After endless bickering by Ma, about how books are dangerously encroaching the whole of our modestly sized house, she said it was time to discard them , /pause/, she corrects herself "we have to discard at least some of them". So stood ahead a daunting task of sorting the old books and catergorising them into "Have to keep", "Find rightful heirs" and "Discard".
I love my book room. It has this huge shelf with glass sliding panels and books arranged behind them in neat rows.
So first came the old text books, from 10th grade onwards. The english text books, which were read the day they were bought. The "Merchant of Venice" in old english. I only realised the importance of ICSE english syllabus, when i shifted to CBSE for my 11th and 12th. The former having a distinguished class ( spoken like a true ICSE snob ! ). I missed "Selected short stories" and "Pagent of poems" after i left them behind.
Among the books, i saw a familiar red- black book cover and out came the "Resnick and Halliday". Eagerly opened it and started reading the first chapter. Aaah, how i love those tiny fonts and those diagrams. And all the "Prove that .." questions at the end of each chapter. Then there was Looney with all the Trignometry gyan. I suspect my other text books except english have already been "given". Then there a few books on physics from my dad's time. Indian authors, big fonts, i remember reading them on and off.
Some odd 30 novels. The ones i started buying like mad when i started earning. I even have a james hadley chase for that matter. :P
Then there were the engineering books. Out went the ones which said "Object Oriented Programming" or "Html" or "Java" or "VC++". I somehow absolutely hated "learning" languages. Then there was "Theory of automata and finite languages" by John Martin. Definitely a keeper. I learned the concept of FSM's here. I am still fascinated by them. Then a "Introduction to Prolog", what a teaser that was , i remember ! Until you think in terms of recursions, you can never write a program. But when you do, it was a 3-5 lines of code , brevity and elegance personified. A keeper again. The "Operating systems" by Silberschatz got eaten by termites. Felt bad, but was secretly relieved that it wasnt "Resnick and Halliday". Then was "Compiler design", a keeper. Was torn whether to keep the "Network analysis", but would have to keep "Microprocessors" too, for the sake of fairness, you know. And "Have to keep" pile was growing making it an extremely difficult optimisation problem.
There were a huge pile of brilliant tutorials mock test papers and YG files. Was tempted to keep one of the papers and try to solve the math section. Debated between getting excited and feel good about myself or getting completely humiliated. Whisked it into the "Have to keep" pile.
Found an old notebook, with neatly written notes sbout calculating the final velocity of a projectile under the force of gravity.
I am so glad that some things never change...
Monday, May 11, 2009
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Refuge
Lots of last minute packing to do and I am writing this post. The age old habit of giving importance to useless trivial stuff, when there are more pressing matters to attend.
A roller-coaster ride has it been. Words somehow dont seem to give way to whole turmoil down there. Lower the defences, one always has the option. Only one doesnt realizes, that one does. The intense desire to be loved is fatal. Wake up and realise its all epheremal. Bittersweet memories swirl around into an oblivion , like one is hurled into the air from a play cart. Momentary glide and then a free fall. Gravity defies none. And what does one think on all the way down ? How did it come to this ....
A roller-coaster ride has it been. Words somehow dont seem to give way to whole turmoil down there. Lower the defences, one always has the option. Only one doesnt realizes, that one does. The intense desire to be loved is fatal. Wake up and realise its all epheremal. Bittersweet memories swirl around into an oblivion , like one is hurled into the air from a play cart. Momentary glide and then a free fall. Gravity defies none. And what does one think on all the way down ? How did it come to this ....
Friday, November 28, 2008
Epiphany
It happened to me when I was in iitm for a week. Now, thats what i call a huge campus, which is as beautiful as it is massive. And my navigational skills suck ! ( This is one of the rare things i actually admit , I am bad at , so it can deciphered how bad I must be ).
So I wanted to take a walk to this place called Gurunath stores. I remembered someone had told me to go in the direction opposite to what I take when i go to Computer science block ( Or was it the sharavati hostel ? ) and walk until i see a small ICICI placard, and walk left from that. So I start walking left from Building Science block and kept walking for a long distance, waiting to spot that ICICI placard. It was a long time before i realised that the turns didnt seem familiar, hence i should ask someone for directions. A gentleman gave me a very warm ( sympathetic) smile and told me wait at a spot for the bus which would take me there. I bravely assured him that i wanted to walk and hence be kind enough to give the directions. So I walk beside the hockey-football grounds, electrical engineering dept, and take a right, when i suddenly spot that damn ICICI placard !
I "globally localized " and shifted the whole map in my mind according to my new position. And i did it as an impulse. That is when it struck me ! So this was what MK ( my robotics prof ) kept drawling on in the Mobile Robotics classes !
I have drawn analogies before, but it was never this striking. And the fact that i did it almost as an impulse, made me started thinking how someone would have bumped across the concept of "localization" and decided to use it for robotics !
After learning robotics for 2 years, "localization" is definitely a concept/term would take a permanent place in my dictionary/vocabulary.
With my perfect knowledge about the world, I proudly made my way back towards the sharavati hostel.
So I wanted to take a walk to this place called Gurunath stores. I remembered someone had told me to go in the direction opposite to what I take when i go to Computer science block ( Or was it the sharavati hostel ? ) and walk until i see a small ICICI placard, and walk left from that. So I start walking left from Building Science block and kept walking for a long distance, waiting to spot that ICICI placard. It was a long time before i realised that the turns didnt seem familiar, hence i should ask someone for directions. A gentleman gave me a very warm ( sympathetic) smile and told me wait at a spot for the bus which would take me there. I bravely assured him that i wanted to walk and hence be kind enough to give the directions. So I walk beside the hockey-football grounds, electrical engineering dept, and take a right, when i suddenly spot that damn ICICI placard !
I "globally localized " and shifted the whole map in my mind according to my new position. And i did it as an impulse. That is when it struck me ! So this was what MK ( my robotics prof ) kept drawling on in the Mobile Robotics classes !
I have drawn analogies before, but it was never this striking. And the fact that i did it almost as an impulse, made me started thinking how someone would have bumped across the concept of "localization" and decided to use it for robotics !
After learning robotics for 2 years, "localization" is definitely a concept/term would take a permanent place in my dictionary/vocabulary.
With my perfect knowledge about the world, I proudly made my way back towards the sharavati hostel.
Monday, November 17, 2008
The two pillars.
This post is an ode to those two people who literally shaped my professional career, sometimes knowingly and mostly unknowingly.
Yoda: I call him 'sir', but found an apt name after I watched star wars. He is probably the only person I have met till now, whose rationality actively strives to equal his brilliance. Inspite of being 50-something, He still has a well-nested child-like curosity in him, which makes him so approachable and an extremely interesting person to have around. He is a self-made genius, who didnt even start as a CompSci engineer, but today sustains single handedly various projects in my ex-workplace. On why and how did he shape my career, i woudl exactly quote a mail i wrote to him long time ago. -
"Now when i look back to those 2 years in eI, i can only think how lucky i was. When students enter industry, they witness petty politics and manipulation, but i got a chance to work with u and what i witnessed was sheer techincal excellence, humility and fairness, which helped me to be myself."
I regret I couldnt get to know him better, one because I felt shy, and second because he was a bigshot in the workplace and I felt a little hesistant in doing so, though I am sure he would have never minded.
A.G - This guy, fortunately was a close friend, and at a time, i was having serious exsistential crisis. A child prodigy, who has impressive academic records is also a self-made genius. There is nothing that this guy hasnt tried his hands on, electronics, mechanics, every damn field of computer science etc etc. In that way, AG and Yoda draw many parallels. They both are brilliant, humble, curious and fair, I used to always wonder what is that they are talking about in the office parking lot . There have been million times I felt like dropping by, craving to just listen to those intelligent exchanges, and maybe express an opinion or two. Well, there was no else i could talk about stuff like Computing and Intelligence, Science fiction, philosophy and metaphysics. But just knowing that they were there, who were interested in something more than APR's , QPR's and office politics was a consolation enough, that I would survive too. Inspite of all insanity around, these people stood as my pillars , mostly unknowingly, that there is still a lot of good and fairness in the world.
P.S : I wish i could write well, I feel i havent done justice to the ode.
Yoda: I call him 'sir', but found an apt name after I watched star wars. He is probably the only person I have met till now, whose rationality actively strives to equal his brilliance. Inspite of being 50-something, He still has a well-nested child-like curosity in him, which makes him so approachable and an extremely interesting person to have around. He is a self-made genius, who didnt even start as a CompSci engineer, but today sustains single handedly various projects in my ex-workplace. On why and how did he shape my career, i woudl exactly quote a mail i wrote to him long time ago. -
"Now when i look back to those 2 years in eI, i can only think how lucky i was. When students enter industry, they witness petty politics and manipulation, but i got a chance to work with u and what i witnessed was sheer techincal excellence, humility and fairness, which helped me to be myself."
I regret I couldnt get to know him better, one because I felt shy, and second because he was a bigshot in the workplace and I felt a little hesistant in doing so, though I am sure he would have never minded.
A.G - This guy, fortunately was a close friend, and at a time, i was having serious exsistential crisis. A child prodigy, who has impressive academic records is also a self-made genius. There is nothing that this guy hasnt tried his hands on, electronics, mechanics, every damn field of computer science etc etc. In that way, AG and Yoda draw many parallels. They both are brilliant, humble, curious and fair, I used to always wonder what is that they are talking about in the office parking lot . There have been million times I felt like dropping by, craving to just listen to those intelligent exchanges, and maybe express an opinion or two. Well, there was no else i could talk about stuff like Computing and Intelligence, Science fiction, philosophy and metaphysics. But just knowing that they were there, who were interested in something more than APR's , QPR's and office politics was a consolation enough, that I would survive too. Inspite of all insanity around, these people stood as my pillars , mostly unknowingly, that there is still a lot of good and fairness in the world.
P.S : I wish i could write well, I feel i havent done justice to the ode.
7 things that research taught me.
1) Happiness is rare, cherish it while you can.
- Sounds dramatic ? Try living through the ups and downs ( usually downs) of missing deadlines, paper rejections, getting your ego crushed, watch your peers pass out etc etc.
2) 'Guide'liness is next to Godliness.
- For those of us who are atheists, as if the world fights back in revealing a new power in the form of a middle aged man/woman, who has the power to affect your life on everyday basis. For others who already believe in almighty find themselves showing intense partiality in devotion to this new source of power.
3) Money is rare too, cherish it, while it lasts.
- Living on meagre Research Assistantships ( as if calling it an RA is supposed to make it sound honourable ), rarely lasts when the month is coming to an end. Hence the sheer desperation of living within the means turns out to be a pattern in extravagances in the former days of the month and penurious in later half.
4) All thesis topics are either too aimbitious or taken.
5) You are an insignificant drop in the ocean.
- And you thought, you didnt want to be just one among the thousands of IT engineers, clunking away the keyboards in their cubicles ? Well here you find, there is another kind of ocean, reseachers in almost completely saturated domains, where you still end up being an insignificant researcher , with the exception of course, some of the brightest or luckiest kinds.
6) Almost all research end up at the blind alleys of open problems.
- From wherever you start, you have to given in to an outstanding open problem in that domain. It would be either intractable or NP-hard. Hence you end up using patchy solutions that have been already in use, indicating to the fact, that till these open problems are tackled, there is not much one can do.
7) I cannot be an island.
- One never really realises the importance of friends (in some rare cases, family), when one is facing the frustuation of research. I remember one faculty say once - " Research is a very lonely experience", and i cant agree more.
P.S : Usually i am not this pessimistic, and i hate this side of me. I still like research.
- Sounds dramatic ? Try living through the ups and downs ( usually downs) of missing deadlines, paper rejections, getting your ego crushed, watch your peers pass out etc etc.
2) 'Guide'liness is next to Godliness.
- For those of us who are atheists, as if the world fights back in revealing a new power in the form of a middle aged man/woman, who has the power to affect your life on everyday basis. For others who already believe in almighty find themselves showing intense partiality in devotion to this new source of power.
3) Money is rare too, cherish it, while it lasts.
- Living on meagre Research Assistantships ( as if calling it an RA is supposed to make it sound honourable ), rarely lasts when the month is coming to an end. Hence the sheer desperation of living within the means turns out to be a pattern in extravagances in the former days of the month and penurious in later half.
4) All thesis topics are either too aimbitious or taken.
5) You are an insignificant drop in the ocean.
- And you thought, you didnt want to be just one among the thousands of IT engineers, clunking away the keyboards in their cubicles ? Well here you find, there is another kind of ocean, reseachers in almost completely saturated domains, where you still end up being an insignificant researcher , with the exception of course, some of the brightest or luckiest kinds.
6) Almost all research end up at the blind alleys of open problems.
- From wherever you start, you have to given in to an outstanding open problem in that domain. It would be either intractable or NP-hard. Hence you end up using patchy solutions that have been already in use, indicating to the fact, that till these open problems are tackled, there is not much one can do.
7) I cannot be an island.
- One never really realises the importance of friends (in some rare cases, family), when one is facing the frustuation of research. I remember one faculty say once - " Research is a very lonely experience", and i cant agree more.
P.S : Usually i am not this pessimistic, and i hate this side of me. I still like research.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
And then, it saved me
A day that started with a sense of accomplishment, became an exercise in humiliation as it drew to its end. I made futile attempts to distract myself by trying to think why a multi-threading framework doesn't work with C++ STL lists and debating with my friends on how using statistics is a not that bad a way to approach NLP, inspite its futility. Nothing really worked, I was still restless. So i decided to retire early. A good night's sleep can cure almost anything.
So i retire back to my room and suddenly I get this random urge to look through my CD pack. I find this DVD which i had burnt months ago, and i randomly decide to watch this movie called "The man from earth". I am so glad that i did.
The concept is not very alien. A man who never dies, has lived now for 14000 years, not sure of how people around him would react to it, moving from one place to another, as soon as someone starts noticing that he isnt aging etc etc. Whats interesting is how it is approached resulting in carving an almost flawless screenplay. Of course bolstered by excellent acting performances by the actors.
The whole film is no more than an intellectual discourse between the 14,000-year-old Cro-Magnon and his professor and teacher friends at his farewell party. There is a biologist, an anthropologist, a historian, an acrhaelogist, a psychologist and a christian literalist. The protagonist of the movie, John Oldman, starts a plethora of thought processes by expressing a hypothesis - "What if a man, from the Upper Paleolithic survived until the present day?" , when his friends keep probing him for the reasons he has quit a job with a tenure and leaving almost clandestinely without even saying a goodbye to his friends he has known for 10 years. Listening to the hypothesis, the characters do, what academicians would do in such a situation--, ask questions. Basically all aspects of how a man who has seen 14000 years of mankind and society pass by would feel and think is covered with perfection. He talks about the things he had to unlearn, and then learn again, his intellectual capability which was a result of a rare opportunity he had, to understand whatever he had witnessed in the past with the help of the understanding of the present, how his views about religion slowly changed over that life span, how he faced problems getting in terms with his immortality on the personal fronts, everything expressed in succinct, yet profound replies. Also there is a touch of honesty around him, where he never gets too melodramatic about his immortality, never rants about how he wants to die as that is whats appropriate according to the laws of nature, he seems a little sad about he had to watch his loved ones age and perish, but all the extreme emotions seem to have settled into a cloak of stoicism., like the ripples in the water ultimately die out over a long period of time.
It also raises the question of how does one feel when the entire foundation of one's belief is shaken. If there is something that you believe blindly, and the next moment you see the evidence in front of your eyes that it was hogwash, does it feel like a free fall ? Does the human nature fights back with a sense of denial ? more than that, is it fair to shake someone's belief like that if its not doing any major harm to anyone else ? what is wisdom ? what is truth ?
All in all, it was a treat for the intellect. I liked a movie so much after a long time ! I was tempted to sms K and A 3a.m in the morning. Somehow decided against it. I finally slept off with a smile on my face.
So i retire back to my room and suddenly I get this random urge to look through my CD pack. I find this DVD which i had burnt months ago, and i randomly decide to watch this movie called "The man from earth". I am so glad that i did.
The concept is not very alien. A man who never dies, has lived now for 14000 years, not sure of how people around him would react to it, moving from one place to another, as soon as someone starts noticing that he isnt aging etc etc. Whats interesting is how it is approached resulting in carving an almost flawless screenplay. Of course bolstered by excellent acting performances by the actors.
The whole film is no more than an intellectual discourse between the 14,000-year-old Cro-Magnon and his professor and teacher friends at his farewell party. There is a biologist, an anthropologist, a historian, an acrhaelogist, a psychologist and a christian literalist. The protagonist of the movie, John Oldman, starts a plethora of thought processes by expressing a hypothesis - "What if a man, from the Upper Paleolithic survived until the present day?" , when his friends keep probing him for the reasons he has quit a job with a tenure and leaving almost clandestinely without even saying a goodbye to his friends he has known for 10 years. Listening to the hypothesis, the characters do, what academicians would do in such a situation--, ask questions. Basically all aspects of how a man who has seen 14000 years of mankind and society pass by would feel and think is covered with perfection. He talks about the things he had to unlearn, and then learn again, his intellectual capability which was a result of a rare opportunity he had, to understand whatever he had witnessed in the past with the help of the understanding of the present, how his views about religion slowly changed over that life span, how he faced problems getting in terms with his immortality on the personal fronts, everything expressed in succinct, yet profound replies. Also there is a touch of honesty around him, where he never gets too melodramatic about his immortality, never rants about how he wants to die as that is whats appropriate according to the laws of nature, he seems a little sad about he had to watch his loved ones age and perish, but all the extreme emotions seem to have settled into a cloak of stoicism., like the ripples in the water ultimately die out over a long period of time.
It also raises the question of how does one feel when the entire foundation of one's belief is shaken. If there is something that you believe blindly, and the next moment you see the evidence in front of your eyes that it was hogwash, does it feel like a free fall ? Does the human nature fights back with a sense of denial ? more than that, is it fair to shake someone's belief like that if its not doing any major harm to anyone else ? what is wisdom ? what is truth ?
All in all, it was a treat for the intellect. I liked a movie so much after a long time ! I was tempted to sms K and A 3a.m in the morning. Somehow decided against it. I finally slept off with a smile on my face.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Spin the yarn
The following is result of a heated argument, a train journey and ample amount of leisure.
Mathematical truth, I think is the innate pattern embedded in whatever math we have discovered and would discover in future. What is required is to acknowledge the fact that, that math is so much more than just numbers, additions and calculus. There is a reason why we have primes just like there is a reason that there is a pattern found among them, or rather lack of it.
I have always found differential equations the most fascinating of all. If one notices, they are extremely powerful. They circumscribe a whole lot of things about a system in the most precise form.
Now, thats elegant. Morever, they are "complete", they describe the system for all boundary conditions and intermediate states between them. If ever, the equation for the universe is found, I am biased enough to believe that it would be in the form of a differential equation ( :D ).
I wonder, what would be the differential equation of emotions like love ? Or would they appear as just boundary conditions ? Temporary constructs of time-bounded variable ranges, stagnating a system to a certain state. If that is the case, there isnt much hope, you see ! One cannot be in love forever.
Maybe the differential equation is such that, towards the end of a life span, it just settles itself, from transient state to a stable state and the boundar conditions dont really matter in the end.
What if one wants to attain this state of "equilibrium" prematurely ? Is there an external way or more importantly is it worth it ? Maybe an equation's "purpose" is only fulfilled if it experiences all the bounday conditions. In that case, the extreme states that it experiences are justified. Is it possible to be ambivalent, while experiencing a powerful emotion ? Or maybe getting swepty away in it, is a part of the plan ?
That raises the question, that what is this darned "plan" anyways ? Is it conceitous to think that i play some part in the whole fabric of the universe ? Or am I an independent unit, which just experiences its sets of boundary conditions and then perishes ? But then if the tool that describes me is same as the tool that describes the universe, then a huge power is vested in each of us. Somehow, each of our differential equations somehow fit in infinitismely into the equation of the universe, maybe it justifies the phenomenon of butterfly effect.
Now with this insight, what is the purpose of each "differential equation" ? And why is that the knowledge of this purpose is not known to us ? Or is it ? present but not known. Thats tricky ! Its like a new math to describe the existing one.
There has to be a pattern in how we think and the things we devise to describe what/how we think. How many times have we felt that there is something huge, incomprehensible and somehow everything is related in some unknown way ? Is finding that relation our purpose ? But not everyone can learn or choose to learn advanced math, and its stupid to establish math as the only tool.
Considering only the group of lunatics who hold that mathematical truth as the only truth, one can hypothesize that purpose is to find the relation between my "equation" and the "equation" of the universe. But what if I dont want to actively pursue the so called "purpose" ? What if i deal in math, but dont neccessarily think that there is such relation or even if there is, dont neccessarily care what it is ? Does it make me "purposeless" ? Or is there a function estimator, that infinitismely defines the purpose, defining just a small step at a time, something like slowly zooming out and in the end viewing the complete picture. In way, there is a purpose hidden in even being "purposeless".
I am grade A lunatic.
Statuory Warning : Curosity and leisure are a dangerous combination.
Mathematical truth, I think is the innate pattern embedded in whatever math we have discovered and would discover in future. What is required is to acknowledge the fact that, that math is so much more than just numbers, additions and calculus. There is a reason why we have primes just like there is a reason that there is a pattern found among them, or rather lack of it.
I have always found differential equations the most fascinating of all. If one notices, they are extremely powerful. They circumscribe a whole lot of things about a system in the most precise form.
Now, thats elegant. Morever, they are "complete", they describe the system for all boundary conditions and intermediate states between them. If ever, the equation for the universe is found, I am biased enough to believe that it would be in the form of a differential equation ( :D ).
I wonder, what would be the differential equation of emotions like love ? Or would they appear as just boundary conditions ? Temporary constructs of time-bounded variable ranges, stagnating a system to a certain state. If that is the case, there isnt much hope, you see ! One cannot be in love forever.
Maybe the differential equation is such that, towards the end of a life span, it just settles itself, from transient state to a stable state and the boundar conditions dont really matter in the end.
What if one wants to attain this state of "equilibrium" prematurely ? Is there an external way or more importantly is it worth it ? Maybe an equation's "purpose" is only fulfilled if it experiences all the bounday conditions. In that case, the extreme states that it experiences are justified. Is it possible to be ambivalent, while experiencing a powerful emotion ? Or maybe getting swepty away in it, is a part of the plan ?
That raises the question, that what is this darned "plan" anyways ? Is it conceitous to think that i play some part in the whole fabric of the universe ? Or am I an independent unit, which just experiences its sets of boundary conditions and then perishes ? But then if the tool that describes me is same as the tool that describes the universe, then a huge power is vested in each of us. Somehow, each of our differential equations somehow fit in infinitismely into the equation of the universe, maybe it justifies the phenomenon of butterfly effect.
Now with this insight, what is the purpose of each "differential equation" ? And why is that the knowledge of this purpose is not known to us ? Or is it ? present but not known. Thats tricky ! Its like a new math to describe the existing one.
There has to be a pattern in how we think and the things we devise to describe what/how we think. How many times have we felt that there is something huge, incomprehensible and somehow everything is related in some unknown way ? Is finding that relation our purpose ? But not everyone can learn or choose to learn advanced math, and its stupid to establish math as the only tool.
Considering only the group of lunatics who hold that mathematical truth as the only truth, one can hypothesize that purpose is to find the relation between my "equation" and the "equation" of the universe. But what if I dont want to actively pursue the so called "purpose" ? What if i deal in math, but dont neccessarily think that there is such relation or even if there is, dont neccessarily care what it is ? Does it make me "purposeless" ? Or is there a function estimator, that infinitismely defines the purpose, defining just a small step at a time, something like slowly zooming out and in the end viewing the complete picture. In way, there is a purpose hidden in even being "purposeless".
I am grade A lunatic.
Statuory Warning : Curosity and leisure are a dangerous combination.
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