple desert. Much needed nourishment. After all, i'm about to out-rotate the earth. Time to sleep. Dim the lights please.

0600 IST 15th Aug: Good morning. Woken up by a Happy Independence Day by my neighbor. But where on earth am I ? The brightness of the GPS hurts the eye. Good lord, we are in St Petersburg in Russia. Reminds me of U2 and their fascination for this country. But why Russia, which route is this, yen saar ??

0645 IST 15th Aug: The sky on the east looks beautiful. Break of dawn. On the right though, Europe is still shrouded in darkness. As we keep moving westwards, the local time kept hovering somewhere around 06:45. Time stood still. Getting up and catching the early morning school bus would have been so easy this way. Damn.

1000 IST 15th Aug: Somewhere over Europe now. Some kid opens the window every 30 mins and screams, "Look mom, its dawn", while the mom happily snores away.

1315 IST 15th Aug: Flying over Toronto. Why the hell did we go to Kannada , oops Canada ? Moron pilot. Bloody Indian pilot. Should have been a bloody Indian auto-driver. Uncle, i'm not out on a sight seeing trip. Ok I got a little disturbed by a few bad glasses of Ballantine, if you know what I mean. Note to self: Never drink while expecting jetlag. It scares you. My friend beside me tells me, "No highness, only scarcity is happening !!!" :-P. Not to self again: Never say no to free whisky. Hick hick.

1330 IST 15th Aug: Only a bit of CCR can help me out of this. And get me back to my senses enough to fill the Immigration forms.

1345 IST 15th Aug: Left the sun behind. Its pitch dark outside. The announcement on the flight says, turbulent weather. Heavy showers outside. Snoring aunty has got up finally. The son seems satisfied now, after having achieved the impossible. But the mom looks so worried. Hurriedly she closes her window, as if to prevent the rain from coming inside.

(I reached New York at 6 in the morning on 15th. About to start the day I have already experienced.)

Love !

2009-08-06T22:18:00.002-07:00

Dell Inspiron 15, 2.1 GHz Core 2 duo, 3Gb, 320GB... with Ubuntu and a 6 cell posterior !!!

Yay but no yay !!!

2009-07-10T04:24:00.006-07:00

And I Googled and Binged and Binged and Googled. And I could not decide. Through which search engine would I like to look at the world through? Google, Bing, M$ Live, Yahoo, AltaVista (For posterity sake !!!). Damn, choice always screws with my head. But don't we live in a world where Google is God? Isnt almost any Google product the next big thing? Personally I am a huge Google fan. So don't read this as criticism or mockery. This is more of an introspection.

Blind faith is uncool. I realised that when I found blind-search. Try it. Quite an interesting thing. You might just realise that Google is definitely not the best search engine for all scenarios.

I have been using Bing for the last few days, and it actually is quite good. Microsoft, here, has done a good job. Yes, you heard that right. Sample this. I was trying to get some info on the platform that Palm-Pre runs on. It's called "WebOS". Quite a misleading term for search-bots considering it has very little to do with a Web operating system. And while Google could not give me anything useful, Bing spitted out some really useful pages from Palm's developer forum. So, definitely worth a look.

I quite like the "More Info" clouds which comes up on the right of the search results when you move the mouse over. At times, they are quite informative without having to actually open the webpage. Smooth.

But before you mistake me for getting mushy about M$, let me tell you I'm just talking about the pure Computer Science that has gone behind this. Not the other stuff. Its sad that we live in a age where a search engine is also judged by the marketing strategies of the parent company. And when it comes to that, Bing might be good today, But Its Not Google.

Bing also amuses me at times. Go to the homepage and each day you'll see a different fancy pic. Quite alluring. You take some time admiring the pic. Move your mouse over the pic, and you see the pic plays 20 questions with you. Yeah, really. But the funny part starts here. There is a arrow button on the bottom right. Click on that and you would expect to see yesterday's alluring pic. But no. It tells you to download and install Silverlight. Whyeeee? Whyeeee I say? Why do u need Silverlight, a flash plugin to display another pic on a webpage? Oh if forgot to say, Silverlight happens to be a M$ product. Could that have something to do with it?

Another instance when I had a good laugh was when I was obsessing about myself. I searched for "Sagnik Dhar Facebook". A blind man could tell you the top result would be to my Facebook page. But none of the results on the first page are that ? I mean, how can you get that wrong ?

Right now, Chrome's omnibox on my laptop connects to Bing for searches. As of now, its been surprising me with the search results. Sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. Lets see how long it remains that way. But till it does, doesn't it form a pretty picture ? A happy union ? :-P

Random Reminiscing

2009-06-27T19:09:00.001-07:00

Remembering the good ol' sunny days !!!

Of alien-bonding and ghost stories

2009-06-19T02:49:00.004-07:00

And my laptop had died. Caught between clutches of creativity and admiring the the thunder and lightning adorning my window, I missed a silent moment. It almost felt as if the lightning outside continued inside through the power socket and onto my laptop. I saw the light, literally. The manufacturers played doctor and now its back to looking as shiny as ever.

By the way, I'm fine. Or so I think. My friend, however, suggests that the lightning supernaturally affected me and caused the viral fever I'm suffering from right now. Worth pondering over, considering the number of spooky-but-real stories i've been given first person narrations of off late.

The creativity I was talking about earlier was designing a presentation on myself. :-P . I know, big fat :-P . Not everyday do I get to do such a thing. It was for the orientation workshop for the scholarship I received at Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation. They have very kindly agreed to fund a part of my grad school expenses. There was a two day workshop where we were initiated to a lot of things that one might experience as an international student, and it was done in a lavish and fun way. One small part of this program was a formal dinner where we had to give this presentation to Mr Narotam Sekhsaria and a whole host of very important people.

The precious takeaway for me was, however, meeting 10 awesome people. These were people from various backgrounds (I usually meet comp-skee engineers at such public meets), with killer resumes and that, most strikingly, was the least important thing about them. Brilliant sense of humour, an infectious enthusiasm to have fun and a strong motivation to do whatever they do. It was two great days of fun. I also got a long-pending wish fulfilled. I got to stay *on* Marine Drive. The view of the Queen's necklace at the dead of the night with the ships lighting up the open end of the sea is a moment to be cherished.

Talking about scholarships, like NSF, there are quite a few other foundations which give cash to go splurge on while pretending to do meaningful research in schools abroad and in India. I could name a few.

- JN Tata scholarships

- Times of India (Sahu Jain Scholarships)

- KC Mahindra Scholarships

- Paul Foundation

- Bharat Petroleum Scholarships

The list is not exhaustive. There is this site called http://www.scholarshipsinindia.com/ . Visit the place and take your pick.

On a parting note, a friend's status message which made me wink,

" Its better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all !!!". Ponder ponder.

In India I believe

2009-06-05T10:30:00.005-07:00

You might be interested in politics and feel good about Congress's clean sweep. Or you might not be interested in politics and have only watched the Pussycat Dolls' version of Jai Ho. Both ways you should read this.

~ Prithviraj Chavan - Science and Technology - BE, MS (BITS, Pilani and University of California, Berkeley)

~ Sachin Pilot - Communications & IT - MBA (Pennsylvania Univ)

~ Salman Khursheed - Corp Affairs; Minority Affairs - BA, MA (Oxford)

~ Jairam Ramesh - Environment & Forests - BTECH, MS (MIT, US)

~ Agatha Kongkal Sangma - Rural Development - MA (Nottingham University)

~ Jyotiraditya Scindia - Commerce & Industry - MA, MBA (Harvard, Stanford)

~ Kapil Sibal - LLM (Harvard)

~ Shashi Tharoor - External Affairs - PhD (Tufts University)

~ P Chidambaram - Home - LLB (Chennai), MBA (Harvard)

~ M S Gill - Youth Affairs & Sports - BA (Hons), MA, Phd (Punjab, Cambridge)

And of course, Manmohan Singh, Punjab University, the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford.

Brilliant stuff !!! I ignored an article in the Times having similar data. But then I received a forward and noticed these. They say, education primarily makes you think better before doing more good stuff. Hopefully the quick wit helps the country before anyone else.

(As I said, I've picked the data off a forward message, pardon any mistakes/typos. )

Brillianto !!!

2009-05-29T18:57:00.001-07:00

Movie, anyone ?

2009-05-28T02:08:00.004-07:00

How do you decide whether to pay 200 bucks (INR) for a movie at the theatre or not ? (In spite of recession or no-recession)

- The movie has an awesome soundtrack. Go for it.

- Hindi period-movie ? No, don't. Hindi futuristic sci-fi flick? No way!!!

- If Chuchu, my good friend, says he didn't like it(uses adjectives like 'Bundle, dude'), its a good movie.

- If Chuchu has seen it, and really likes it(uses adjectives like 'Kickass movie, dude'), do not see it. Do not fall for the trap.

- Bond flick but the theatre has sad audio quality. No issues, go for it. Tarantino flick but the theatre has sad video quality. Don't worry, go for it.

- First date? Do not go for a movie, you dufus.

- The lead actress's character and your ex share the same name, and your going with your girlfriend. Do not. I warn you again, do not.

- If its a superhero movie, go for it only if you have seen the previous versions. Else, you wont follow.

- This is the first movie based on the superhero ? Don't go for it, mostly it will be a comedy of errors. Yeah, you got it right, bottom line, dont go for a superhero movie.

- The duration of the movie says nothing. Three and a half hours doesn't always mean it is worth it.

- If its a chick flick, don't go. Not worth it. Even with the pretty-young-things all around you.

- If its a chick flick and and your gf is forcing you to go for it, you should go. Which scoundrel said, chick flicks are not worth it ?

- If its an Al Pacino movie where he plays a cop, I can tell you the story. Bad cop turns good at the end. Still want to go ? A hot woman falls for him, but he pushes her away. Still want to go for it ? Good lord !!!

- Does it have Penelope Cruz starring in it ? Shut up. Just go for it.

The above list doesn't apply to my friends studying acting, direction or any form of Film studies. :-)

ZooZoo-ed ?

2009-05-25T23:36:00.013-07:00

Retrospectives on the advertisement that has caught the attention of you, me and most of the rest...

- Duration. Not too long, not too short. 30 seconds. Perfect.

- Variety. A new ZooZoo-venture everyday.

- Though the ads changed daily, the use of similar colors, tone, and theme meant the viewer's brain was invited to something familiar yet unique.

- Releasing multiple ads at the same time was a sharp risk. Sharp risks generally pay off.

- The "cuteness" factor.

- Creativity. Animated characters enacted by human beings to give the natural touch.

- Some of the plots were quite dumb, but painfully well presented. To quote a friend, "The use of subtle colors to talk really loud."

- Relevant ads. They did not talk about cheap caller-rates or dumb "Talk to your fave bollywood star" contests. On the contrary, they spoke about cricket and stock-alerts though.

- Soothing effect. Made you smile when you didn't have nails left on your fingers.

- You don't always need SRK to make your ad shine.

- You could relate to them. I'm sure you've had your ZooZoo moment. This was mine.

The result of all the above. An ad-series filled with sparks of brilliance. If your sitting at your local cafe and this ad flashes on the television screen, take a look around and you'll know what I'm talking about. It only remains to be seen how well can they capitalise on the ZooZoo wave. And I am not talking about Vodafone caller plans here.

<. Applause >

All the credits till now though, go to their creator, Ogilvy and Mather !!!

<. /Applause >

Hope

2009-05-18T23:28:00.004-07:00

I love to live in hope. It might work out, it might not. Even if it does not, I wish the hope never dies. Looking at it that way, even when it works out, the hope has died, because there is nothing else to hope for.

Call me crazy, but I love hope. The feeling of it. It scares me to death when I'm devoid of hope.

It is not about how difficult it is to jump across to the other side. It is also not about where you will finally land. It is about how much you think you can cover. Hope helps you increase that distance.

Hope is the reason for many things. Think lottery tickets. People usually have a one in a million probability to win a lottery. But, even mathematicians buy lottery tickets. Atleast a million of them are sold everyday globally, even during recession. Do you think people are foolish? No, cos what they also get with the ticket is that inkling of hope to win it. And that is worth it.

It does not matter what you sell as a marketing guy. Cos at the end of the day, what people buy is hope. The hope that my home-banking service will make my life simpler. The hope that a software will decrease the time-to-market of my product. The hope that my yoga lessons will not only make me physically fit, but also free my mind of daily clutter.

Come to think of it, all our actions are smeared by the hope of something more than what it is actually intended to do. Obama was clever enough to put up posters with just one word on them. Hope.

I have hoped for the impossible. I still do. Its a good thing to do, cos that way, the hope never dies. I like that.

Also, Hope makes you day-dream. I like that too.

Reason lost in the desert sand of dead habit

2009-05-12T03:33:00.010-07:00

As I stared out of the small window, it was pitch dark. I was nestled in the comfort of not having to do anything. Absolutely nothing. Ground realities of life seemed light-years away. As I looked outside, closely, the black of the night was slowly getting illuminated with tiny sparkles of orange and gold. The specks turned brighter and bigger. I could feel the snugness and the abundance of it in my present situation, dissapearing steadily. The flight suddenly screamed onto the runway and screechingly slowed down on the Bangalore runway. Reality and practicality seemed to creep in too.

I was back after a ten-day (read "long") vacation back home. I was away from any kind of office-work, application-stuff, daily chores. Also hardly added to my blog too. But I did write a lot, random stuff with uncanny connections. There always has to be a connection between one and the next. No 'order' is absolutely random, both mathematically and in life too.

Beyond that, I was busy hugging laziness in all eagerness. The soaring temperatures in the city made any attempts to step out during the day, almost impossible. The evenings were mostly filled with time spent with friends and family. Also started on Salman Rushdie's "The ground beneath her feet". Definitely has an interesting start.

I also observed,

- My school, Don Bosco, still looks as pretty as it did a decade back.

- The elections are loudest in Calcutta with decibel-bursting power speeches.

- The political rallies though, move faster nowadays, with people on bicycles and motor-bikes compared to the old-fashioned Gandhian-style walking.

- People are generally more scared of computer viruses than normal.

- My sister is still the _ditcher_ she always was.

- Air-conditioned public transportation, especially buses, is the need of the hour. People surely wont mind paying a bit extra for the comfort.

- Yet another Australian coach is dead-scared of coming to the city.

- The south Calcutta chinese restaurant called "The Wall" serves awesome food. Totally worth the freedom, the notes in your wallet are granted.

- The city still remains beautiful beneath its skin of heat and dust. Its beauty, often reassured by the sudden showers.

Home still remains golden.

The title of the post, of course, is inspired by Tagore's brilliance.