The Monkey and the seed

‘O! Ranjeeth, the benevolent and seeker of truth!! This struggle of yours and the hardships that you face fill me with pity for you. But I wonder what makes you beleive that your toil is certain to bear fruit? Even the wisest can sometimes be mislead by excess of ambition and spend great energy on goals that are unfathomable. I remember the tale of a monkey that spent its energy thus : Long ago there was a monkey in Brihadaranya that lived quite happily feeding on the abundance of fruits that grew on the trees of the wood. But as time passed he became more desirous and wanted to grow an orchard for himself as the forest had lot of unclaimed fertile ground. So on a bright sunny morning, he picked up a healty seed of the sweetest fruit and planted it, watered it and put a small fence of thorns around the place… that night he dreamed of the orchard and the hundreds of trees that he would own later… then a doubt crept in to its mind : ‘does the small seed hold so much promise?’. ‘Too small a beginning’ he thought . His faith was shaken. So the next morning he went to the place where he planted the seed, removed the fence and dug the seed out of the ground to see if it has germinated… alas! he found no sign of an orchard growing!! ‘I feared so ‘ he thought but he knew of no other way to grow an orchard. ‘Let me check tommorrow’ he thought and buried the seed back…. and the routine continued for weeks and months… the monkey grew weary and tired but no sign of an orchard yet. He continued his unwise effort with no fruit till the end of his days and all the while lived with overwhelming sorrow inflicted by the failure to grow an orchard…Now , one of great patience!! Is this struggle and your patience meaningful or are you pursuing a goal that you would never reach? If you are aware of the answer and yet donot answer me, you will not be able to complete you MS by July of 2006′ Funny..!! isnt it? Now let me answer that

Adventures@ACCV…Contd.

…the second day too had its own share of adventures….[Forgot to mention me accompanying BNC to the airport in the last post]

• AZ’s talk on images as ‘bag of words’… something that had been around in the vision field for quite sometime [starting with Wallraven and Bulthoff's 'Kernel Recipe...' paper] but I think AZ’s ICCV paper and this brought it further in to focus…as usual I found it difficult to wake up on time and then rushed to Taj Krishna with Himanshu in an auto. It was quite an informative talk and following it I had a chat with Krish and Asutosh from Google B’lore….and the another discussion with AZ during lunch… looks like I am not that bad a researcher at least in sniffing trends .

• Talked to the Toshiba guy about fast and approximate SIFT, some tracking stuff….but in all afternoon wasnt that great… the kernel sesssion turned to be one with kernels with one argument .

• Talk with Arcot Sowmya turned out to be long and monotonous one though I was contented to know what she was working on.

• Shilparamam : met Katsuhiko, Vijaya Saradhi, Andrew Blake. Some AB quotes : ‘You dont see lot of girls in IIIT…I met only one’, ‘machine learning… that is hot’, ‘you guys get jobs…get fabulously rich’ [How much does MSR pay Blake!! ]….real cool guy.

• Katushiko : ‘I would like to see them [the sculpture work at Shilparamam]….but wouldnt want to miss the beer!!’

• Now the big thing : I started consuming alcohol…actually thought I would learn…had a small glass of wine. And being the sincere kid, called home and told my parents….Dad : ‘Its OK. but be in limits’….Mom : ‘Go to a temple early morning tomorrow and apologise to the Gods [Amma!! they drink too]… next time you go to such dinner carry pray to God to keep you sane’.

Math Rocks…!!

Doing math isnt just intellectaully satistying nemore… it helps you make some big money. Business reports the future of mathematics here. The rise of mathematics is heating up the job market for luminary quants, especially at the Internet powerhouses where new math grads land with six-figure salaries and rich stock deals Now thats something to think of.

Adventures@ACCV

The past of few days have been some of the most exciting ones during my stay @ IIIT. The funniest aspect was our adventures with the top researchers… since we didnt know many of them by face many of the first time introduction turned out to be real fun… Here go some of them [ abbreviations : ACCV : Asian Conference on Computer Vision, IVSC : Indian Vision Show Case, WCVGIP : Workshop on CV, Graphics and IP, MSR : Microsoft Research, TK : Takeo Kanade, AZ : Andrew Zisserman, AB : Andrew Blake, PJN : PJ Narayanan]

• Me@IVSC : Some Japanese guy…explained him Nayar/Murase’s work on object recognition and told him the authors names
  too…paresh arrives…looks quite tense…takes over the presentation…I looked at the guys ACCV badge : ‘Hiroshi Murase’ …OMG!

• Me@IVSC : Just attended a TK’s talk in 104…came back….some guy in black coat turns up at my poster….I see PJN and Jaws in the background… started talking to the guy casually… HI I am Ranjith, would you look to see some the work…blah..Subconscious mind screaming….he is important…he is important…seen him somewhere… where?..where?…CLICK : the man on the screen in 104….TK….OMG!! [God knows how I managed the rest of the conversation]

• Santosh@IVSC : Santosh quite pissed off by now due to finance/felicity/IVSC/ICPR…now some guy asks for pins…’Santosh, can you give me some pins’…Santosh : ‘Wait I am busy’….another request…the reply is more of a yell than an answer…. later Santosh comes to know the guy is Sarathchandran (IIT Bombay prof!!)..another OMG.

• Visesh@MSR Bangalore : Visesh sees Satya talking to a guy quite casually and thinks of him some ‘normal’ researcher and goes there… Satya to the guy: ‘He works in Computer Vision’ …Visesh to the guy : ‘Hi, I am Visesh’… ‘Hi I am Andrew Blake from MSR’…..OMG.

• Vishesh@MSR Bangalore….goes for a Coffee…guy in front Andrew Zisserman, Blake behing, Kanade sideways….next P Anandan !!

• Hafez to Kanade : ‘Sir, do you know Visual Servoing?’. Ai…la….[Kanade goes on to explain the fugitive tracking system at CMU]

• Visesh starts a discussion with Kanade who goes on to brainwash them for half-an hour explaining on the board….Enter PJN…to TK : ‘You are hired!!’….’You will teach 3 days a sem, play golf and visit Taj Mahal.’ )

• Me@ACCV : First day lunch….me dying to talk to AZ… finally me and googs succeed in starting off… AZ’s real cool… gets more and more technical, asks my name, mentions how lovable India and gives me contacts on researhcers working on invariances….[now why did I put it here? you dont find it interesting...who cares...It was EXCITING for me].

Soft copy vrs Hard Copy

News is out that SONY released its electronic book reader ‘Sony Reader’. BBC exaggerates a bit saying ‘Sony is trying to do for e-books what Apple has done for downloadable digital music’ here. any takers..? . Since my first year I regularly download gigs of e-books but never liked on-screen reading as much as I did reading a real book (unless its some kinda research paper which is boring neway). And my guess is most people dont. Unless the device creates a feeling that you are reading a hard copy its difficult to imagine someone spending $300 – $400 on it. The case of digital music was lot different…but hey, I havent seen the device yet and would love to have a device that allows me to read books netime, newhere…we will see

Another screwed up post

The past one month or so was such an eventful period for CVIT that I began wondering what an idling moron I am . To my eyes everybody around me seems to be doing something more important and more sensible than the stuff I do. Sitting in front of my comp. I stare at the matlab console desperately looking for a better accuracy from a program as if my life depended on its outcome…..ponder over some equations and wonder why certain matrix becomes singular…. after hours of struggle that saps my patience I decide to write a script that does the observation for me. As the script runs my thoughts wander off in to a different domain…what kind of scientific inquiry is this? what am I up to? For how long will I lurk in this darkness….the uncertainity of research that looked like a challenge sometime back appears so boring now…I guess I am kinda turning disillusioned about research…more often than not the modern researcher seems to be preoccupied by the donkey work that is required to make a paper look ’sexy’ rather than a genuine study. cooking data, reverse engineering , tuning parameters (manually )….its simply doesnt make sense. The open-endedness is making me uncomfortable particularly when I have fixed time frame in which I have to finish the work…I dunno if such frustration is characteristic to me alone or others too but right now I have a hundred reasons to discourage this search for non-existent black cat in a dark room. For a change I pick up one of my B.Tech textbooks and search for the most unclean page (indicating that was the page I was reading before the end-sems struggling to avoid sleep and in the process spilling coffee and titbits of ‘Lays’ on it ) and try to continue from there, read machine learning blogs or try to code an old forgotten algorithm….Healthy distractions!!. A call from home brings me back to this world. My father as usual gives me advice and freedom (at the sametime ) on everything. Of late he tells me with a queer excitement how my mother started enjoying watching cricket matches instead of soap serials, how he is getting to know more about computers,..there are simply too many things to be reported even from the small hamlet. Images of my village flash in my mind and I find some peace…’Coffee dude’ somebody invites and my ruminations are rudely cut-off…wtf? what am I supposed to be doing and what am I doing….mind starts screaming again you ARE an outlier dude…so behave like one…..wtf? a nice spicy post composed…now whats the title…

Zimbabwe’s woes

Its now official… Cricinfo reports the dire state of cricket in Zimbabwe here. The statement ‘Those who want to stay in can stay, but those who want to go are free to go. They can go to India, Canada or wherever. We are not bothered. The government will not be held at ransome by individuals.’ summarizes the state of affairs in this ill-fated nation. Sometime back when Taibu was forced in to hiding, Parry and I were discussing what ordinary citizens must be facing when internationally acclaimed persons are being targeted so openly. God knows how things are handled in other less exposed domains. Its a shame that the world silently watches such travesty while less troubled nations elsewhere are bombed relentlessly to salvage the pride of a supernation. An explanation why most of the countires in the dark continent are still unable to see light… I guess.

Specialization

From Sagar’s blog :

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

— Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

Happy New Year

…so arrives 2006, and I thought its time to change the location of blog and wordpress looks cool enough. The Yahoo 360 thing can still be accessed here

2005 has been one of the better years ( the best after 1997 when I last left her )

• Met lot of good people at GE scholars meet at Bangalore, found some comfort with the fairer sex finally (The first half of 2005 had little to report….R & D showcase, acads…regular stuff…the eventful period started with the GE meet)

• Went out for shopping for the first time in Hyderabad (with Parry, Vardhman)…now dont laugh at me

• Contributed about 1.5 lakh to Sis’s marriage thanks to GE + Prathibha scholarships (Sis’s marriage removed all responsibilities on Dad n he wishes to retire in a couple of years…so the time for me to take over is very close)

• Went to Jogging and Gym for the first time in my stay at IIIT (thanx to Vardhman )

• Worried about a JOB (of all things) genuinely for the first time

• Went to my first and last ACM – ICPC…Comibatore & Bangalore and screwed it up grandly but the experience was good…meeting lots of friends and ‘birdwatching’ so eagerly for the first time

• Participated in the placement ‘rat-race’ for the first time : Adobe – written gone, Google – interviews still going on , Sarnoff – yeah…RCA, SRI, Color TV, CMOS….this was good!! Gave my first party at IIIT (money still to be given to Vardhman)

• IEEE-SB secretary, X-mas with family, making lots of frenz in and out of IIIT, IEEE workshop,studying business….lots of new things in 2005

• Added lots of things to resume this year : ICCV contest, ACM-ICPC, CSI-programming contest, IEEE-SB secretary