An ode to my professor

Algorithms was definitely not my favourite subject. I was not good at it. I know this because in the Spring of 2011 i took the course , and found myself speech-struck everytime there was a question popping up in class. Algorithms was for the geeks and the nerds and the math-y ones i thought. No,  i had to stay away.

A semester later , i decided to change my mind. I thought , "oh what the heck ,lets try this. Might help me get a job atleast" (I was all smart ass about my job. I thought that computer graphics was something completely unrelated in terms of implementation with respect to algorithms). And then i took it under a very famous professor at our university .. famous for giving out bad grades ie :-). 

It was a dare. Ah, double dare . First - survive the crap that is algorithms. Second - pass the course (not sure if this is happening yet. results are yet to be announced).

The first class was pretty scary. Lots and lots of tough assignments promised , and plus absolutely zero tolerance on late submissions (thats what i had been hearing) , and no grace days ! Totally unlike my other courses i tell ya.

Things got better as classes went on . I actually realized that this was a pretty fun course. Most importantly , the teacher was just brilliant . Probably the first time i have ever seen someone who is so well versed with the topic , with absolutely no air of a researcher . He knew how to teach .He would treat every single stupid doubt posed by the students ( a lot of people blame me for the stupid part , i promise) like me.  There was never a class where (unless i lost attention after 50 mins..i have a very short attention span) i did not ask him a single question if it was rolling around inside my head. It was a charmer of a class. The grades did suck and i did not like solving problems theoretically. I usually gave up after i figured out the idea behind the problem. I lost patience with some. But i heck as made sure that i got the concepts right before i gave my finals. The teacher had done it for me . The class was great . I loved it . Grad school was worth it for this course.

Thank you professor.

hypocritical

Disclaimer : There is no justification for what was done. The attackers must be punished no doubt. But as a society , do we stop at just punishing the attackers ? This is just an opinion and should not be used as a personal insult.


There are good men , and then there are good women. In India,  there are a lot of kinds of women , and usually a fewer kind of men. Strange.

In india , there is
- a working , responsible , good housewife - which can be translated as " does most of the work ,earns money, cooks, cleans and is faithful to her husband , no matter what he does. That includes him sexually assaulting her , physically hurting her etc"..
- the quiet type girlfriend - " gets abused by boyfriend , and doesnt complain ..And even if she does, there are not a lot of people who take her seriously , and hence she decides to live with it".
- the obedient daughter - "the ones that watch the ones mentioned above , and decides that this is how the world works"
- the rebel college girl - " doesnt want to stick to the conventions set by the society , and hence gets thrown out as an outcast"
- the good college girl - "obedient and good natured, doesnt lash out against the society, but still is sensible enough to distinguish between male dominance and culture"
- the stupid college girl - "the ones that get pampered by mummy , and just dont care about whats going on out there"
- miscellaneous - "these are again women..and well , what they think probably is still a subset of all the above"

When it comes to men , there are

- the sensible man - "knows that girls are just an opposite gender. You need them to keep life going , and you respect them the same way as u respect any human being.( I would like to believe that if naari is a devta , naran is also some kind of deva .I love both my dad an mom equally , and this is more personal than anything else)"
- the frustrated man - "was sensible once , but then there was just too many sexual innuendos in life , and no sex"
- the chauvinistic pig - "thinks he can dominate anyone ,esp girls.. they need to be controlled. a trait normally acquired by watching parents/friends/siblings/society".


The sad part is that all these people have been influenced by some generation of society or the other. They are not one criminal / one naive person. They are a group. They dont come out and commit crimes. They sit back and judge. The violent ones like man 3 , the chauvinistic pig gets to do the crime part, but a majority of the rest are just egging them on at various proportions.

The solution :

I do not know. I do know a few things that would make it better

1. Legalize prostitution - i think this is better than girls being trafficked illegally. This is never a respectable profession in india. Some might spit at me for saying this.But i am pretty sure that rape cases WILL go down if this is implemented.
2. Men,stop using women as objects - both in TV serials, commercials , and the conversations you have with your best friends. Dont talk about fucking a girl in class unless you really can with her consent. Sorry this was probably too direct, but sometimes your thoughts try to enact your words. I am not saying that every guy who does this in a pub is a criminal. But the widespread nature of these conversations are alarming . I have heard a lot of people talk about it, no matter how innocent or futile the intentions may be. Why talk about it if you are not going to do it.


Finally.

This one is to the women - Yes, you have your rights. Sadly , india is a pretty fucked up place. I know that the govt sucks ,and they make irresponsible statements. But please please take care of yourselves. Sadly thats all we have at the moment. Things will probably get better. So the next time you go out in the middle of the night, catch a friend who has a car/a private vehicle .Better than trusting the public.

Programmers problems

The cover image of  "Physically Based
Rendering" by Matt Pharr/Greg
Humphrey.

Most of the time , me as a programmer/ a lot of other programmers i know are stuck between implementing a program completely ,discarding it , then moving on to another , maintaining stuff someone else wrote etc... There has never been a time where i have been in charge of implementing a project from scratch. After spending around 1.5 years at the University of Minnesota as a "Computer Science Masters Student" , i have dawned upon this realization that its never a bad time to write very good maintainable code.More importantly, the realization that reading some well designed code is a good place to start did not occur to me until just recently ( I had my lunch at the Bun Mi cafe here  while reading my favourite PBRT text book by Matt Pharr and Greg Humphrey and probably the wrap i was eating made it all click).

It should have been bloody obvious.. I was lazy. My instructor made me write code for assignments. I never looked forward since then. I know kids who sit and code for hours. I underestimated that planning that needs to go behind being able to code for hours. You cant just write code for hours.. You need a design. A design that can be extended.Something that makes sense and sticks to the behaviour of the system even when you want the system to do something completely crazy. Good code should be reassuring,ike a mother holding her child close to her bosom. Good code should make you want to code more. Good code should take care of you like you took care of it .

I dont care if i am going to copy the PBRT text cover to cover or NOT. I am going to learn to write good code. So i place my trust in you Matt/Greg. Here i come !

a friend in need

The proverb that has not been mentioned here , has been killed a million times. A friend in need  and you know the rest ie . However , if you want to stick to another proverb which goes like  - "a half truth is as good as a lie" , then the former is exactly that. Yes . Of corz, a friend in need could be a friend indeed , but all friends who might be helping you while you need them need not be your friends.. Confused ? K , here is my justification.

Say you are Ms A. You are in deep shit .You do not know how to get out of it. Now you are walking back and forth across your  hallway , pulling your hair and probably cursing every possible person you know for putting you into this great peril that you conveniently call "fates cruel play"  or whatever . And BAM! yes, there you have it . The solution is to dial a number .You think of someone who could probably help you out, give you some kind of support , and you go dial his  number . Lets just call him Mr B.You get what you want. You end up all satisified coz you are out of deep shit at the moment .You did get a friend in need. But , was he a friend indeed ? Lets pause here for a second and look  a little forward.

Ms A is out of Deep shit, and leading a very happy life. Now , Ms A doesnt really remember what happened a couple of months back , and probably still doesnt really get how much she has been ignoring Mr B the whole time. She was busy ( probably with better things) .. 

So... Going by the proverbial sense of the proverb , Mr  B was a great friend in need..But was he really a friend indeed ? NO ! He was a friend for the moment,  he was just a bloody friend who was useful when there was a need. Is that all there is to friendship ? No sense of responsibility no need to reciprocate  ? 

PS : We all do this knowingly or unknowingly .. As a human race , i believe that we are flawed in many ways , and hence we need to keep trying .. 

So badly

 I want you . i will be happy coz that way i would have some reason to look at myself in a less despicable way. Please let me have you.

Azhalinte Aazhangalil

So guess what ?

Thats right !  I was listening to this song..

Then i realized that i loved this song . And it was way too obvious to me. I thought the song was a pretty tricky one to have composed . The visuals remind you that this song is not a completely sad one,though most of the scenes do have some kind of gloominess associated with it.However, one can see that the protagonist is not entirely depressed.There are sequences where you can see that the he is cheerful and happy about his present life to an extent, eventhough he is completely lost in some sad memories.This needed a composition which skipped tones between happy and sad at different intervals in the scenes. I thought that was masterfully executed by the composer (especially the interludes). And in my opinion every bad memory about broken relations are sweet (lets safely call it sweet and sour) to an extent, how much ever you may hate to think about it.


However ! Not many agree. Apparently the song is pretty depressing. The song reminded them of all the stuff that happened in their lives. I am not sure if this means that i am unaffected by similar events in  my life. Not sure at all . May be its just the fact that I,  inspite of having such memories, prefer to rather cherish them as a part of my life that was worth some amount of pain , out of which i gained valuable  experiences and sometimes , even good friendships.

Man makes profit by pre-selling cheap "iPhone 5"s

A very knowledgeable man is said to have made over a million dollars in profit , after he "acquired rights to pre-sell , iPhone 5s" , says  a very reliable source. The man quotes " Almost every 2nd person in America has no idea about what an iPhone 5 looks or feels like.All you need to do is take a nice shiny picture of the iPhone 4S ,show them that it has a Siri , photoshop the lightning port, and you are done". While we diligently pointed out to him that he missed the brand new "earpods" that apple had designed, he shrugged and said "For 30$ i would rather buy something that doesnt look like an alien head chopped in half". This brand new leak has had the world shivering over another takeover by the technology giant amassing profits by practically selling the same thing again and again for higher prices.

                    The iPhone 5s currently being sold are creating quite a bit of a sensation , with customers experiencing moments of pure bliss and connection with the new and improved Siri. An anonymous buyer said " Siri is way too enhanced. I feel like her and I have this special bond where we both know what we are thinking.When i asked her where my girlfriend was ,she suggested that my nearest escort was in the next block.And what do you know, she actually does stay in the building! , though i havent really yet started talking to her or anything .But i am sure that she will be my escorting and partnering me for life..very soon"

                It seems that its not only the apple fanboys who are gobbling up the brand new iPhone 5 "pre-sales"...The geeks are in it too.A so called geek says. "This iPhone is whack . I can just tell by looking at the speeds at which the apps are running. I dont see the panorama feature here yet , but I am sure that its because some ATT upgrade is missing.I mean , its upto the carrier , isnt it ? . (??).."

No one is more happy about the critical turnout of events than the very knowledgeable man himself. He says " Last year, i saw this coming.I bought around 10 million iPhones for a very cheap price, and now i am selling them as brand new improved iPhones..Thank you apple for making this possible".


DISCLAIMER : This IS fake news. I personally admire apple for all they have done.But this news is inspired from Faking News , and my personal inability to distinguish an iPhone 5 from an iPhone 4S unless i flip it over and look at whats under it (forgive the expression).

test

test test

Things that could tend to infinity

1. The number of times i play Rahman numbers in a loop
2. Certain Shankar Mahadevan/Ehsaan et al numbers too !
3. Coffee
4. Lying on my belly
5. Sherlock
6. Constant inspiration to procrastinate
7. All of the above.

Starting out at the bottom

I realized , stupidly enough , after a span of 25 years, that my mom was right. She had always told me that i was overconfident. For me the word "over-confident" meant that i was probably a guy who was a lil too intimidating and  "show-off"-y in terms of how i projected myself around people . I did not think that that word applied to me , for the same reason, and i hence assumed that my mom was just venting some of her anger on me by using arbitrary words. But it seems that , as it always did , my interpretation of the language (or my intelligence) failed me. I had an epiphany recently , where i realized that i am a person who never likes to climb the stairs. I always want the elevators ( Sachin Tendulkar could do that according to Vinod Kambli . But facts show that Sachin climbed the stairs too...). I couldnt take the process of learning something in the most humble manner possible. Even before i could solve a simple problem , i would start going after complex ones. I still do not realize what that is. Even today,  inspite of knowing this for a  fact , my mind is usually driven towards newer /more exciting things , where i eventually end up losing interest (reasons unknown).

One could call this laziness/ impatience / just escapism due to frustration . Or it could be something more. I am not sure about how i can find a solution to this . The most straightforward solution being attempted right now is called " working my ass off " .  Even thats hard to do if you've been lazy for more than a decade.

Amen.

Me myself and I and then you

I have been wondering about you. You might think that i know you. No i dont. I have seen you many a times, walking by , idling around , sitting in a corner ,talking on the phone , and on occassions in one of the groups that i might have barged into uninvited/otherwise.I do know you. I do know that you exist .You pass for a pretty good looking girl in my head.You look levelheaded,  you have a cute smile , and it mostly leads to all my other observations , which are more biased and uncertain events rather than actual "observations" . You made me do that . I do not know why. May be i do , but i do not want to admit it so naively.

I forgot about you .Then there were a series of boring episodes of the daily life. Well . Ok, it was not boring.It was definitely procedural, expected , and not at all surprising . What was surprising was the fact that i had had started disliking you for some reason .I do not know what that reason is yet. Probably the fact that you are hurting my ego by being an over-acheiver in your field. May be you are not an over achiever , i do not know.I am not passing judgments now .But my mind has already made up its mind to hate you. Yes it has. And for a while it shall be. You shall be hated coz you are that one person i  can hate without actually having to deal with my conscience.Coz i do not know you .You shall remain to be that one mysterious person who has absolutely no role in my life whatsoever ,except in my imagination.

I hope this shall end one day. May be you should come up and talk to me . We might make good friends.

Rise and shine cycle

Every single day before starting out to study/work

9:00 AM - Meh!

11:00 AM -  Ok, this has gone too far, i need to do something bout this ! \m/

12:00 PM - Ok , lets do dis !

1:00 PM - Man, m hungry ,lets do this after lunch shall we..

2:00 PM - yummy, wasted too much time cooking , so tired , need to rest up

3:00 PM - Hah..lets do this !

What i miss

Right now , i miss the tea dad makes. Simply superb. I can turn into a tea addict just by thinking bout it... He could never ever say no whenever i asked him for a cup of tea. Tea was our thing . !

Sultan of swing

Firstly. sorry to all the fans of sultans of swing who have been misled to this blog.this is not about the song.

Secondly. The title comes to my sudden realization that my mind gets diverted at the slightest of mood swings. yes . now that is not something that i seem to be able to control.

...

List of things doing the rounds today

- Abhinav Kadam my friend has managed to put up a guitar cover of  "Kissi ki muskurahaton" on youtube , and it has made into MTV unplugged. Very excited !!
- Eternally pissing moment with my roomate ,with the shouts to turn the volume down (it was never that loud i swear)
- GPU computing
- Algebra and Math
- Me wants to play lucky ali songs. Me gusta !

The Magic that is India

Firstly i will start with the confession , which is an obvious one. You are always predisposed to have a bit of bias towards the land from where motherly love comes from.Be it from your mother, or your father (i think its just as motherly at times ;) . Then there is this whole influence of your friends, your teachers , your extended family ( as good as it gets in my case) and what not.

But then , there are things in India that you get nowhere else. There is the always helpful and casual public. They know not the ways of the nice or the civilized.They are educated in matters of the heart. They uphold traditions , and stick to them religiously.I am not talking the ones people tend to politicize or turn into vote banks.I am talking rich belief and integrity in human values. You can tolerate people spitting on the roads,  you can still go to them and ask for help and then exchange a smile and a token of gratitude without uttering the word "thanks". Words need not be spoken to be understood, smiles need not be forced to be seen.It is india to me. Everything is effortless in my land. Everything is unforced. May be there is a bit of violence a bit of rudeness that people of other cultures tend to misinterpret. But then, we just do fine when it comes to treating the person the right way. We are brothers to our best friends , and we are almost never acquaintances.We have no work buddies ( at least i dint).I miss that here. I miss that warmth and those impalpable moments. I may sound a bit too patriotic (chauvinistic if u push it) , but then this is not something that I am using as a list of things that make my country the one worth living in.

Its a list of things that i wish for you to have experienced if you are non-indian , or a list of things that you might have in your head , but cant seem to put them in a blog - like me , since you are not as jobless/distracted.

PS : For a change , i stuck to the title i started out with.

Hypocrisy staring right at you !

It was a nice and easy day. I was lucky enough to have survived bangalore as a bad guitarist. a really bad one who prolly should not even associate the word guitarist with himself. But i use it for claritys sake.
So . Now was my turn to get to Minnesota with me and my guitar in one piece. My roomate had agreed to let me "unconditionally" play guitar/music whenever i wanted. i felt lucky.

Things arent as they were planned. He doesnt like loud music .Just like my dad. I am not pissed off at either of them. I dint have a choice with my dad. He dint like it , and of corz , he has every right to ask me to shut up too . Well , what about my roomate ? I am not sure. Hes a hypocrite for sure. I give him the advantage of "desperation in bad times" to have agreed to all my conditions, since he prolly had no one else to roomie up with. Thats not gonna stop me from whining. I hate this . Its like being imprisoned.

Studio for cheap anyone ?

Is language the barrier

I was wondering today how it gets so hard to sometimes express what you feel inside, and in the attempt to put it into words,  you end up compromising on them by trying to resort to the most common analogies , like "im depressed" or "im feeling sad" or " i feel lucky" or "i feel wierd" , and you just hope that the person on the other side of the conversation figures out what you are implying. But how often does that happen ? May be never, may be at times or may be at all times.. How do you know ? Well i dont . So to sum it up , i have lost my faith in the laymans language a little. And my faith in  writers have gone up. Somehow they just manage to put it all together in the most effortless way. Respect.

This also reminds me of how some languages unlike English , have specific words for expressing some real specific feelings or even events.I wonder how this really changes the way they understand each other , and if anything changes when the same conversation happens in English.Something to think about.Hopefully i will learn   korean/french/japanese one day and try and figure this out myself. haha.

The question tat gautam menon could not answer

Today i am trying to answer that one question that no one could answer .. "Sir, intha ulagathile ivlo ponnungal irunthum naan en saar jessiye love panninen ?" ("sir, inspite of having so many good looking girls around me, why did i love jessie?" , a dialogue from a famous tamil movie "Vinnaithandi varuvaaya")

Though romantically ,there is no way that i can compete with either Simbu (for his looks ) and Gautham Vasudhevan Menon , I am going to try and tackle this the laymans way.

1. She lives upstairs
2. She is good looking
3. She is your sisters close friend
4. She is mallu christian.The more you cant get them , the more you want them
5. She is HOT.
6. She is tall
7. She is not obsessed about make up
8. She wears a saree..ALL THE TIME !
9. She likes to spend a lot of time in the terrace for reasons unknown.
10.She talks with an air of mystery , especially like the way they talk in Maniratnam movies
11. She doesnt keep bugging you about what you are doing with your life , since she knows nothing bout movie making.
12. She looks like a pentacost christian. esp since she is not watching movies and all that..So most likely she is not indulging in other material pleasures like jewellery/make up/flowers/technology.So shopping money saved.
13. She likes KFC and you like KFC.
14. Did i mention that she is hot ?

OK.thank you.

Universityfication of interestingcourses

Life is full of interesting things..But , we miss them..We always look up to artists or thinkers to come up with beautiful ideas, and solutions..WHY ?

Answer : Universityfication of interestingcourses i say !

What you ask ? And you have every right to !

The  UOIC as i shall call it ( euphemism for drilling a screw in ur brain basically) , is how most of the interesting problems out there are turned into the most boring theoretical treatment that one can give it , hence rendering it into a totally vegetative concept.

Give me an example you say ! And you have every right to.

Lets take my favourite course , GPU Computing.

Every problem that i have been given in this course has not gone beyond matrix multiplication or 2-D convolution.None of the problem sets involved coming up with a creative assignment.Not to mention the fact that the marking is completely strict and traditional.Not to also mention the fact that people ensure that for teh silliest mistakes, you lose maximum marks...

The question/rather my problem is this : Are we studying in a university /  writing an exam that lasts 2 years (when doing a masters) or 4 years ( wen doing a bachelors) .. Do we have to spend all our time being precisely precise / invest it in being more creative and focussed on the tings that matter ??


PS : This does not happen in all courses.Some professors do understand the importance of LEARNING vs PERFORMING.

Are we students/ are we performers ???

- A man who hates the way things are taught

My Grim Lover

the bell tolls and i see her
creeping near, the fear in me
but i do not see ,
my enemy
i see roses and gardens ,
and a lovely sea
of clouds and grass
and wind and fragrance,
i do not yearn to part unto it,
reality,it keeps calling me ,
death, shall grant me freedom at last.
i wait forever, for the grim reaper
i count my time,for the final fall
moments relived, moments past
the axe it falls, and i thank
my lover my reaper.

Avial . One band that inspired more than many other

Avial was revolutionary.I dint think that they quite cut it with Nada Nada.They simply had better things to do .Yes, and they did .They rolled an entire album , titled Avial (Nada Nada was realeased as part of "SoundCheck" first).

The kind of music the band could inspire was limitless.The kind of tightness and professionalism with which they played their music was unbelievable.They were original.They were different.They brought a lot of malayalam back on the malayalees lips.I am glad they did . All of us staying with our northie friends , down in bangalore , had a reason to lip some malayalam lyrics, without getting bashed for it .We could play it loud.We could headbang together, the mallus and the non-mallus.Avial brought us together, effortlessly.About time i thanked them for that.

A statement that i make a lot these days -- "I am a music lover , among a million others.The usual guy who likes to plug into music after a long day.I wear a black shirt.I like to headbang at times too.. a lot us do the same thing too.Somehow ,everyone in a black shirt with a metal bands name on it , tend to stand out and get beaten up and paired up with insane out of control drug addicts ..strange world.."

On Stupidity and opinions

Apparently someone said " There is a limit to genius..but not to stupidity"..A lot of people use this as a punchline when they want to bitch about someone who is stupid while making allusions /abstractions that might possibly deceive any wayward trolling man on facebook who probably doesnt even care about what this man is posting anyway.Besides the meaningless latter half of the previous sentence, the point that i am trying to make is that " We like to think that people might be stupid, or for instance , stupidity exists". Stupidity being a very subjective word , is mostly the most beaten up word in terms of being squeezed and hammered into every place that has a context or place for an appropriate superlative that often eludes the human brain.Sometimes ,the superlative might be " misunderstood " , "different","out of context","lost","confused" ,"please refer to the english dictionary for more words if you are expecting more". Ok.Coming back.Next para.

Yes , stupidity is often a very loosely used word.Most people in this world are not stupid.They probably dont care enough to be smart.Look at me.I am stupid.To someone doing a Phd, i am totally dumb.To someone doing a law degree, i am someone who cannot tell the difference between Obamas health insurance laws and private health insurance laws.. " Duh that engineering degree holder..wat a waste huh?"..Even to my peers, i am that guy who might not be able to cook anything more than a decent sambhar (indian food). I do not know a lot of things that you think that I AM SUPPOSED TO KNOW.I am not defending a case here by the way. Its just that i know that talking about myself will not be landing someone else in a bigger soup.Just seemed to be a lot easier to beat myself up rather than someone who could have been a use-case (loose-case.. ).

So kids,adults,smart gentlemen,ladies and all other kind of public who can read .. don't judge someone by the scale that you use to measure your intelligence.Sometimes it just doesn't fit.Treat people well.Treat them nicely.If you like them, treat them better.If you dont ,just stay away from them.You are helping more than you think.If its hard , tell them that you love them , though u despise a lot of things about them (this usually doesnt happen..unless the person is irresistibly sexy.)


PS : I dont think einstein ever used that quote to talk about stupid people.He was either pissed off with someone, or was talking bout himself ( after he regretted using the GOD constant may be ) ..who knows ?

Aromale

I am not sure about where this post will end up.But i am sure that it has been inspired by this song.Aaromale -which literally means, "my dear dearest" from the movie, Vinnaithaandi varuvaaya.
The movie itself opened to rave reviews, the characters stood out for their queer qualities,or rather wierdness as the not so youth of tomorrow (the youth of today) might put it.

Jesse is a malayali girl.She is christian.She has strict family values.She has a rich dad.She can buy a passport to america like any of us can.She loves her dad.She marries the one her dad asks her to,without shedding too many tears.Yet.We hate her.I do.Trisha post-marriage,walking on the brooklyn/golden gate bridge,pisses the hell out of me.I feel sad for "Karthik" (protagonist) .I do not know why.In fact,the movie starts (scarily enough) perpetrating some kind of an irksome feeling towards respectable,obedient and well brought up girls who love their dads a bit too much.Prejudice.

Strange is love.Stranger are movies.Strangest is the effect it has on definitions of love.Girl loves boy,boy loves girl,girl loves dad,girl ditches boy for dad,boy is who we all want to see happy.Screw the girls happiness,screw old bonds!

Where do i stand?Boy or Girl ? I dont know! For the world is not a movie for us to stand back and rate,we would rather be better of moving on from such scarring experiences,if it ever happened to any of us.

And yes,if we wer as creative as A.R.Rahman,who celebrates his birthday today,we would all be singing, Aaromale! in one big chorus...