A couple of days since my first job has begun, and I already feel a lot wiser (probably a little too much than I should).
The days were marked by curious inspections of undecipherable code, eye-opening meetings by the 'CEO', super-funny talks by a co-worker followed by the typical laugh I used to laugh when in Mumbai (with tears streaming down and all), luncheons discussing surfing, feeling of awe and comfort, and some misplaced 'aha' moments :)
Another important thing. I discovered that there is more to life than talking on phone, checking mail, orkutting and reading arbit stuff on the net. (I am afraid that THIS discoverey is the little-too-much wisdom part of it... coz when I think deep, I think there could not be anything beyond talking and laughing and socializing and some vague intellectual kicks... what more can one want... but there seem to be other things)
Oh ho!
As always, I write and erase and rewrite not-yet-good-enough lines.
What to do? Probably comment out some lines (haha).
Anyway, the only joke that still makes me laugh is the one that's on me.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Friday, June 01, 2007
Ramblings
She sits in a room... that's not hers.
She can visualize things... She hears those words, sees that expression. She laughs at the sight of that yawn... that I-know-I-got-up-from-sleep-but-I-can't-help-it yawn.
She sees that focus in the eyes - that focus to help. That drive to help. That determination.
There are fond memories in this room. Too many of them. The peccadiloes committed in the thrilling stealth, the assignments 'completed' in the unbearable din... well, the moments!
The fond memories.
Dam! There always are these annoyingly unnecessary 'fond memories' that are impossible to shrug off.
If only life was not a state machine with transitions from one state to another. It's these transitions that are bothersome.
She is in a 'mess' (or she likes to think that way). But she physically is - her eyes are burning with lack of sleep and exceesive abuse, her stomach is complaining about the dumped substance that is misleadingly called 'food', her hair is disheveled - uncombed and uncared for, her face is trying hard to exude exhuastion as a convenient replacement for frustration.
It's only during those dark hours at night, when she bikes alone, do her lips betray a sharp shriek.
She hasn't known this feeling. She doesn't want to.
But she likes the side effects of this. She hasn't thought this incisively in a long time. She hasn't been so truthful, and so acceptive of herself in a long time.
She is.
She has lost care.
She doesn't feel like an outsider. Places, people, cultures, movies, billboard signs... everything is universal.
Space and time.
Or place and time. Two important things.
Important enough to have all alogorithms assessed on this. Important enough to make a project on by comparing Jemmy and JPF.
Why aren't algorithms assessed by their 'intuitiveness quotient', or 'ease of understanding' quotient, or 'ease of explaining' quotient? (this was a total tangent).
Why do total tangents come up while writing? What is a tangent? Can there be a legitimate tangent when there is no particular issue addressed in particular? What is important? To write as if it's my blog post, or to write keeping in mind the response? What is important anyway? To strive to be a perfectly acceptable (and admired) embodiment of desirable virtues? Or to be oneself without a care in the world? What is important - one moment of ecstatic bliss or several of a puritan existance? What is important - how do we measure time?
What is a lifetime? What will it be when I would have lived the major part of it? A collection of photographs and uploaded youtube videos? A series of lost memories of restaurants dined at, of shared bus rides and laughter, of insignificant brain waves that make you proud, of chance encounters and the joys that follow, of the train rides in the monsoon, of the praise you could not handle and could not forget either, of incomplete conversations and of things left unsaid?
Aren't these the important things? Then why is their importance brushed under the carpet? Why are these things 'by the way' ?
She hates revolting. She hates to feel the nascient upsurging of a revolt. But sometimes, the facade collapses, and the raw emerges. She doesn't know whats oppressing her, she cant fathom why her robust logic and intuition should give way and give in to 'conventional wisdom'.
All she knows is that something is wrong. And unless she corrects it, she'll be living a lie.
She can visualize things... She hears those words, sees that expression. She laughs at the sight of that yawn... that I-know-I-got-up-from-sleep-but-I-can't-help-it yawn.
She sees that focus in the eyes - that focus to help. That drive to help. That determination.
There are fond memories in this room. Too many of them. The peccadiloes committed in the thrilling stealth, the assignments 'completed' in the unbearable din... well, the moments!
The fond memories.
Dam! There always are these annoyingly unnecessary 'fond memories' that are impossible to shrug off.
If only life was not a state machine with transitions from one state to another. It's these transitions that are bothersome.
She is in a 'mess' (or she likes to think that way). But she physically is - her eyes are burning with lack of sleep and exceesive abuse, her stomach is complaining about the dumped substance that is misleadingly called 'food', her hair is disheveled - uncombed and uncared for, her face is trying hard to exude exhuastion as a convenient replacement for frustration.
It's only during those dark hours at night, when she bikes alone, do her lips betray a sharp shriek.
She hasn't known this feeling. She doesn't want to.
But she likes the side effects of this. She hasn't thought this incisively in a long time. She hasn't been so truthful, and so acceptive of herself in a long time.
She is.
She has lost care.
She doesn't feel like an outsider. Places, people, cultures, movies, billboard signs... everything is universal.
Space and time.
Or place and time. Two important things.
Important enough to have all alogorithms assessed on this. Important enough to make a project on by comparing Jemmy and JPF.
Why aren't algorithms assessed by their 'intuitiveness quotient', or 'ease of understanding' quotient, or 'ease of explaining' quotient? (this was a total tangent).
Why do total tangents come up while writing? What is a tangent? Can there be a legitimate tangent when there is no particular issue addressed in particular? What is important? To write as if it's my blog post, or to write keeping in mind the response? What is important anyway? To strive to be a perfectly acceptable (and admired) embodiment of desirable virtues? Or to be oneself without a care in the world? What is important - one moment of ecstatic bliss or several of a puritan existance? What is important - how do we measure time?
What is a lifetime? What will it be when I would have lived the major part of it? A collection of photographs and uploaded youtube videos? A series of lost memories of restaurants dined at, of shared bus rides and laughter, of insignificant brain waves that make you proud, of chance encounters and the joys that follow, of the train rides in the monsoon, of the praise you could not handle and could not forget either, of incomplete conversations and of things left unsaid?
Aren't these the important things? Then why is their importance brushed under the carpet? Why are these things 'by the way' ?
She hates revolting. She hates to feel the nascient upsurging of a revolt. But sometimes, the facade collapses, and the raw emerges. She doesn't know whats oppressing her, she cant fathom why her robust logic and intuition should give way and give in to 'conventional wisdom'.
All she knows is that something is wrong. And unless she corrects it, she'll be living a lie.
Monday, May 14, 2007
What to remember while preparing for Presentations?
This is one of those topics that should be written about 'pronto'
Soooo, I had to make a presentation today... on a subject very alien to me.... in front of people whose knowledge/ experience was daunting.
I spent the whole of yesterday (apart from Kick-boing and talking to family and other important beings) trying to make sense of the paper I was to present. It took much more time than anticipated.
Lesson 1: The most touted trick is to BE PREPARED. And one can never under-emphasize its importance.
I spent too much time trying to understand. And too little time on the actual presentation.
Lesson 2: Don't lose focus on the goal. You have to ultimately present it. Its a very good idea to understand, but unless you are going to teach it or unless you are going to be held accountable for every word that emanates from your mouth, it is important to balance the time well between understanding and preparing.
I started the ppts too late.
Lesson 3: Start ppts early enough (especially if you have less (in my case, NO) experience in making them). The ppts are really important (though not as important as your talk... but they do cover up for a lot of things, and they, most importantly, serve as hints to YOU).
Understand the audience.
Lesson 4: Again, a common idea. But its true. Your presentation should be tailer-made to the audience, and if it is a small focussed group of people then you have no excuse for not customizing it appropriately.
The audience is understanding
Corrolary to Lesson 4: When the audience sees that you have made an effort and you are trying to put accross a point, they nod. (They were exceptionally nice to me). So don't go with the mind-set that 'they are out to get you'.
Rehearse!
Lesson 5: Unless you imagine the audience and go through the presentation with the slides, you have conquered only 20% of the battle. (80-20 principle?). When you present it to a dummy audience, you realize that the slides are not in the right order, the matter does not flow right, it doesnt sound convincing, some things are not clear, some things are redundant. You might come to a point of editing every slide until the ppt is nowhere close to what you had initiallly made. This is a good sign.
Become the audience
Lesson 6: Present to yourself. Do you follow it? If YOU don't, there is very little chance that anyone else will!
The slides
Lesson 7: Big fonts. Big images. Less words. Fun words. Flowing concepts. Intersperse with questions. Don't make them very animated and fancy (perhaps a personal preference here).
Time yourself.
Lesson 8: Either you will get too excited and finish it early, or you will start being repetitive and take too long. Ideally, be prepared for either case. Have some 'extra slides', just in case. I didn't, and the audience was so smart that I thought I was saying redundant stuff, and ended up skipping some slides. Finished it earlier than expected. Not a bad thing, but its a good idea to do justice to the paper/matter that you are presenting.
Be prepared for the actual presentation
Lesson 9: Definitely don't be late. Coz you are going to realize that you forgot the 'adapter', and now you cant connect the projector to the computer. Some nice soul will offer his laptop, but you won't have a pen drive. Another nice soul will offer a pen drive. Now you realize that your ppt is in KeyNote (a Mac presentation tool) and it wont work everywhere. So you have to convert it to a pdf. Basically, there may be initial hurdles. And unless you trust the stars to be aligned in just the right order at the right time, be prepared for the actual presentation and the technicalities.
Google the paper!
Lesson 10: Very very important. Most of the questions the audience shoot will be anwered by the Google Search results of the first page. It is very important to know some background (defiitely not a good thing to not know when and where the paper was published).
Have an opinion
Lesson 11: Your presentation may be unbiased, but eventually in one way or the other you will have to evaluate/compare/critique the paper (and so will others want to do it). Ideally your presentation should not put the paper in a bad or good light. But at the same time, you should have an opnion on it.
Smile before you begin
Lesson 12: Its a presentation after all!
My audience was reallly good. Although they obviously knew a lot, they interestingly and attentively heard it. They put forth lots of questions (some of them I was embarrassed to not know... hence the lessons :-) )
In the end, the instructor and another student praised me.
Final lesson: Appreciate genuinely. It helps ALOT.
Soooo, I had to make a presentation today... on a subject very alien to me.... in front of people whose knowledge/ experience was daunting.
I spent the whole of yesterday (apart from Kick-boing and talking to family and other important beings) trying to make sense of the paper I was to present. It took much more time than anticipated.
Lesson 1: The most touted trick is to BE PREPARED. And one can never under-emphasize its importance.
I spent too much time trying to understand. And too little time on the actual presentation.
Lesson 2: Don't lose focus on the goal. You have to ultimately present it. Its a very good idea to understand, but unless you are going to teach it or unless you are going to be held accountable for every word that emanates from your mouth, it is important to balance the time well between understanding and preparing.
I started the ppts too late.
Lesson 3: Start ppts early enough (especially if you have less (in my case, NO) experience in making them). The ppts are really important (though not as important as your talk... but they do cover up for a lot of things, and they, most importantly, serve as hints to YOU).
Understand the audience.
Lesson 4: Again, a common idea. But its true. Your presentation should be tailer-made to the audience, and if it is a small focussed group of people then you have no excuse for not customizing it appropriately.
The audience is understanding
Corrolary to Lesson 4: When the audience sees that you have made an effort and you are trying to put accross a point, they nod. (They were exceptionally nice to me). So don't go with the mind-set that 'they are out to get you'.
Rehearse!
Lesson 5: Unless you imagine the audience and go through the presentation with the slides, you have conquered only 20% of the battle. (80-20 principle?). When you present it to a dummy audience, you realize that the slides are not in the right order, the matter does not flow right, it doesnt sound convincing, some things are not clear, some things are redundant. You might come to a point of editing every slide until the ppt is nowhere close to what you had initiallly made. This is a good sign.
Become the audience
Lesson 6: Present to yourself. Do you follow it? If YOU don't, there is very little chance that anyone else will!
The slides
Lesson 7: Big fonts. Big images. Less words. Fun words. Flowing concepts. Intersperse with questions. Don't make them very animated and fancy (perhaps a personal preference here).
Time yourself.
Lesson 8: Either you will get too excited and finish it early, or you will start being repetitive and take too long. Ideally, be prepared for either case. Have some 'extra slides', just in case. I didn't, and the audience was so smart that I thought I was saying redundant stuff, and ended up skipping some slides. Finished it earlier than expected. Not a bad thing, but its a good idea to do justice to the paper/matter that you are presenting.
Be prepared for the actual presentation
Lesson 9: Definitely don't be late. Coz you are going to realize that you forgot the 'adapter', and now you cant connect the projector to the computer. Some nice soul will offer his laptop, but you won't have a pen drive. Another nice soul will offer a pen drive. Now you realize that your ppt is in KeyNote (a Mac presentation tool) and it wont work everywhere. So you have to convert it to a pdf. Basically, there may be initial hurdles. And unless you trust the stars to be aligned in just the right order at the right time, be prepared for the actual presentation and the technicalities.
Google the paper!
Lesson 10: Very very important. Most of the questions the audience shoot will be anwered by the Google Search results of the first page. It is very important to know some background (defiitely not a good thing to not know when and where the paper was published).
Have an opinion
Lesson 11: Your presentation may be unbiased, but eventually in one way or the other you will have to evaluate/compare/critique the paper (and so will others want to do it). Ideally your presentation should not put the paper in a bad or good light. But at the same time, you should have an opnion on it.
Smile before you begin
Lesson 12: Its a presentation after all!
My audience was reallly good. Although they obviously knew a lot, they interestingly and attentively heard it. They put forth lots of questions (some of them I was embarrassed to not know... hence the lessons :-) )
In the end, the instructor and another student praised me.
Final lesson: Appreciate genuinely. It helps ALOT.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Realizations
Earlier it wa all happiness interjected with periods of loneliness.
Now it is all loneliness interjected with periods of.... loneliness!
As I was explaining my student the code during office hours, she was amazed by some of the super-basic tricks. She didn't know that 'tabbing' can help one browse thru the directories and the up arrow gives the previous command. She was amazed.
I realized that I was in the exact same position just 5 months back.
I then realized, I am jsut accumulating some information. But is it simply appending stuff to the data repositiry residing in my head, or is anything being appended to the knowledge/wisdom repository as well?
I hope so... But I think not.
:(
Now it is all loneliness interjected with periods of.... loneliness!
As I was explaining my student the code during office hours, she was amazed by some of the super-basic tricks. She didn't know that 'tabbing' can help one browse thru the directories and the up arrow gives the previous command. She was amazed.
I realized that I was in the exact same position just 5 months back.
I then realized, I am jsut accumulating some information. But is it simply appending stuff to the data repositiry residing in my head, or is anything being appended to the knowledge/wisdom repository as well?
I hope so... But I think not.
:(
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Last Weekend
was gooood... what with ma and pa here... and oter events/people.
Distance makes the heart grow fonder... and the legs go weaker :)
The dance was good. The audience was fun (P and S cheered alot.. Ma says she did too.. btu didn't hear THE voice)
The color thats 'totally in' is Tango Red
The lines of Dhoom2 that are totally in:-
and when love comes your way
you'll know its here to stay
you'll steal the chance 'cose you're
the thief of hearts yeah
you'll win with a galance
walk away with your romance
there's no more ther's no backing out now
There were many other things that were 'totally in'.
Learnt new lessons:-
1. Expressions are probably the most important part of the dance.. If you enjoy dancing, others enjoy watchin
2. What goes around, comes around.
3. If you correct your students, they will correct you too :)
4. Tongue is the strongest muscle of the body
5. Reading is often more thrilling than watching.
Distance makes the heart grow fonder... and the legs go weaker :)
The dance was good. The audience was fun (P and S cheered alot.. Ma says she did too.. btu didn't hear THE voice)
The color thats 'totally in' is Tango Red
The lines of Dhoom2 that are totally in:-
and when love comes your way
you'll know its here to stay
you'll steal the chance 'cose you're
the thief of hearts yeah
you'll win with a galance
walk away with your romance
there's no more ther's no backing out now
There were many other things that were 'totally in'.
Learnt new lessons:-
1. Expressions are probably the most important part of the dance.. If you enjoy dancing, others enjoy watchin
2. What goes around, comes around.
3. If you correct your students, they will correct you too :)
4. Tongue is the strongest muscle of the body
5. Reading is often more thrilling than watching.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The bookstore problem
You are in a bookstore with the intention (and resources) to buy ONE book, and all the books are wrapped in plastic. Is there a way other than judging a book by its cover?
And what if you find the covers of more than one book interesting? How do you judge different books based on the cover?
One would think that based on apriori knowledge/information/wisdom you buy a book which had the most interesting cover. But what if AFTER buyin the book, you happen to read the preface of another book... And now THAT book ALSO seems interesting...
Is that a start of something?
And what if you find the covers of more than one book interesting? How do you judge different books based on the cover?
One would think that based on apriori knowledge/information/wisdom you buy a book which had the most interesting cover. But what if AFTER buyin the book, you happen to read the preface of another book... And now THAT book ALSO seems interesting...
Is that a start of something?
Saturday, April 14, 2007
The ice-cream problem
I go to an ice-cream parlor. I haven't tasted an ice-cream earlier, but 'heard' that it tastes delicious.
There are 27 varieties. I have to make a choice between these flavors. I choose a flavor.. educted guess, I would think. I like the ice-cream. It's not AS good as I had heard, but it's good.
I presume that I had not made the BEST decision about the flavor. But now I have more knowledge (Experience) and hence, the next decision wil be better. And next time, I summon the courage to make a choice of another flavor. A more educated guess, again I think.
And I like this flavor much more... But then, the mind is not happy. It wants to 'explore' further.
And it has seen the pattern - more educated the guess, the greater chance of the flavor being tastier.
So, next time I go to the ice cream parlor, I choose ANOTHER flavor. It's delicious. It's as good as it can get. I think it can't get better. But the weak mind tempted... to make the next guess... to explore a vertex on the next level of the traversal..
I do that. And this time, I also gets toppings... peanuts, oreo cookies etc. Now the ice-cream is thoroughly tasty. I am GLAD I took the step.
But there are questions:-
1. There is a modification to the problem. Once I choose another flavor, the previous flavors are discarded for good, and I cant get back to them. Under such circumstances, when should I stop exploration?
Should I stop when I find a GOOD flavor, even though there are chances that I might find a better flavor in the next step of exploration? (It is MY belief that the next educated guess will be better... but that need not be true).
2. Was the last ice-cream better because of the toppings? Or was it inherently good?
3. There are ice-cream flavors that are reallly popular (recommended). Am I biased towards those?
There are so many subtleties that are not captured in this analogy, although they can be.
Anyway, my roomie suggests a similar story - about a shishya (student) and his guru. THe guru asks the shishya to go to the forest and pick up the tallest branch, on the condition that e cannot pick up a brach on his way back.
Well... this is easy to solve... coz one can keep hold of the tallest branch SO FAR, and then discard it when a taller branch is seen. (FInd the max number in an array algorithm).
But this solution UNFORTUNATELY does not hold for all situations!
There are 27 varieties. I have to make a choice between these flavors. I choose a flavor.. educted guess, I would think. I like the ice-cream. It's not AS good as I had heard, but it's good.
I presume that I had not made the BEST decision about the flavor. But now I have more knowledge (Experience) and hence, the next decision wil be better. And next time, I summon the courage to make a choice of another flavor. A more educated guess, again I think.
And I like this flavor much more... But then, the mind is not happy. It wants to 'explore' further.
And it has seen the pattern - more educated the guess, the greater chance of the flavor being tastier.
So, next time I go to the ice cream parlor, I choose ANOTHER flavor. It's delicious. It's as good as it can get. I think it can't get better. But the weak mind tempted... to make the next guess... to explore a vertex on the next level of the traversal..
I do that. And this time, I also gets toppings... peanuts, oreo cookies etc. Now the ice-cream is thoroughly tasty. I am GLAD I took the step.
But there are questions:-
1. There is a modification to the problem. Once I choose another flavor, the previous flavors are discarded for good, and I cant get back to them. Under such circumstances, when should I stop exploration?
Should I stop when I find a GOOD flavor, even though there are chances that I might find a better flavor in the next step of exploration? (It is MY belief that the next educated guess will be better... but that need not be true).
2. Was the last ice-cream better because of the toppings? Or was it inherently good?
3. There are ice-cream flavors that are reallly popular (recommended). Am I biased towards those?
There are so many subtleties that are not captured in this analogy, although they can be.
Anyway, my roomie suggests a similar story - about a shishya (student) and his guru. THe guru asks the shishya to go to the forest and pick up the tallest branch, on the condition that e cannot pick up a brach on his way back.
Well... this is easy to solve... coz one can keep hold of the tallest branch SO FAR, and then discard it when a taller branch is seen. (FInd the max number in an array algorithm).
But this solution UNFORTUNATELY does not hold for all situations!
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