Blogs

The referee’s whistle blew; we started moving forward, ready to win this game already. For the first time in as long as I can remember, Jam(una) was poised to win gold at inter-hostel basketball (Schroeter); winning gold in basketball would seal the deal on winning the Schroeter cup. It was a dream I wanted too much to believe it could be true. We were up against Saras(wathi), a hostel with so many good players it was criminally unjust; starting with an incredible post and forward with an 80%+ accuracy (SNS), an insanely fast point guard (Ajay), shooting guard (Evera), and some good supporting players (Krishna, Eeshwar and some guy who plays volleyball). They could assemble a whole team of institute players, and have otherwise good substitutes. Our team, on the other hand, was a motley collection of an institute player (Kanishka), a fast running support (Srikanth; he was also captain), a couple of freshies (Jana, Srinath), an old fart (myself), and some more supporting players (Hema, Rajesh, etc.). ...

Admittedly, not the most original of titles. As some may know, I’m inclined towards academic research, and have been admitted to PhD programmes at MIT, CMU and Stanford. So, grabbing hold of this golden opportunity to evade work, I spent the 2 weeks visiting these places, meeting professors and students and generally having a ball of a time. The trip happened in early March, so this post is still within experimental error of my usual procrastination delay1. ...

Last Sunday (because I’m terribly slow with these things), I ran my first authentic 10K1, in roughly 58 minutes. It felt great. I had the most “flow” I’ve ever had while running, and my infernal (and eternal) cold shut up for once. I’ve long tried to associate my running with summoning the will to achieve something (usually my research work). I certainly hoped that this would hark a new wave of awesome. Unfortunately, the analogy proved to be ephemeral, as is the case with most analogies. Right now, a more apt analogy would be chasing my own tail, for that’s all I seem to be doing (instead of, say, chasing an ICML deadline). I have reached a new level of stagnancy in my professional life, seeking even to run rather than do (any) work2. ...

Every now and then, it hits you that all this technological advance mumbo-jumbo that we’ve been doing is actually improving people’s lives. Today was one such day. My uncle and his wife are both unfortunately deaf and dumb, though their daughter (my cousin) thankfully is not. When taking said uncle to pick his wife up from the airport today, he showed me, with absolute joy, how they could communicate via SMS. In their own way, they had regained a mode of communication. ...

foss.in/2009. Nimhans Convention Center, Bangalore, Dec. 1-5, 2009. Yep, a month ago (well, atleast it’s better than a year ago). I attended my first foss.in in 2007, and it seriously changed my life. I can’t say quite the same for this edition, but it was interesting. The overwhelming focus of this year’s foss.in was open hardware - something I’m really close to. The best talk I attended without a doubt goes to Harald Welte; he spoke on how people (including himself) had reverse engineered RFIDs, and remarkably GSM, and exposed how flawed it was. Harald has this near holy modesty about him, but good god does he know his stuff. Seriously, Harald ist Gott. ...

A recent discussion with a friend, Ramya, on the topic of Computational Creativity got me thinking. For sure my views will change in the course of time, but at least I would have penned down - and safely stored - my initial views that I may come back in a month or so and chuckle at my naivety. A nice question that Ramya asked was not the standard “Could computer programs even be capable of creativity?” (which is IMHO a completely philosophical discussion and I side an author a work I read - it entirely depends on how you define creativity), but rather, “Why would you want ‘creative’ programs in the first place?”. Computer programs that detect or comprehend things that humans can do (like how programs can detect handwriting, or pictures, etc.) are immensely useful to us, it helps simplify a lot of routine work. ...

IIT Madras hosted it’s second hackfest last weekend, during it’s annual techfest, Shaastra. The hackfest was phenomenally successful, with 6 projects running concurrently producing about 7-8 patches in total. Within our second instalment itself, we’ve probably established ourselves as the most productive student-run hackfest in India, something we are extremely proud of 1. The hackfest is of course something that is very dear to me, and it was really heartening to see it bloom like it did. A review of what happened last year can be found here. ...

This weekend, CocoD and I embarked on an adventurous trail deep into the Tam heartland to India’s second largest lagoon, Pulicat Lake. Soaking in the sights, sounds (and smells - good god we wish we didn’t), the two of us boldly proved our manliness by cycling the whole of the 62.8 km (ref. Google Maps), on the ultimate chick magnet, the Tam Cycle. The two of us also boldly proved our idiocy, carrying only our bags, some grub, spare change, a video camera and some paper soap. What follows are the chronicles of our tripiocity. ...

It’s been far too long since I came up with decent material to put up here. Rather than let my blog die, the organic creature that it is, I thought I might as well look deep in my archives of half-baked articles and post something from there. This is one such article that I have no clue why I haven’t published as yet. I wrote it loooong ago, around the time of my rant about PlasmaPong, and is of a similar theme (and no surprise it’s a rant too). Anyways, here it is, in it’s raw un-edited format (oh, the value addition of lazyiness): ...

There is a fantastic open-source turn-based strategy game that goes by the name of “The Battle for Wesnoth”. It has some excellent code, celebrity hackers (rusty and esr), engaging game play and pretty good graphics. It’s goal was simplicity in design, and richness in game play. Inspiring as it is, I found it to be an anchor for a question that’s been mulling in my head for quite a while now; Which is better, Captain or Champion? ...