Just arrived in Bangalore

It has been several months since this blog got an entry. And well, I guess there are no readers left either. But alas, I will still write to ressurrect this blog from the ashes.

Changes in life

My life has changed dramatically since May 2007. The biggest change being in my identity, from a student to an employee. From being dependent to being self-sustaining. Rather ’self-sustaining’ is a weaker word, I could as well have dependents now, ;).

BTech Achieved

The biggest achievement in the past few months has been completing my BTech. Honors degree, which was looking unachievable in April. Though I could not finish the project I was working on, in its totality. Not even to my content or even Jawahar sirs content, or for that matter, even Pramod Sankar content :). It was getting unbearable after May start. First, I was tied down to the legacy of the existing system, which I thought, a re-design would make things better. And then the problem is ‘not having enough power to take major decisions’. This made me drift from the main project to others like iYum, iChat, tv.iiit.ac.in and so on.

Anyways, lets not drift further from the topic. So, finally I achieved the degree, with all requirements met. And an extra topping of 8 extra credits completed apart from the ‘BTech Honors’ degree with a 8.57/10 CGPA. Not really very impressive like IV or Nikita, but still a respectable total for a player like me. Yeah, I could have got into 9+ if I was more focussed on ’scoring’ rather than doing all random stuff. Or if I have ‘real talent’ like IV, no study all fun but still manages an outstanding CG. (CGPA = Cumulative Grade Point Average).

The Yahoo! experience

Thanks to Yahoo!, my life has changed now. The Yahoo! experience has changed a lot of things in me. Now, at lot of the times, I ’search.yahoo.com’ instead of ‘Google’ for things. And well, it turns out, its just ‘cult branding’ that keeps Google above Yahoo! (at least in search services).

The atmosphere in the Yahoo! EGL office is nice and cool. People talk to each other casually, and I haven’t heard anyone raise voices, yet! My work is pretty less these days as I am just getting to know the old system and so on. Though my honeymoon (training period) is over, but I am still on vacation, lol.

Old friends parting

Well, for the first time Indore feels viraan. My dear buddy Tapan left Indore some days back. So, the central headquarters of our group has been relocated to USA, ;). Rahul is also in Indore till September something. And Anni is enjoying ‘his’ kind of life in college. He has been facing hard times since his breakup, but now his life is beginning to stabilize again. But you can’t be sure when its Anni, hehe.

Tanu as usual has been there. She keeps getting angry with me sometimes, but thats ok. What option do I have, I am an employee now, and need to answer to my manager and not Pramod, hehe. She will be looking for internship soon. Hope she gets a nice opportunity in some reputed agency.

Riya. This word has been like stuck with me since we ever talked. I really really wish someone just goes and stabs her or something, or comes and tells me that she is gone forever. She is wierd, she doesn’t need me. She still wants to hold on to me, just a hook around my neck, so she can pull it whenever she finds time out of her friends, colleagues, best friends, family, Glenn and so on. But I wish to be free, and so I have decided to cut her out of my life. I hope she just lets go and I am set free.

New friends at Yahoo!

Its not all sad sad in here. This new place has a lot of scope for new people to jump into my life. And well some of them have already come in. The most prominent ones being Deepak and Rishu. Oh come on, why do you keep cribbing that you got to have some ‘girl friends’? Well, I don’t generally discriminate much, a good understanding companion is all I need, how does their gender matter? Though we haven’t hung out as such, but spending 9 hours every day 5 days a week together at office is a huge thing. More than I would get to spend time with my girlfriend if I had one in Bangalore.

Deepak is a cool guy, more like me. Always having fun, talking in a desi tone, though he is responsible and hard working too. He keeps working in the ops team for like hours, even after work. Rishu is a ’sophisticated guy’, thats what I could infer. He is good at technology and fashion and pubs and stuff. We’re planning to create some cool things in our free time, apart from work. Lets see how it turns out. Well, I am not the dancing-drinking-going-to-pubs-n-discs kind of a guy, but still I am looking forward to a good friend in Rishu.

There are other colleagues in my office like Rahul, Puneet, Vinod, Amar, Santosh, Poonam, Mangesh, Abhishek and so on. And some others in MG road like Rohan, Smita and Sravanti. These people are good too, and I keep talking to them when life permits and when they feel like giving me time.

I noticed an air of ‘informality’ in Yahoo! life, people talk casually and generally have low ego, or at least potray to have it such. But, in terms of what to create and all, they focus more on ‘planning, reviewing, computing the revenue and the risk’ rather than just listening to instincts and making things. Maybe its right too. If its for one person, he/she can listen to ‘instinctive decisions’, but for a big company like Yahoo!, this is the right way. But it conflicts with my way of thinking, just a personal opinion.

And the old buggers still there

Well, thats not all, the old buggers from IIIT still haunting my life, :). I got a home with Bhavik and Sumeet. Well, as Neeraj puts it, friendship is another thing and becoming someone roomie is another. Its fun to live in the new home, but sometimes it feels irritating to hear about ‘this is your house too, so you should also do this do that’. Sometimes I wish I tell them that if its my house too, then let me live a little in my own way too. At weekends, its a fun place. All the friends from IIIT and beyond gather at a place and have a blast.

Sheharwasi aka Neeraj has also joined me in this new city. This guy has shared the same city with me all his life, be it Indore, Hyderabad or Bangalore. And well, he is a good friend, fun loving and easy going. And sometimes I hang out at his place for dominos and related issues. Rahul Mangla also lives with him, but you must be knowing how these Delhites are. Ravindranath Thakur aka Bokaro also keep visiting sometimes. Other frequent buggers include Sukesh, Amit, Gopal and friends.

Loneliness

Well, Aquarians are supposed to be deep thinkers, so I tend to be one. This new city Bangalore has so many people, almost over-crowded. I have almost the biggest circle of friends one could expect to have in a city in this short span on one month. But still, it feels a bit lonely here. There is no one here to speak my heart out to. I wish Tanu or Tapan or Ullu or someone was here. Yeah, Tanu keeps talking on phone, but no one can actually see me, and understand how I feel.

At times my personality splits into two. When someone talks to me, I am two people there. One is the guy ‘Anurag’ listening to that person, looking straight into the eye. Another is this second ‘Anurag’ who is looking at both of us, and smiling that what the hell is Anurag doing. He is smiling about the fact that how Anurag has changed. How he has grown into someone who can listen to such people like a credit card marketing person explaining details or a team leader explaining the details of the project. The second Anurag feels ‘Anurag’ is not eligible to be a part of all this. He is a simple sweet child, who wants to fly and play around, and not get involved in serious stuff like this. But then, I try hard to keep myself confined to the first Anurag that people know. The Anurag who has been good at work, who has passed a BTech degree, who can do wonders, who can take up responsibility and so on. There is no place for the innocent second Anurag, who is hesitant, who is not perfect at anything, who is introverted and shy, who is just a small child. But still, he keeps showing up.

Conclusion

Well, thats pretty much it from my side. This weekend hasn’t been much fun except the pizzas and movies and BC and driving. Lets see how the coming days look like. I am planning a home visit on Diwali, in November. And yeah, I got my first salary too, so its party time in Bangalore. Take care. Ciao.

Disclaimer : The facts, opinions and ideas expressed in this post are completely my personal. They don’t represent any organisation, group of individuals or any individual other than me. 

Operating systems, iYum and Flash 9

Introduction - Operating systems and me

Its been long since I wrote an entry here, but this one has a purpose rather than being a pass time. I’ve always been interested in operating systems. Ever since I knew about computers, I wanted to make my own operating system. MSDOS used to be my dream at a time, then Windows 3.1, then Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows Xp, Redhat 7.2, Redhat 7.3, Redhat 9, Fedora Core 2, Fedora Core 4, Ubuntu, Kubuntu and now Fedora Core 5. I’ve been updating my knowledge at each step, changing the dream everytime.

BASIC and the OS dream

In the beginning when we began with ‘BASIC’ (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), we learnt to write ‘graphical’ programs in it. We wondered that all world has been programmed in BASIC and that learning to create a ‘WINDOW’ using the graphics of BASIC will enable us to write an operating system. As if thats the only missing link in our knowledge. Back then, our computer instructors used to say that operating systems are very complex things and can’t be made by someone as such. I accepted his point of view, but didn’t let the dream die.

When I came to IIIT

When I entered IIIT, the exposure to a new environment, different from the old and familiar Windows, which I had been used to since 1994, gave a new outlook to the whole thing. And the fact that Linus was able to make an OS of his own made my will even stronger. Though now we know that Linus only made the ‘kernel’ of the whole operating system, which is only about 3% of it (I read it somewhere).

Anyways, this was just to tell you about my strong desire to work in the field of operating systems, though I haven’t been able to do so. This was also to tell you about my familiarity with both platforms, as some people stereotype me as a ‘Linux person’. I use what I like more and its not completely impossible that I’ll switch to Windows Vista if I find it better.

iYum Repository

When Sugandh mailed about having a IIIT Yum repository, I was very excited about it. I had some idea about it. Initially, Sagar and I began working on making the Yum Repository for Fedora Core 5 - 32 bit. Sugandh talked to the faculty and got us resources. We installed a new system there, and I wrote some shell scripts initially. Later Sagar helped me out with some python too. Finally we made a mechanism to create Fedora Core 5 -32 bit repository. It downloaded about 7700 packages from the internet, about 12 GB of data.

And a set back

But you see, bad scripting and organisation resulted in a catastrophy. The script automatically deleted all packages naming them as ‘old versions’. This was a huge set-back. We decide to revive. I am very good at this I’d admit - reviving. People generally lose interest, hope, faith - after a crash. I, on the other hand, rebegin from wherever it is. Even if it means building from ground up.

Reviving

Sagar almost lost faith, while I was getting fascinated by the whole thing. It opened a new path of imagination for me. Besides, I was getting in touch with the power of Python, which I never acknowledged or experienced before. I designed a new mechanism for the Yum Repository.

New plan

Why should Yum Repository download all packages from everywhere? Why should it download any RPM for Fedora Core 2 if there isn’t any PC running it? Why should 100 others with Fedora Core 5 wait because Fedora Core 2 is being updated? Everything was so straightforward, ask the users to generate the requirement, and download only that.

The design
I designed the two tier architecture of the iYum network. The client runs a service in the background, constantly reading what packages the server ‘can’ download, comparing with what packages are old or not-installed. It sends back a list of those packages to the server. The server process combines the lists from various users and downloads the requirements. Thus, an automated system takes birth, which can expand itself as an when needed, as well as shrink itself when a particular operating system is getting obsoleted.

The actual work

I kept on telling Sagar to work, but he had his other commitments like his DIP project, BTP, etc. So, slowly and gradually, I coded the entire thing. The iYum client service, made in Python as well as the whole server and its webpages. The iYum client is currently a non-GUI thing, but my vision is to make it into something like synaptic or yumex. I might use yumex code to do so too. Anyways this is just a dream.

Flash player 9

Adobe took over Macromedia. The new version of Flash, Flash 8 came into picture. But, as Linux is not a popular platform, they didn’t work towards developing a version for it too. As a result, all Linux users were forced to use the old version, Flash 7. Many internet sites insisted on Flash 8, like the popular news site, www.ibnlive.com. Finally, Adobe has kept its promise to release a version 9 for Linux. It prerelease versions include a browser plugin and a standalone utility to run Flash 9 on Windows, Mac and Linux. Enjoy! Here is the link.

BTP

On 9 of October was a great day for me. Jawahar sir scolded me like anything for not working on the project. Initially I was very depressed and angry, but now I am happy that he did so. It brought me on the right track again, the track of working! He explained me very nicely about the BTP viva and report today, and about the future plans. I’ll be giving it my best during these couple of days. Wish me luck!

Fedora Core 6 and Vista

I heard FC6 was coming today, haven’t seen any news about it. The Fedora website is down for maintainance. Regarding Windows Vista, I am very keen. Recently I’ve read many blogs supporting and against Vista. I want to see what has Microsoft offered this time. Hopefully it’ll be something good.

Anyways, bye for now. Ciao.

Another combo post :D

Its not fair. I write so less these days and most of the posts are just a sum total of the past days. Anyways, what can I do, lets continue the trend.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is a busy day. I have to prepare a BTP presentation, a Advanced Graphics course presentation along with normal classes (read it as one class at 11). The upcoming matches from 7th of this month is to be recorded match-by-match on the tv.iiit.ac.in server. Yes!! The same old server which people enjoyed. We are working on the audio-video sync of the recording system these days. Hopefully after the series, the server will be open for the public.

This week

Well, I’ve to finish a lot of things this week. There is a pile of backlog for the Cognitive science course and a pending GPU assignment. We’ve set up a YUM REPOSITORY SERVER for IIIT. But mirroring 12 repositories for 6 platforms is a wastage of disk space and bandwidth. As a result, we are working on a better mechanism to create the repository. Sagar and I are jointly working on the project to come up with something good. Lets see what do we make.

This month

Diwali is ’scheduled’ this month. And its been 3 long months since I went home. I came to college on 7th of July 2006 and today is 4th of October 2006. I’m thinking to go home from 16th to 22nd of this month. As a result I’ve to skip a few classes and also finish the BTP final report beforehand, which is to be submitted on 24th of this month. Hopefully Jawahar sir will allow me to go home. I have to restart the work on the 4th semester 4 credit Mobile Blogging software project. The placements have come very near, and I need to have a clean marksheet.

Qt 4

Wow! This new thing is such a marvel. Initially I used to hate it, because I didn’t understand how to use it. But now I am familiar with the Ui namespace, resource files and other fundas, it feels good. For starters, let me tell you a good news. In Qt 3, if we created a Ui from Qt designer, and edited the header and sources generated using the uic command, the ui files used to overwrite them next time we needed to change something in Ui. Now, they’ve separated Ui component from the functionality code. As a result, the programmer can completely rely for Ui on Qt4 designer and on his code for the rest of it. Another good thing is resources. Now we can define the resources like images, text files used by the application we develop. All of them will get embedded inside the executable itself. As a result, we need to ship only single files instead of zip archives.

My experiments - Embedder

I was thinking about making something like ’setup.exe’ of windows. Generally linux setups come as tar archives or like rpm files. Almost nothing (except jdk setups, etc) come like a single setup file which handles everything. I wrote a command line utility as the first steps to generate something similar for linux. The command is called ‘createArchive’. This command takes two arguments, name of a new executable and a resource file. The resource file contains a list of files, both executable and ordinary. The command reads all files given in the resource file and finally creates an executable by the name as specified. This new executable contains all the files embedded in itself. Upon execution, this executable creates a temporary directory in /tmp and extracts all the files. It then executes the executables in a specified order. It has options of ‘quiet’ and ‘destroy extracted files on exit’ too. You can try this too. Download the files from here. It works on Linux, but is pretty much platform independent, most of if is just CORE C++. Maybe you can try it on windows as well. Does “FILE * fp;” work on windows? Sorry, the code isn’t documented (at all).

Movies

Ok, not many in the list. Lage Raho Munnabhai has been the favorite since a few days. I don’t know if the director had any intention to spread the gandhigiri, but I can see it already spreading (at least in orkut profiles). What I think one should notice is that the ‘noble thought’ is being internalized and understood by someone who has been violent and aggressive all the time, a gunda. If such a person can understand the words of truth and non-violence, we, the ordinary people ought to.

Pyaar ke side effects… they are already there. Actually Tanu wanted me to see this one. And after people appreciated it, I got desperate to see it. Eh, well I can already notice some of the side effects in my life too, hehe. In all a fun movie, a must see for your PC and can be worthy for the cinema hall as well.

Blogging - bring me back

Oh its been so long since I last visited my blog or someone elses. I am like out of the blogging world. Not that I am busy or something, but I do other things more often. They include movies, orkutting, chatting, working on the YUM REPO, etc. And rest of the time I am outside my room doing some other activities. Lets see if I revert back with this opening post. Actually I was considering of creating a private blog as well, or making this one private or something similar. I think a lot of my thoughts don’t find place in this open blog. Maybe its too early to let my ideas open for the public to read and judge.

Conclusion

Ok fine, now that I wrote a post, I have to have a conclusion. There is nothing to conclude though. Welcome me back to the blogging world. Hopefully going home this diwali. And well keep your fingers crossed for the upcoming YUM REPOSITORY and TV.IIIT.AC.IN.

Ciao.

Tagged??

I don’t know whats TAGGING or TAGGED and stuff. I was just reading Sumeet’s blog and saw that he was tagged or something. And I saw that at the end he has TAGGED me. I went and asked him the whole funda. So, according to him, I am supposed to answer this questionaire and forward it to someone else. Here it goes…
1.Grab the book nearest to you, turn on a random page and find random line..

Do you remember when you bought, or comtemplated buying, a new car?
Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis
(Yeah, am trying to try to mug up some words…lol)
2.Stretch your left arm out as far as you can

Just got my room cleaned…. a lotta free space in here…

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?

The song ‘No way no way’ from ‘Anthony kaun hai?’ on MTV

4.Without looking, guess what time it is?

11:40 AM

5. Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?

11:56 AM … wow!! I am so bad at remembering time… just saw the watch before taking this questionaire.

6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?

Nothing! The wing is unusually calm!! :O

7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?

Went to brush at 10 AM. Am soooooo lazy hehehe.

8. Before you started this survey, what did you look at?

I looked at my monitor and the lovely ‘wallpaper’ on it

9. What are you wearing?

Shorts and T shirt

10. Did you dream last night?

I dreamt that I was chatting with my dad… which has happened like only twice in this whole lifetime till now..!!

11. When did you last laugh?

Don’t remember… been a lil sad these days

12. What is on the walls of the room you are in?

Dead bodies of insects… some marks left by the tapes that were stuck… cracks …. just removed all my posters and all….

13. Seen anything weird lately?

Well… cant even think of anything wierd… wierd isn’t it?

14. What do u think of this quiz?

Quiz? Is it a quiz? Its more like an interview

15. What is the Last film u saw?

Omkara …. the a-shade-less-than-DVD print… with ok ok video and crappy audio x-(

16. If you became a multimillionaire overnight, what would you buy?

I dunno… I need a bike and a Ford Icon… and maybe build another floor for my home… and surely wanna help some needy ppl.. dunno how

17. Tell me something about you that I dunno.

Well… Sumeet… you know almost everything… :).. and I wont tell you the rest of the ‘details’ .. nice try

18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?

I wanna have a world without the border disputes between India and Pakistan…

19. Do you like to dance?

Like to… well thats tricky… YEAH I do.. But you see am not a professional dancer.. or rather not even a dancer… so I prefer doing it in private

20. George Bush

Screwed the world.

21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?

I’ve already thought about it.. I’ll call her Mahfooza…. hopefully… if my wife agrees too
Mahfooza Rana wont go… so maybe we’ll come up with something else

22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?

Never imagined that… !! .. it’ll be a gal.. come on

23. Would you ever consider living abroad?

Yeah why not… I’d love to. I mean I don’t have these ‘principles’ that I’ll live in India and stuff. But then I might feel homesick and return..

24.What do you want GOD to say to you when you reach the pearly gates?

I don’t think there is anything like that. Everything that IS is just in this world.

25. People who may do this memo in their journal.

Didn’t get the question. But if you mean people who take this quiz… then … well.. who have a lil time to spend outta their busy schedules

So, thats it, now my turn to TAG!! Wow!… I don’t even know how many people will actually read it and reply to tag or whatever you call it. So here is my list (skipping people who have been tagged by Sumeet)

IV … lets see what the bond has to write … AAAAAAIIIIIIIVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

Hari puttar lets see what paaji writes… …

Pati … ok this one is a brave attempt… awaiting acceptence

Gokool lets see what are the ‘optimists’ thoughts

Beegle …. something techno expected

Ok fine.. as instructed.. I’ve put Five people on the TAG list. Ohh, and here are some specially invited/tagged

Gautam …. the coolant guy …. would love to know what he would answer… hey gimme the link to your blog

and last but not the least ….

Nidhi …. lets see how a PROFESSIONAL would reply

Ok thats it for this time. Am busy trying to study for GRE as you all know. Shamefully hopelessly failing to do so though, but I’ll keep trying. Rest in another post, and I promise wont delay it a lot.

Ciao.

Backlog

So, its been over a month without a single blog. Great! Actually I didn’t feel like blogging these days. Some of it was due to some personal reasons, and most of the time in the later part of July, it was due to lack of motivation. Anyways, what I remembered is that it just takes a fresh start to make things roll again. Here is the fresh start.

Let me tell you things in the reverse order. Right now I’ve just returned from my class, Middleware Systems. It was a very hectic day today, hypothetically. I haven’t done much work today practically. NOW I have to do some wordlists for GRE. Phew, god help me.

This week

I have behaved quite complacently this week. Most of it is due to the fact that most people around me are attempting their GRE in August, while I am attempting it in September. Hence, the complacency. The Barrons GRE book, as they call it, contains 50 wordlists, each having about 75 words. That makes it 3700+, wow! I haven’t even done 200 of them. Hope I get a little more sincere on that front.

Last month

The month of July has been easy going. Not many classes, unneccessarily delaying the project work, not doing any GRE preparation has been the norm. All my classes are scheduled after lunch this semester, except one on Wednesdays. Hence, sleeping late and getting up late has become the ruitine. Well, and I explain it as taking rest after the tight schedule in the internship.

Post Noida

I already mentioned how nice was my trip to Noida. Thanks to Rakhi ma’am and Deepak sir for the kind remarks. After my return my Noida, most of the days back home were spent in roaming around with my friends. And then, an unplanned return to IIIT, which I realized was unneeded. I could have easily spent another week at home. Those few days living in the campus were painful, after knowing the biting reality.

Room shift
I shifted to a new room, OBH 110. Great room it is, the room of my pal, Arun. Apart from a screeching door and an almirah without any hanging rod, its quite cozy in here. Its in the front wing in OBH. Ravi Shankar often claims that girls come for breakfast at the exact time he is leaving for a shower, so that they can have a glance at him, half naked in a towel. I don’t know how true is that, hehe. Other things are great about this room. With Ashish in the adjacent room, and Devansh around the corner, its always fun time and guidance to this poor soul. And well, teasing and irritating Ravi is like a everyday timepass.

Courses

Not very many, just 4 courses this semester. And most of them are not much into the technical side.

A perspective to Industry and Society - As the name suggests, this one is a pure philosophy subject, just write what you want in the answer sheet kind of subject. Most classes are just fun.

Introduction to Cognitive Science - Ok, no need to think it like a real course with some matter to mug up and all. Its like a discussion forum. The only constraint is the topic is chosen by the course outline. Rest of it is just the way you make it. We are divided into groups of 15 each and have group discussions on topics like human vision in 3D, illusions and stuff. Most of it is fun.

Middleware systems - This one is a great one. Real tech thingi involved, all Java, Corba, .NET, J2EE and stuff. We learn some really useful tools and concepts and well we have a project to do too. Will also learn Java in the process. Nice one it is.

Advanced topics in Graphics - This one is like a learning and experimentation based one. Most of it is related to OpenGL and GPU programming. Today was the first class, so can’t write much about it. Its going to be a great experience I think.

Projects

Eh, this is the area I am lagging. Too many projects have aggromerated (hope the usage is correct). The BTP, Mobile Blogger (4th sem project), Visual Tracking (5th sem honors project), Computer Vision course project, isn’t four enough? Hope I get to some serious work.

Fedora Core 5

Since long I have been getting irritated with Random Hangups and Freezes with FC5. I just upgraded the kernel from 2.6.16 to 2.6.17 and the hangups disappeared. It seems there was some problem in the kernel and its ATI drivers or something. The issue has been resolved in the newer version.

KDE 3.5.3

Upgraded to this new KDE after I reached college. Its simply awesome. You would say it has copied stuff from XP, but the konqueror with its metabar and the capability to play video previews (actually play the video as a preview, pause, ffwd, rew, stop) is great. It supports ALL formats supported by MPLAYER, i.e. MPEG, AVI, ASF, RM, RA, RAM, anything, you just name it and it plays. And the KBFX menu (with the normal K-menu is great), actually the button looks cool, hehe. Rest of it pretty much similar to 3.5.

Conclusion

GRE is my priority. Others are my projects. The courses are easy going so need not bother much. And well, my readers, sorry to keep you waiting…. please come back.

Ciao.

Wrapping up

So finally my days in Delhi (or rather Noida) have come to an end. Just another 3 days to go. The project work finally got completed. Though we kept thinking about improvements, but nothing seemed to make it any better. I completed documenting it in doxygen, commenting the code and also a general writeup about the whole thing. Since about two days, I’ve been looking for work to do. There is really nothing left now. I’ve to still keep coming to office for the next 3 days from 10 to 6.

Independent for the first time

Past two months have been great. Landing in a new city alone for the first time, looking for a place to live without dad to help me out, roaming in unknown places using maps, asking people around, etc. Then, in the middle came the big tension of being extravagent. So from 21st of May, I decided to write down every transaction and expenditure, be it as less as 1 INR. Now, not only do I have a log of the expenditures till 17 June, but also a log of the places I went to, where did I eat, from where to where did I travel and by what means. This log isn’t of much importance in the sense of money matters, but I’ll still go through it once to recall everything.

Places I visited

I saw some new places in Delhi. I had visited Delhi before this only once, and I remember to have visited India Gate and Qutub Minar. This time I went to see public places like Cannaught place, Palika Bazar, Metro, Lotus temple, India Gate, Appu ghar and Oysters park, PVR Priyas, PVR Spice, and CS Mall in Noida. I also went to a pub for the first time in my life, namely TGI Fridays and Aliens Foot. I also went to a disc for the first time in my life here. Its named RPM.

I didn’t go to

Well, even this time I didn’t see Delhi completely. I missed seeing Akhshardham temple, Gurgaon, Red fort, Chandni chauk, and whatever places I didn’t mention in the above list. I’ll come here soon. Lets see.

People I met

I met quite a number of new people in this place. One of them is my dear net friend, sms friend, phone friend and now a friend-in-person, Snopy aka Alvy. She is a nice girl, too bindaas and all. Sometimes forgets me for weeks in her careless attitude. But thats okay, shes expected to act dumb and careless hehe.

I came to know some students from IITs who are interns here. They are Sandeep and Rohit. Most of my interaction in this office has been confined to Sandeep since a few days. He is a nice simple guy with no worries in life. He can be naughty at times, and irritating. But he is nice. And well he is good at maths too. At least faster than me in algebra. He has been a great help in solving some of the complex equation which play a major role in my project.

I came to know Phanindra aka Phani. He is one of my seniors from IIIT and my project lead too. He is too nice and friendly to be called a project leader. He has been working on this project of mine as a partner rather. And its so easy to approach him, talk to him, roam around, eat bhuttas, sit adjacent in movies (company outing… movie: Fanaa). Nikhil keeps teasing him all the time, hehe. He is a great guy and I like him as well as respect him.

I met Piyush sir again. He is as he was, nice, friendly and with a great voice. Even here he is a bond and people approach him for tricky problems. Though I didn’t interact much on the project front, but he has been a help in some of the problems I faced.

I met another great guy called Gautam. Another Linux lover like me. Actually a pure linux user unlike me. He is also nice, friendly, casual, jovial natured. Sits right behind me and keeps talking about Linux and related stuff. He has suggested me to try out Gentoo. Lets see if I get my hands on it sometime. We also went to a movie together.

Though I didn’t meet Dipinder (whos the head here), but still all of us admire his communication skills and the way he makes everyone feel comfortable. It has been a nice experience to work with him. Also I met our HR manager, Miss Rakhi. She has been more like a school teacher, pushing small kids to work. But then now when I think about it, I can only smile about it.

Other people I came into contact, which were again employees of Kritikal are Tarun, NS sir, NT sir, Deepak sir, and others. They all have been nice and friendly too.

I didn’t meet

I didn’t meet the only person who knew me from back home in Delhi. That is Anurag bhaiya. He is one of our neighbours back home and works in Airtel here. He was supposed to be the first one to be contacted after landing in Delhi. But I haven’t met him yet, though we talked on phone as late as June! I haven’t ever seen him in my lifetime though.

What did I get

I got a new experience of being independent. I learnt how to manage money and maybe sometimes spending it mindlessly. I learnt how to bargain in Palika bazar. I learnt to be punctual, come on time, keep working during working hours and leave on time.

I understood some new concepts in opencv, doxygen and linux. I came to use NFS which I hadn’t seen anywhere in college. I learnt from Phani, how to plan and work, instead of working in any random direction.

Whats next?

Now, I am returning home on 1 July by Intercity express. I’ll reach there by 2nd noon. Then I’ll meet friends and family, fill up my GRE form, and leave for IIIT by 5th or so. I’ve to rebegin my Computer Vision project there. And I have to complete my J2ME project. I’ve to talk to Jawahar sir for leaving in the middle and restart work on the BTP too. Next semester is going to be light. Less subjects, less working days. I might be able to sneak out to home in the middle if the schedule is less busy. Lets see.

Conclusion

These days in Noida have been wonderful. Some of them were somewhere in the dreamworld. Some of them were sad and rude. But most have been good, full of energy, zeal to work, some fun days with friends, and what not. I am going to leave Noida in a happy note. Three cheers for Noida, Kritikal, these days and me.

Hip hip hurray !! Hip hip hurray !! Hip hip hurray !!

Ciao.

My first salary

It has been a nice week althrough and supposedly going to be a great weekend too. I've got my 'mid term presentation' tomorrow afternoon at 3 PM. Some professors from IIT Delhi are going to witness it. I am kind of nervous too, though my ppt is almost complete. We're going out to see 'Fanaa' as a monthly outing of the company. We'll be leaving shortly for the movie.

At about 1:30 PM, there was a loud noise in this building and the power supply unit stopped functioning. I hadn't completed my ppt and was least expecting a powercut. The HR manager asked us to go 'off' as in, leave for the day. I was happy and sad both. We were just leaving when she called 'bacchon.. idhar aao…', as if asking some kids to take away some chocolates. And then with a mild smile she told us that we are going to get our salary. My first formal salary in a 'real' company. Wow! I wasn't that thrilled, but then I signed the document and held the check of 8000 INR. I called up mom and dad, and dad congratulated me. Then I called up Tanu too and shared the good news. It feels great to have earned my first ever pieces of currency. Thank you god for letting me live and feel this day. Nikhil also got his salary along with others.

Three cheers for us. Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray ;) 

I am preparing for the presentation, and will be leaving for the movie in a couple of hours. You have a nice evening and also the weekend to follow. Wish me luck. Ciao.

tv.iiit.ac.in

How did it happen? Another idea by our good old Jawahar sir. Tarun was already recording news using some windows software whos license expires every 16 days! He knew it could be done in Linux too, he had done it before. Finally, first we came up with a portal so that we can test how people like the interface. Still runs on http://172.17.9.33/videoserver

The next step was the harder one. Making a recording possible in Linux. It wasn’t difficult as we thought. But then, first we had to tune the channels. Those hardware frequencies given ‘human recognizable’ names. We tuned about 40-45 channels, of which the one available are of good reception. Then, as we all know, Linux and audio are the two things that never meet. We did anything, left, right, center, /dev/dsp, /dev/dsp0, alsamixer, kmix, aumix, rpm, ffmpeg, nothing made audio come out! Finally, somehow we figured out the solution and it was recording.

The first video recorded was of ‘GREAT QUALITY’ but unfortunately 40 MB per 20 seconds. We kept trying different tweaks, codecs, but the compression ratio didn’t come down for the ‘best possible’ quality. Not the disk space but the ‘feasibility of download’ was the criterion in mind. Finally, we decided to drop the quality till we find a solution. And the odd channel switches might be caused by the operator himself as there is no other way one can change the hardware frequency that the card is using.

We’re planning a discussion forum kind of thing to be added there. And as and when the requirements start looking obvious, we’ll make changes. Expect a DF coming up soon. And thanks for all your compliments.

Ciao.

Placements.

Well, I never thought very seriously about getting placed as such. Actually thats not in the agenda. I mean, I never wanted to get into a JOB. I wanted to do something on my own. Thats not new actually. I mean, if you see other professions like doctors or lawyers, they basically don’t run some huge firm like Microsoft, but still in a way, they are quite independent compared to an engineer who has a boss on his head, and has to worry of his pay and bonuses. So, basically the idea is not to do something great (though I’m not against doing it, if I get the opportunity to), but to be ‘free’ and ‘independent’.

Anyways, ideas apart, talking about the placements of our batch in the coming months, I’m quite optimistic. I mean, why should there be a problem? The way Microsoft employees visited our SE classes and were so enthusiastic in explaining the software process, safe coding practices, the StringCchCopy function, etc, etc, I am sure they wanted to put some of us on track so that we’d be easy prey for their recruitments. The only problem that could possibly occur is with ‘miscommunication’ of timings and dates, ‘non-transparency’ about placement of people and other statistics, ‘ambiguity’ in rules and possibly ‘annoying’ some company because of insulting it or opposing it based on some opinion mismatches.

I feel that faculty has a very important role in ‘not complicating things’ apart from some role in bringing companies through their contacts. We know that this institute is so-called ‘research oriented’ and stuff, but the ‘excitement of research’ should come from within, not that you force it on people. You can just get ‘less placements, more MS students’ by forcing a policy to favor research. Most people read the ‘100% placement’ tag line rather than ‘research oriented’ thing before opting for IIIT. And I don’t think its wrong to get placed. It actually exposes oneself to the actual industrial environment. Then, if the person is motivated enough, he might as well come back into research.

Even in the ‘getting admission for MS in foreign universities’, most professors are reluctant to support. They want that the student should do an MS degree from IIIT. That is to say that ‘we want to encourage research’ and then impose another thing ‘we want to encourage research only within the boundaries of IIIT’. I think if they want us to become true researchers and that is the only motive, we might go to a company and work, or work in some other institute (in India or abroad) or work in IIIT, it shouldn’t matter. But what I feel is, its more of showing that ‘we support research’ and actually ‘we want to bag more papers and researches to be done in IIIT’ thing. I mean, its more of a selfish thing rather than a thing done for the ‘benifit of India and the world’.

Coming back, I hope that this time the faculty is more helpful and clear about its policies. Also that there is no ‘internal policy’ to mess up the placements deliberately so that they can get a large part of our batch as ‘researchers’ for MS. I feel that any decent person, (I heard Machine Jain became), can handle the placement secretary thing. He just needs to be able to communicate well, and coordinate the events with students, faculty and company schedules. I hope this time the scenario is good.

Placements in relation to me are a big big opportunity to get into some good place. I mean, people keep telling me to do research, some people tell me that for me GRE would be a piece of cake, and when I say that I’m looking forward to placements, people say, placements are for us, why are you going into them. First of all, I haven’t done anything great in any field, so basically am not a researcher or anything. Its just that the idea of ‘working in a company’ doesn’t suit me. But then, if thats the only way to survive, then be it.

Ciao.

Its been so hot these days, I mean the ‘temperature has been high’. And as per Murphy’s law, my fan has stopped working since two-three days. Its kind of difficult to keep alive, many people who visit my room are amazed at my tolerance capacity, hehe.

Anyways, these days, as you all know, the R&D showcase thing is going on. Not that I’m very much involved in it. I wasn’t even told by anyone that I’d put up some project there. Actually, Tarun sir has his ‘Information retrieval from Video’ project, and my project is one of the extensions of it, the BTP I mean. So, I had to complete the pending work to make it functioning and ready for display. I’m not much happy about the project though, I mean the state in which it is right now. Big challenges are in the way right now, and hopefully next year, in R&D, people will be impressed. They wont react the way they do this time, the ‘blah, thats so simple and useless’ kind of look.

I HAD to put up the robotics project too, as it carried MARKS for putting up a project in R&D. But we weren’t ready. So, we decided to ‘lose marks’ instead of getting humiliated. Lets hope I don’t lose much from the perspective of grades.

Bush visiting ISB, this thing has been made so loudly audible. I mean, ISB isn’t even visible from here, its so far (I know its far, I run upto ISB often). And still, they’ve to increase security in IIIT, ask us to keep windows closed and all. I seriously wished someone should kill Bush when he is in ISB. And thank god our government didn’t make the ‘fast breeders’ also under the agreement between India and US. I read that we’ve developed expertise in processing fuel for fast breeders, which are some advanced kind of nuclear reactors, while US puts us in the ‘developing and unsafe’ category. If we had signed the agreement, it would have meant curbing all the research that went into that fast breeders and other processing stuff. Hail Manmohan!

Rest of the life is kind of fine. I’m still alive, in senses, very much stable (unlike what my friends think or believe).

Another thing we were talking about is, if you love someone, what does it mean by getting involved? Is there a way to stop somewhere in middle? I mean, when you love, its like it just goes on, keeps growing. Can you decide, okay fine, itna pyaar ho gaya, ab stop! Just because there is a risk, should people stop loving? And what does it mean by ‘loving in safe limits’? As in, a state from where you can recover if something crashes! What I think is, this kind of risk is everywhere. I mean, when a person invests somewhere, or a company makes a new software, or even when we decide to opt for a course through ISAS, there is always a risk that things go wrong and we reach a very unfavorable state. Knowing all this, when investors don’t stop, the companies don’t stop, nor do students, why will a person who loves someone stop? And what can he stop, thinking about the other person, meeting him/her or even having a relationship? Conclusion: Risk is everywhere. Just do what your heart says and be optimistic.

ACCV’06 from my point of view.

Woah! ACCV 2006, it was a roller coaster ride. It was as if we were in the dreamland. Though I didn’t know much about research in Vision, or the researchers, or even the books, but still it was fascinating. It was really enjoyable to volunteer for the event. The biggest advantage was to be able to listen to many great people, and their great theories and ideas. Though I don’t have an in depth knowledge of Vision, but still most of the ‘good’ talks had the inherent beauty of being exceptionally simple and understandable.

Another good thing that I benifitted from is the varied range of people which came into contact. Though I didn’t talk to many explicitly, but then it was nice to listen to different accents of english, their way of presenting, and even their way of approaching the problem at hand. Some of the Chinese people didn’t have great English, and it was a little difficult trying to communicate with them.

Most of the program went on smoothly, though I think that the program could have been improved. Most of the program was filled with Oral sessions. Though they contribute the maximum in distribution of knowledge, they tend to be boring and sleepy too. I think creating a more interactive environment, rather than a simple PowerPoint presentation system would have been good, though even I don’t have much clear thoughts about a more interactive and interesting alternate solution.

The Taj Krishna Hotel is nice, great architecture, nice potraits and paintings on the walls, marble floor and lots of mirrors and jhoomars around. Its very beautifully lit, has some great sofas, really polite and efficient helpers. The conference halls were big, nicely lit, with good echo-proof audio system and a good enough stage. The food at Taj was lower than our expectations, though people suggested that it is to suit the international needs. The icecream with melting chocolate was the best thing in the world one could ever have. Amazingly all toilets were western and without water!

One of the girl had a presentation. I asked her whether she wanted to test her laptop on the projector. She couldn’t understand it for a long time. All the time what she would do is, wear a cute confused smile on her face. I was noticing her all day, as coincidentally she kept sitting in the same room which I was managing. I thought she was really lonely, and didn’t have anyone to talk to. I mean, if you had seen her, what she would do is, come to the empty conference hall and sit. Then she’d start reading the brochere for the zillionth time, close it, pack her bag, and go to the internet access room. Again pick herself up, and sit in the hall and read the brochere, or roam around wearing a really pathetic smile, not talking to anyone, just grinning. I couldn’t gather the courage to go and talk to her for long, so I asked Nirnimesh sir to help. We went to her, chatted for a little while and clicked a few photographs. She told me that she has three friends here. Her name is Yuru Pei. She is a Phd student in China. I got her air tickets confirmed from Singapore Airlines. Scheduled departure 16.01.2006 9:20 PM.

We clicked many many photographs during the session. A lot of those which I clicked with my cellphone got blurred. I am still waiting for Varhman sir to release his cameras matter. I have some really good and really precious pictures in that camera.

One of the presenters did not come to the conference. He sent a ppt with embedded audio instead. Finally, I had to go and click the mouse to play it in front of the people. I made ONE mistake only, but it was fine I guess. Prof. PJN was saying that it was the only paper presented in ACCV from IIIT. I asked him about whether we will get any opportunity like this in the future. He suggested to write a paper, and present it in one of the conferences to get such an opportunity. This conference has really infused new spirit in me to do something. Lets hope I am successful.

Before this, we had the WCVGIP, which was another conference of similar type but a smaller scale adn magnitude. It was a nice one too.

To conclude, ACCV 2006 was a successful event, and a major event this year. Thanks to all the professors who gave us this opportunity and also thanks to all the great researchers who presented such great ideas. Finally, three cheers for the volunteers,
Hip hip … Hurray!
Hip hip … Hurray!
Hip hip … Hurray!!!!

Welcome 2006.

Its the new year now, 2006. First thing I’d want to do is to learn to write ‘2006′ while writing dates. Its really hard to get used to the new ‘year’ in the dates, and I confess that I’m still stuck at ‘2003′.

First of January Two Thousand and Six was a nice morning, mildly cold. I was with my family at Bhopal, wishing people on the phone with loud music and warm wishes around. At 4 AM, I had to leave my home state and board the train to come back to college. It does look quite sad, but then, I’m used to it now.

Back in college, I’ve a really bad cold, a partially swollen eye and loads of work. Basically, I am in a mess, and so is my room! I’m thinking to switch off breathing for a few hours as its really painful to do so. I’m now used to getting up lazily (mind it, I said LAZILY, not LATE). Its really difficult to do things in a haste.

Before all this, I went home on 17 December 2005. I had barely even worn the clothing for the journey, and dumped all luggage in my bags when I had to leave. Actually, the PR project report and some final touch-ups were the problem. I was struggling to finish work till about 2 PM. I had a bus journey at 4:40 PM. I somehow reached the bus stand, and boarded the bus. The journey was nice, though a little too chilly.

Being at home was fun. This time I didn’t meet too many friends, I didn’t do any work. I saw about 3 movies in the theatre with friends and 1 with my family. It was a nice experience to meet friends and all. Tanu also turned up for the movie, along with Tapan. It was nice to have her company.

I didn’t have much time to spend with my friends. I couldn’t meet Prerna and Vijay bhaiya. Hope they forgive me. I wanted to return to college with the Volvo bus, so that I’d get one more day at home. Anyways, here I am, back in college, back to work.

Tanu has a competetive exam in January. Hope she clears it. Tapan too has GRE in February and he is working hard for it. Hope he does it too. I have GRE some time soon too, along with TOEFL (hope the spelling is right), and hope I at least study for it. Anyways, first thing I want to do is to get a passport!

I have to do the Face Detection thing before 10th, and I haven’t begun. Hopefully I’ll do it before the deadline. Actually, I want to do an internship in the summers, and not work on the BTP. For that, I have to finish all expected work before April comes. That is why I am so serious about it. There are other pressures like the Mobile Blog project, DS&A TAship, DIP cum Tracking project, GRE preparation, etc, etc, etc.

When I look at life, its busy, its painful, sometimes sad and lonely, sometimes happy and celebrating. I do get time to meditate, to spend time with friends and family. Its really not exactly the way I wanted it to go, but its still along the same direction. Welcome 2006.