Vittal's Blog

A critique of Room by Emma Donoghue

2011-08-22T17:26:00.007+08:00

Spoiler Alert: Since this is a critique, it is bound to contain some spoilers. If you do not wish to read any spoilers about the book, please look away now.

‘Room’ is a book that I read recently and loved instantly. I was breaking my head to try and find an apt and succinct description of the novel and did not find any better than the review made by Audrey Niffenegger, author of ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’, who said, “Room is a book to read in one sitting. When it’s over you look up: the world looks the same but you are somehow different and that feeling lingers for days.”

Let me try and describe the book in short. It is a story about the relationship between a mother and her five year old son, Jack. Both Jack and his mother, whom he affectionately calls ‘Ma’, are kidnapped by ‘Old Nick’ and locked in a Room. Ma tries to protect her son, who was born in the Room, from ‘Old Nick’, and conceals from her son the fact that they are actually locked inside and that there is a whole wide beautiful world out there to live in. As Jack grows, his inquisitive nature forces Ma to spill out the truth about the Room and the world outside, which Jack, in his innocent way, calls ‘Outside’.

The book then goes on to explain the beautiful relation that a mother has with her son, and the sacrifices that a mother makes for her son. As much as I would like to comment about the beauty of the book, I will not do so because this post is meant to be a critique. If you need a summary of the book, the innocence of Jack, and the problems that the writer must have faced in writing such a book and how she overcame them, have a read here.

Before being critical, I would like to make it clear that I liked the book very much. It is a must read, and it deserves all the fame and accolades that it gets. However, there are some important points that I would like to make, which would have brought the book even more fame and success, like actually winning the ‘Man Booker Prize’, for the year 2010 (The book was a finalist in the competition).

The first point that I would like to make is about the unraveling of the truth. Ma, who had initially kept the secret of the real world from Jack, had to tell him the truth as she could no longer convince the growing and questioning Jack. The book does not give much importance to the unraveling. Very little space is given to the part where Ma lists out the truth about the things in real world. It would have been nice if the author had expanded this section of the book by showcasing, in much more detail, the hard-to-believe emotion of Jack. Jack finds it hard to believe when Ma tells him that there is a real world outside. He thinks that Ma is lying to him.

The ‘Room’ part of the story ends half way through the book. (Spoiler alert). Jack and Ma escape from the Room after they successfully execute their escape plan. This part of the book was extremely thrilling and scary. It was just un-put-down-able. For me, the book ended the moment they escaped. The fact that the book was called ‘Room’ and that there was nothing about the Room, after the escape, was hard to take.

The second half of the book explained about how Jack copes with living in Outside. Jack finds it hard to accustom to the outside life. Everything seems new and strange to him. There are a lot of questions going on in his head and he does not have answers to most of them. He does not understand why his public display of innocence is cute, and hence funny for the adults. He does not understand how he could have a book, ‘Dyllan the Digger’, and still find it in a store (he thinks there is just one copy of everything). He does not understand why paparazzi are like vultures, and many other such things that are commonly understood by people living in the Outside.

While all this was happening, there is very little mention of Ma. For me, the story is as much about Ma, as it is about Jack. The fact that she lived all alone in the Room, before the birth of Jack, has been overlooked. She mentions how not a single day had passed without her thinking about escaping, how she had made different plans, of which none were successful. The book would have got more 'meat' if Emma had explained about the plans that Ma had made when the character was locked up in Room all by herself.

The reunion of Ma with her mother was hardly given any importance. After spending seven years, away from her parents, there was not much joyous interaction between Ma and her parents. I would have liked to see a happy reunion between the two.

Apart from these points that I have listed out, I felt that the book was very well written. It captured the innocence of a child very well. Extreme effort must have gone into the writing of this book and I applaud Emma Donoghue for doing a good job for most of the book.

P.S. Certain mid-sentence capitalizations are intentional. It is not a typo or a grammatically wrong sentence. If you have read the book, you will know what I mean.

Is being selfless actually being selfish?

2011-05-15T17:23:00.013+08:00

As paradoxical as the title of this post may sound, it is actually true! Every now and then when you perform a selfless act by helping an old man cross the street, or helping a student pick up the books that he/she has just dropped, or any such thing, and come about feeling great that you have helped someone, the fact is, internally, you are actually being selfish. You just don’t know it.

To make sense of the previous paragraph, we need to go back a couple of centuries or so. Charles Darwin, a naturalist, made a revolutionary claim that we were not created by God, but we are a product of evolution. I guess every sane person accepts that we are here because of evolution, but the question about God’s existence will be debated until the physicists find the ‘Theory of Unification’. This post is not to discuss about the existence of God, but to make sense of evolution.

Evolution is a process where a living being continually adapts itself to the surrounding environment in order to survive, and the adaptation is carried on down the generation time line resulting in a whole range of organism that we see today. You and I are not special, we are just apes! Technically, Homo Sapiens are the 5^th ape. We are more closely related to chimpanzees than horses are to donkeys. Whether you like being called an ape, or not, you are one. Darwin stated that the aim of the organisms is just one, survival. And only the fittest of the organisms survive. Unfortunately, during his era, nobody knew about the DNA structure or the genes that make up a DNA. When Watson and Crick proposed the double helix model of the DNA, a whole new world was opened up for us to explore.

Scientists have analyzed the gene structure of the human beings and many other animals. They describe the genes in our DNA sequence as ‘Selfish Genes’. The role of the selfish gene is to simply act selfish so that it gets to survive, and that it gets propagated down the generation time line. This is totally in conjunction with what Darwin had proposed. The genes in our body modify to each and every external stimulus so that we can survive and our life on earth can continue as long as possible. Scientists have been able to explain the sensation of fear of heights in certain individuals, the need to fight back to defend oneself, the need to groom oneself to look better, and many such attributes in human beings, as being directed by the selfish genes in our DNA sequence. Some of us are scared of heights because they don’t want to fall down and die. Such explanations can be given to most of the emotions that we exhibit. While all these traits sound logical, there has been one aspect of human behavior that the scientists found hard to explain using the concept of selfish gene; the ability of the humans to be kind to other human beings and even other non-humans.

If selfish gene is meant to help you and you alone, why do we perform acts of kindness and help the needy? Why do we even have to protect someone if we know that the race is run only by the fittest? Recently there was a breakthrough and certain scientists have been able to link this trait in humans to the selfish gene. The researchers have proposed that, the act of being kind to another living being will generate a sense of camaraderie among the two, thus helping the former to remain safe from the latter. The former being, will help the latter, hoping that the latter will not hit back on the former when survival comes into question. The latter will develop a sense of guilt and not act selfish towards itself and thus helping the former to survive. That is a whole lot of things that I have said above. Some of you might want to go back and read through the previous paragraph again.

Experiments have shown that even chimps show selfless acts towards other chimps. However, it is not as clear as it is in humans. This emotional trait has been hardwired into our brains and we perform selfless deeds even though we know that we won’t be getting anything in return. The brain has been positively reinforced by being selfless to such a degree that it no longer needs to know that it will get something in return for this act of kindness. Being selfless also shows that the individual has matured a great deal through the evolutionary process. So, the next time you act selfish and do not see why we should be helping out the needy, keep in mind that, you are nothing more than a less evolved CHIMP!

To be, or not to be (born in March)

2011-04-01T17:08:00.006+08:00

To be, or not to be (born in March), that is the question. Well, that may seem to be a stupid question to ask as no one can decide when he or she is going to be born. But, probably that is a question more directed towards parents, than to those born in March themselves.

Why this question all of a sudden? Well, being a March baby, I had to ask this for varied reasons. The very first years of me remembering celebrating my birthday, seem to be the only years when I have celebrated (at least, when my parents celebrated it for me) to the fullest extent. Ever since I joined school, there has been some or the other reason that has prevented me from celebrating it to my heart's content.

Birthdays, in India, are the days when the birthday boy or girl dresses up in colourful dresses (a change from the monotonous uniform), distributes chocolates to their classmates, invites their "close" friends back home after the school, and has a grand finale of all celebrations by cutting a cake with friends and family all singing the "Happy Birthday song" in unison. It is the day, when the person gets the maximum attention in school and elsewhere, with scores of "friends" surrounding him/her all day, many of whom would have been there only to enjoy the extra chocolates that the birthday baby would have been left with after all the distribution. It is also the day, when teachers would hardly scold or punish you for any mischief performed during school hours.

However, if you are a March baby, none of this would seem to be true. In India, March is the time when schools hold their year-end examination. Every year since my fifth standard (this is when exams start to get serious), I remember having had my birthday on an exam day, or at least, in the middle of the year-end exams. You can imagine my plight here. Colour dress or not, no one gives a damn if there is an exam on that particular day. Moreover, if your birthday falls on a break-day, it is even worse. Everybody would be so busy with their preparations that, it would be easier to find a needle in a haystack than find a friend who is ready to party with you (not that I used to party myself). It would feel like a curse and I would perhaps name it, "The Curse of the March-Born Baby".

One of the worst experiences was during my 10th standard exams in 2003. 10th standard exams are one of the most important exams for a student in India. In conjunction with the all-important exams, there was also the Cricket World Cup that was happening, in which India had gone on up to the finals, which was on March 23rd, 2003. The fact that they lost the finals to Australia made you feel even more miserable than what your exams had already made you feel. Such situations continued up to my 12th standard exams. It was only after that, that I felt there would be some respite with this "curse", allowing me to celebrate my birthday more joyfully. But, I couldn't have been more wrong. March, again, fell mid-way through my engineering semesters and there used to be internal exams in my college in and around this time preventing me from celebrating to the fullest.

Four years passed this way and I later joined NTU, Singapore, for my doctoral studies. Last year, was the first time I "celebrated" my birthday outside India away from my parents. Unbelievably, there was the dreaded exam again, a continuous assessment on the day after my birthday. So, the whole of my birthday was spent studying for the quiz.

This year though, it was a different scenario. I am in such a pressurised situation that celebrating my birthday was one of the last things on my mind. I am currently writing my confirmation report and it seems to be taking ages. I am working on a set deadline in my mind and I want to complete it by then. So, there has been absolutely no respite. I spent the whole of my birthday writing my report and then took a short break. To do what? To *write* this blog post. Man, I must love writing!

At the end of the day, I seem to have become immune to this curse. I am not a party person, I don’t drink, and I don’t spend extravagantly on unnecessary things. Probably it is because I have been tuned that way over the last 22 years. If it is so, I take this as a positive reinforcement, as it has taught me to lead a simple but satisfying life.

Finally, I would like to say that, I don’t have any hatred towards my birthday. In fact, I actually love it. There is this unexplainable feeling that I have towards March. For me it is a magical month. You may say I am biased towards the month because I was born in it, but, I don’t care. Without any offense to other months, March is the best month to be born in!

It would be interesting to see what next year has in store for me. Probably, I will be completely free and will be able to enjoy the day as much as I can. That said I am sure irony will play its part and make me feel too old to enjoy birthdays with the same enthusiasm of a teenager.

"Network Cable Unplugged", but it isn't!

2011-03-16T18:02:00.009+08:00

Today morning, when I sat down at my desk and opened the browser to check my mails, I found that my computer was not connected to the internet. I ran the Win 7 trouble-shooter to diagnose the problem. It said "Network Cable Unplugged". I was like "What the...?" I quickly turned over the cabinet to see where the ethernet cable had run off. It was sitting well behaved in its slot. Then what was causing Win 7 to say that the network cable was unplugged?

I checked the socket connection on my wall to see if the other end of the cable had been disturbed. It was also tightly lodged into its socket. I asked Win 7 for a detailed description of the problem and this is all it could say, "Network cable Unplugged or Broken". Wow, that was descriptive! At least it gave me something new to work with. I replaced the ethernet cable to see if the original cable had any loose-connections in it. Unfortunately, the new cable was also of not much help. The same "error" kept occurring.

Well, if the ethernet cable was not faulty, then was the wall socket faulty? I tested that by connecting the cable to another free slot and still Win 7 said, "Network Cable Unplugged". But it wasn't! Like any other trouble-shooter, I resorted to restarting my machine, and checked if that helped. No, it didn't.

Suspicious that it might be a Windows related problem, I booted into Ubuntu to check if the same problem persisted over there. Not so surprisingly, I was able to connect to the internet without any problems. So, at least the problem was narrowed down to its source. Buggy WINDOWS 7.

Now that I had the power of the internet, I plunged into the World Wide Web to find a solution for this "problem". Not many articles talked about this problem. The few of them that did were happy to stay working with Ubuntu. Sadly, I could not do that. Some of the applications that I require, do not run on Ubuntu, or at least, requires a lot of work to make them run on the Linux flavour. Finally, I came across a forum with a user who had faced the same problem. His "solution" to rectify the problem is given below.

1. Shut down your PC.

2. Unplug the power cord.

3. If you have a laptop, remove the battery as well.

4. Walk away from the problem for at least 30 minutes.

5. When you return, reconnect battery and power cord.

6. Start as usual.

7. If this solves the problem, take 20 minutes and post this to all of those message boards that you didn't find the solution to.

I seriously laughed aloud at the above set of "instructions". What else do you expect a computer science engineer, researching in computer science, to do, when he/she reads such instructions? The instructions looked ridiculously stupid and not worth trying. Therefore, I spent 30 more minutes searching for "proper" instructions to solve the problem. Sadly, I didn't find any. I was seriously frustrated at this point. So, I thought, "well, there is nothing to lose in trying out the above instructions", and gave it a shot.

I shut down my PC and unplugged the cord. My PC is a desktop machine so point #3 does not apply. I also walked away from the problem (it was lunch time and I was feeling hungry). When I returned (35 minutes since I left, to be precise), I connected the power cord and started the machine.

Well, I guess all of you have already expected what the outcome was going to be. Let me swallow my pride and tell you, the bloody thing worked! I was able to connect to the internet in Windows 7. I was lost for words when the minimalist Google page loaded when I opened my Chrome browser. I was literally scratching my head wondering what shutting down the PC for 35 minutes could have done that restarting didn't.

The only logical solution that I can come up with is that, shutting down the PC and unplugging the cord from the socket would have earthed some stray eddy currents that had accumulated on the chipset. I cannot think of anything else. MS needs to look into their network drivers and try to make it more robust to eddy currents.

Finally, since the instructions worked, I could not help but follow the final instruction in the list. I have taken 45 minutes to compile this blog post in hope that it will help someone else with the same problem.

P.S. If anyone else has any logical reason for the above solution, please leave them in the comments section.

How Do You Change The Indian Political System?

2011-03-02T12:47:00.000+08:00

Recently, I came across a video, which was shared by a friend of mine, on Facebook. The video was from a news channel in Bangalore that had invited two politicians to debate about the performance of the current government in Karnataka. One politician was from Congress and the other was from BJP. I won’t take names as I feel they are not worthy enough to be named. Below is the video of the debate and I would like you to have a look at it before reading further.

Well, those of you who know Kannada would have understood what was going on, and those of you do not follow Kannada, would still have known what was going on. There was total chaos in the studios. The news reporter was trying his level best to stop the two from fighting. But, all his efforts went in vain.

If you were from India, you would know that this is a common occurrence and would have thought that these two politicians are corrupt rogues, who are trying to throw mud on each other's party and prove to the public that their personal parties are the "best". You probably are right.

The politician from congress started the "debate" well by questioning the functionality of the BJP by asking what they had done for the development of the state. Since the questions hit the nail on the head, the politician from BJP tried to "elevate" his party's status by trying to demean the congressman and his party. He even went onto brandish personal abuse, which infuriated the politician from congress even further, resulting in a full-fledged verbal abuse.

Why is Indian politics in such a bad condition? Why aren’t there good leaders at the state level? Why aren’t the leaders giving importance to developmental activities? While searching for some "good" politicians, I came across one, Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan, a well-educated politician from Andhra Pradesh. The answers to the above questions were answered by him in part. Below are two videos where he talks about the changes that are required to bring forward a healthy political system.

He does talk at a very high level stating the problems that our system is facing. But, what are the solutions to rectify it? The same personnel, who we say are corrupt, are the ones that have to change the system. Will they do it? Of course not! Why would anyone dig their own grave? So, one may ask, what can be the solution?

As Dr. JP mentions in the Q&A session of his talk at Google, there is a need for awareness among the general public and a desire among the same to solve the country's problems. The educated should step into politics and make the change. Of course, not every educated person is ready to step into politics. There is far little number of people who are willing to make the step. Whenever such a daring person steps in, the "big" parties trounce him in the elections because of the money politics that they play. Here is where we come into picture. If you do not want to step into politics, I can totally understand. What I ask of you is to at least vote for the right person. Do not vote for a person just because he/she is from a "big" party. However, the next question is, ‘Whom do you vote for, if the two personnel in the first video stood against each other for a single seat?’ Well, in that case, if you do not find anyone who is capable of leading your constituency, then do not vote for anyone. Make use of the right to NOT VOTE (there is such a provision in the Indian Constitution).

Secondly, the biggest power that we have in our hands is education. If the government does not provide education, many kids will believe that corruption is the only way to be successful and follow in the paths of the current rouges. We cannot rely on the government to provide high quality education. So, it lies in our hands. I say, go out and imbue the importance of education in your neighbours, your friends, your relatives and most importantly, in those poor people, who do not know the value of education. Moreover, follow the rules. Do not bribe. Do not take autos if the drivers demand more than the meter fare. Take the bus. It will also reduce your carbon footprint. Doing such "small" things can have a relatively major impact on the society. I will borrow this statement from Gestalt psychology, "The whole is greater than the sum of parts".

We cannot expect to see a change overnight. It is only in the next generation that we can see the results. In fact, look at some of the educated politicians who are governing our country today. They are doing a very good job. Dr. Manmohan Singh is a great personality. Narendra Modi is a prime example of a politician who believes in education. Yes, he might have made some mistakes during the Gujrat riots and he should be punished for it, if proven guilty. However, look at the way Gujrat is developing under his leadership. We need to produce such leaders. Sadly, such "good" leaders are scarce. And those few that are educated are at the Central level. There is virtually no one at the state level to take care of the basic needs.

I would like to conclude by saying that education is the only way forward. Education will bring about awareness among the public, which in turn will help the common man to make better and justifiable choices. As more and more people get educated, many of these educated personnel will trickle into politics. They will have a better understanding of the system. They will be better able to solve the problems, which will help the country move in the right direction. You have the power. Make use of it.

Erdős Number

2010-11-29T20:55:00.000+08:00

According to wikipedia, "Erdős number describes the 'collaborative distance' between a person and Paul Erdős, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers." So, who is this Paul Erdős and why is his number famous?

Paul Erdős was a famous mathematician who had an enormous output of mathematical papers. Because of his enormous output, his friends created a metric as a tribute to him. According to this metric, Paul Erdős gets the Erdős number 0. Anyone who has co-authored a paper with him gets an Erdős Number 1. Anyone who has co-authored a paper with a person having an Erdős Number 1 and not directly with Paul Erdős, gets an Erdős Number 2 and so on.

Why am I telling you all this? Because, I believed that I had an Erdős Number of 4! I recently wrote a paper with my Professor, Dr. Ramakrishna Kakarala, who has an Erdős number of 3. This got me excited! The complete tree being: Vittal -> Kakarala -> Kelttee -> J. H. Straight -> Erdős. Therefore, my Erdős Number should be 4, right?

If you were a keen reader, you would have observed that I mentioned "I believed" and not "I believe". The reason being, I was wrong! I do not have an Erdős Number of 4 though I have collaborated with my professor who has an Erdős Number of 3. I missed a crucial part of the definition of the Erdős Number. "Erdős number describes the 'collaborative distance' between a person and Paul Erdős, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers." There you have it. Sadly, the paper that I wrote was not a mathematical paper. For a paper to be a mathematical paper, it has to be published in journals or conferences dedicated to mathematics.

Its funny how people can go from a state of euphoria to a state of despondency within a matter of seconds! Ah, but this is life...

Nature's Unchangeable Path

2010-11-18T13:29:00.000+08:00

Today morning I got up to the usual sound of the alarm from my mobile phone. Sleepily, I walked across my room and opened the window to let in some of the fresh chilly morning air. The air blowing on my face usually wakes my brain up and helps me get my day started. On some days I have to take the help of coffee and on others, nothing helps at all! Today was a different day though. I was wide-awake after opening the window just half way through...

My room's window has a sliding mechanism to open and close the glass pane. Therefore, you just have to push the glass in either direction to get the job done. While this looks to be a straightforward job, little did I realise that pushing it open today, would hurt a living creature.

When I opened the window today morning, I saw a poor butterfly get struck between the window's railings. I had not realised that it had taken shelter on the other side of the window for the night. The butterfly was haplessly fluttering its wings and trying to get away from the "death grip". It was such a saddening sight and I wanted to help the harmless creature. The fact that its wings were struck in the railings meant that I could just not slide the glass pane in the either direction. It would in fact injure the insect even more.

While I was thinking of what to do, the multicoloured insect was fluttering continuously with all its might. The vigorous fluttering had eventually tired the insect, as it was lay silent for the next couple of minutes. I had fears that its wings might be damaged and was wondering if it would ever to fly again. I just did not know what to do. Every solution I thought of would in fact hurt the butterfly further.

After rejecting most of the ideas, I stuck to the least painful method. I decided to lift the glass pane to increase the gap between the glass and railings, enabling the butterfly to fly to freedom. I slowly lifted the glass pane and the butterfly started fluttering again. I had to blow at it to help it get away from this claustrophobic space. Once it reached the end of the glass pane, it flew into the open air celebrating its freedom. It looked to me that the insect was not completely at ease with itself and was trying to reach a nearby tree to settle down. What a joyous moment it was to see the insect escape from a near death position. However, the joy was short lived...

Just when it seemed that the butterfly would find sanctity in the nearby tree, a mynah came swooping in from nowhere and caught the injured insect in its beaks. It was both a stunning and a sad sight. Stunning because I was amazed at the predatory skills of that bird as it caught a flying insect in mid air and sad because the butterfly had finally met its end.

I had to acknowledge that this was how nature worked and that Nature had already planned the time each creature would meet its end. At the most, it is only possible to delay the inevitable, but not stop it completely.

CVPR 2010

2010-06-17T10:51:00.000+08:00

This year's CVPR was nothing short of a major milestone in SCE's history. There were quite a few remarkable achievements in the top most conference in the field of Computer Vision. Here is the refreshing mail that greeted us today morning.

Hi all,

I have some wonderful news to share, fresh from here at CVPR’2010 in San Francisco:

SCE student Duan Lixin, with Xu Dong and Ivor Tsang, has just won the Best Student Paper Prize at CVPR’2010!!!

In addition, SCE has produced 3 oral papers at this CVPR, in terms of 1st author affiliation. This ranks SCE/NTU second among all organizations in the world as far as the number of oral papers is concerned. We are just behind ETH Zurich which has 4 oral papers, and we beat traditional CVPR powerhouses such as CMU, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, U Washington, Microsoft Research (all labs combined), Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, TU Graz, Technion, Weizmann and many others including NUS!

Furthermore, SCE has produced 6 poster papers for a total of 9 papers, which is a bumper crop compared to our numbers in the past (1 or 2, some 4 years ago and earlier)! I’ve heard various well known people remarking on the strong presence of NTU (mainly SCE, I think there is only 1 other poster from EEE) at this year’s CVPR.

The IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) is one of the triumvirate top conferences in computer vision. It is very competitive with an overall acceptance rate this year of 26.7%, of which oral papers have an extremely small acceptance rate of 4.5%. Despite having only 461 papers at the main conference this year, it is heavily attended with some 1900 registered attendees.

Tat Jen
(with CVPR’10 published SCE faculty of Dong, Ivor, Deepu, Maylor, Clement, Ramakrishna, Jianmin and Jianfei)

A Weekend Retreat to Bintan

2010-05-24T17:23:00.000+08:00

Bintan, is a small island belonging to Indonesia. Being just a 50 mins ferry ride from Singapore, Bintan offers people staying in Singapore a perfect get away for a weekend from their hectic and mechanized life. It also offers tourists who visit Singapore a nice place to explore and enjoy the calm lives on the Indonesian island. Bintan has some major resorts, most of them close to the beach. People usually book for resort villas/rooms from Singapore itself. Getting work done from Singapore is really easy as the resorts have set up offices and information facilities in Singapore.

I had been to Bintan for the weekend (22nd and 23rd May, 2010) and stayed in the Bintan Lagoon Resort. Reaching Bintan is not at all a problem as there are a number of ferries from Singapore's Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal. Two way tickets in the comfortable ferries are available for SGD62. The Bintan Resorts feels to be completely secluded from the hustle of towns and cities in the main island. The resorts have their own bus facilities to pick their customers up from the Ferry terminal and drop them back. Bintan Lagoon Resort is 20 mins drive from the Bintan Resort Ferry Terminal.

The resort is self-sufficient with restaurants and apartments. Each villa is given a buggy of its own for moving around the resort. The resort has a Leisure Center where people can relax and enjoy themselves in a number of ways. It has TT tables, indoor games for small children, Laser Quest for youth, a video game room, a swimming pool for people of all ages, and many other recreational facilities.

The beach of the South China Sea is 5 mins walk from the rooms and villas. The waves in the beach are not as strong and tall as the ones we see in India. They are much calmer and much more peaceful. Sunset is the time that has to be spent in the beach. Apart from this, there is also a Golf course and an archery range within the resort.

Overall, the two days that I spent in Bintan was a relaxing and memorable one. I would definitely like to go there again some time in the future.

Second Semester Exams

2010-04-25T23:45:00.000+08:00

Long long time since I wrote a blog post and what better time to write one than now. 12 in the midnight, taking a break from studies, surfing the web, reading blogs, which made me think, why not post something myself? As its exam time here for me, it will be a short blog post and as the topic says, it will be something about the exams.

As my lightening quick second semester comes to a close, all that there is left for me to do is to do well in the final exams. I took three courses this semester which include Advanced Digital Signal Processing, Video Signal Processing and Human Computer Interaction. Being a Computer Science Engineer, it was brave of me to choose two Masters level courses from the School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE), and just one from my school (SCE). Ever since I took the Digital Signal Processing course in my first semester, I have been extremely interested in learning more about Signals. Thats the reason I took up Advanced Digital Signal Processing. Though a novice in Signal Processing (everyone else in my class are from EEE background with extensive knowledge in the same), I was brave enough to choose it.

My first exam (ADSP) is on 27th April, 2010. The third and final one is on 5th May, 2010. Completing these exams (passing them :P) would meant that I would have completed my course requirements. I had to complete 6 courses in total, 3 of which I had finished in my first semester. I am hoping to be done with these three as I can concentrate full time on my research. Praying that all goes well in my second semester exams at NTU.

Shishu Mandir - World Wide Volunteer Week(WWVW)

2010-01-22T12:36:00.000+08:00

In my previous blog entry I was talking about how Sun organizes volunteer activities to make the world a better place. This a continuation of that but a different chapter. After the arduous work at Sangam, it was now time to help out children. Rajesh U.S. had organized a one day event to help out the children in need. I volunteered to help out as, it would be one of the greatest helping hand I could ever provide to humanity.

The place Shishu Mandir, located in Bangalore, is a schooling place for orphans and the needy. It is such a great initiative to help out the young kids so that they can lead a better life in their future. We had a lot of things planned to help out the children. We conducted fun events like Musical Chair and Passing the Ball so that the children could have a great time. We had arranged prizes for the winners of each competition.

We also organized a painting competition so that they could express their artistic talent. Each kid was given a drawing sheet, crayons, sketch pens, and other stationary. The volunteers were helping out the children in drawing and coloring. Some of them were absolutely brilliant.

Post-lunch we gathered all the kids in a room. Some of the kids sang songs and were rewarded with sweets. There were children as small as 4-5 years old, who faced the crowd and sang. They did not have that stage fear. If only they could be given a 'real stage' ...

While the kids were singing, dancing and enjoying themselves, we were acting as judges for the painting competition. We gave out three prizes in each category. This made a lot of them seriously happy. Finally, it was time to leave and it was so hard to do that. Though it was just a matter of 5-7 hours, the kids left a lasting impression in my heart. I will never forget this activity in my life.

Finally, I would like to say this. Everyday, we crave for a zillion fancy things that are not actually essential in our daily lives. On the other hand there are a zillion people out there who do not even have the most necessary and basic things to LEAD A LIFE!!!

Shishu Mandir Volunteer Team

More Photos Here and some more below.

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/vittal.sunca/ShishuMandirWWVW

Shishu Mandir
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=103497&id=583231662&l=98177328ab

Shishu Mandir - Musical Chair Game
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=103503&id=583231662&l=6463bc24cf

Shishu Mandir - Painting Competition
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=103508&id=583231662&l=481a6fd7b8

Shishu Mandir - Painting Competition Part 2
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=103513&id=583231662&l=abed6f9bb1

Shishu Mandir - Lunch with the kids
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=103518&id=583231662&l=328dbd32b0

Shishu Mandir - Prize Distribution
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=103522&id=583231662&l=b74bda0a7e

Shishu Mandir - The volunteers
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=103526&id=583231662&l=45b8a9c2be

Posted at 04:13PM Apr 20, 2009 by Vittal P in Sun

Sangam Eco Drive - World Wide Volunteer Week (WWVW)

2010-01-22T12:34:00.000+08:00

There is no bigger joy than the joy you get out of helping. Sun Microsystems has this amazing initiative of organising lots of volunteer activities for one whole week. This week, named World Wide Volunteer Week (WWVW) is dedicated for all kinds of voluntary services. Sun Microsystems, IEC Bangalore, has done an amazing job in conducting the voluntary activities.

When I heard about the events, I most certainly wanted to participate in as many as I could. I participated in two full day voluntary events. On April the 18th, 2009, there was an eco-drive voluntary service, aimed at helping out the environment. On this day, about 50 volunteers (me included) made a short trip to a place called Sangam(100 kms from Bangalore), which is a confluence of two rivers. This is a major picnic spot and picnic spots go hand in hand with litter. We planned to clean up this place and educate the locals as well as the tourists, not to litter and maintain a clean and healthy environment. This activity was supported by an organisation namely Clean and Green, again situated in Bangalore.

Upon reaching Sangam, we were shocked to see it in such a sorry state. There were litter thrown around, plastic bottles, paper plates and all sorts of miscellaneous garbage. Armed with gloves, rakes, gunny bags, and the drive to make the world a better place, we went around cleaning and collecting the items strewn on the ground. Me and my friends formed up teams to rid the place of plastic bottles. We picked the bottles for 1 hour and were able to collect 6 gunny bags full of discarded bottles.

Once that was done, we helped the Clean and Green team to install Cement Rings, so that people could use them as dustbins and not litter the place in future. Once the rings were placed at strategic locations, we painted them with blue and green. I thought painting was an easy job, but it was when I actually started painting that I knew, how tough a job it was. Once this was done, we wrote out notices, so that people could start using them in future. But the most important thing that we did was to educate the people over there to stop littering the place and start using the bins that we had installed.

Once I was done working, I had this amazing satisfaction that I HAD CONTRIBUTED for making the world a better place to live in !!!

Sangam Volunteer team with the litter bags collected.

More Photos here.

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/vittal.sunca/SangamWWVW

- Posted at 03:24PM Apr 20, 2009 by Vittal P in Sun

Comments:

140 Kgs of plastic was collected.

Posted by Tirthankar on April 21, 2009 at 05:53 PM IST

Inauguration of the Technical Club, ASTC at BNMIT

2010-01-22T12:32:00.000+08:00

Well, here I am writing another blog post. This one is an unique experience. I have never done anything like this before. So, it is a first time for me.

I was asked to be a distinguished guest for the inauguration of the technical club at BNMIT.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from a student in BNMIT named Jayanth M.P. He told me that they were inaugurating a technical club in their college and it was going to be a grand one (It definitely was a grand opening). He had asked me if I could be present there for the inauguration and I did agree for it. He also wanted a SUN Employee to be present there to grace the occasion. He requested for an Employee and finally Rajesh U.S., the SUNCA co-ordinator for south India himself agreed to be there.

We were formally greeted by the BNMIT mangement upon reaching their campus. We were made to sit in the board room along with the Principal, the Director, all the Dept HoDs and a couple of other dignitories from other companies. We were served snacks and drinks. It was weird to be in a social environment with all these high profile people (remember, I am still an Under-Grad Student).

We were then taken to the auditorium for the inauguration. Again, it was all completely formal environment which I had never experienced before. We were introduced to the crowd and were given bouquets of appreciation by the institution!!!

Let me come back to the crux of the event. ASTC stands for Advanced Software Technologies Club. I really liked the name. It is kind of unique and also turns out into a cool acronym. The inauguration started of well and there was Rajesh with his presentation talking to the students about the OUSM group and the SAI programs. The students were indeed keen to learn more about this program. It was quite an enlightening talk to most of them present there.

Crowd at BNMIT

I was called mainly to speak about the SUN CA program and its benefits. I wanted to make it a crisp but an appealing talk which I eventually managed to do. My job was to wake the students up, who were in that hall for 2.5 hrs. God! they were a patient crowd. I was in fact quite amazed at how quite and calm they were throughout the inauguration. When I walked onto the stage, I got the flow that I needed to make a good speech. I was there representating all the SUN CA's across the world. I talked to the students about growing a community, being innovative, contributing to the community and a couple of other thoughts which I think each student must and should follow.

Me @ BNMIT

I am completely happy that I got an opportunity to present my views in front of a big crowd in a different campus! Finally, I would like to thank BNMIT for inviting me (a "mere" student) to represent the Campus Ambassador community at such a major event in their institution.

- Posted at 06:20PM Mar 30, 2009 by Vittal P in Sun

Comments:

Must have been a great experience to be a chief guest (and at a very young age too.. :)

Posted by Nischal E Rao on March 31, 2009 at 06:10 PM IST

I was not the chief guest :P
"Just" a distinguished guest :)

Posted by Vittal P on March 31, 2009 at 11:20 PM IST

First Even Semester Technical Activity

2010-01-22T12:17:00.000+08:00

Today I finished the first technical seminar for the even semester.

Its was three weeks since the even semester started and I was getting restless. I wanted to start off with the technical activities as early as possible. So, why postpone? I went to the management and got things approved and here I am today happily typing off after the events :)

27th was the day when we made all the announcements. Me with a couple of my friends went to all the classes in the CS and the IS departments and made announcements about the seminar. While were were expecting a very few to actually attend the seminar, we were shocked when there was a huge number of people who thronged in for registrations. Sadly, we had to limit the registrations to 100 because of space constraints.

The event was supposed to start at 9:00am today morning. There were a lot of students who were eager to enter the lab. To actually tell you the truth, the students were waiting to enter even before the scheduled start of the event. We had to send back about 25 of them, as they had not registered. We had absolutely no space to accommodate more students. The lab I can say, was filled to the maximum extent possible.

Lab filled to the limit

The first event was on Web 2.0, the latest trends in web technology and how to make use of them. Sattvik Chakravarthy, who conducted the event did a splendid job. After talking about the trends and how we are using Web 2.0 knowingly or unknowingly, he went on further to give a hands on demo. He made the audience write a small piece of code using javascript to animate a picture. There was one sentence in his presentation which caught my eye."Lets not just use, lets contribute....". What an apt saying!

Sattvik Chakravarthy giving his session

Web 2.0

View more presentations from vittalp88.

Next, we had a session on the Open Source Content Management System (CMS), Joomla!. Conducted by Nitin Rao, this session was aimed at introducing the use of a CMS in building a website. This session was purely hands on. We had installed servers on each of the machines. The students were made to install Joomla! on their own machines. Once they were done with the installation, they were able to access their website on the localhost. He taught them how to write articles, publish them, change themes, add breadcrumbs, add polls and many more things. By the end of the session, the students were able to create their own websites, write articles and also maintain it.

Nitin Rao giving his session

The final session, conducted by me was on Sun SPOTs. This session had all the ingredients to get the crowd, rooting for more. I started off the traditional way by talking about the history of Sun SPOTs using a slide show. Later, I didnt feel the necessity of slides as the device I was holding had everything I wanted to show in it. I showed the Bounce Demo and I could feel the excitement in the audience. I was running under a severe time constraint, but still had time to show magic tricks like through the head, ectoplasmic ball :P . I talked about the different features of the Sun SPOTs, Squawk JVM, Wireless Communication, etc. I showed the Bounce Demo- On Desktop to emphasise the communication between the basestation and the freerange sun spots. Next came the crowd favourite, Airtext Demo. I asked them to read the words which were shown when the Sun SPOTs were moved. There was synchronous chant of "This is a Sun SPOT". Brilliant! On Popular demand, I changed the code in front of them to show the letters RNSIT, an abbreviation of our college.

This is me :) and the coveted Sun SPOTs

Previously, I had made use of the Temperature Sensor demo so as to transmit the current temperature OTA to the basestation and display it on the PC. I wanted to show this last thing and some how managed to squeez it in time. Finally, I realised there was also the slide show running. I skipped to the Q&A part. I was again surprised to see a lot of students actually asking a whole range of questions about the usability of Sun SPOTs, features, etc. I am sure that my session had appealed to them. I could make out a lot of enthusiastic people in the audience. Signed off by giving the links to sunspotworld, a couple of blogs and sunspotworld forums. Finally I gave out the link to the RNSIT OSUM Group. If you have not joined this yet, please do so.

Sun Spot Talk

View more presentations from vittalp88. (tags: sun)

Finally, I would like to thank my friends for helping me out over the course of these three days.

Nitin Rao, Sattvik Chakravarthy and Me.

More pictures over here.

So, there came an end to an hectic yet exciting day. I plan to conduct more seminars through the course of this semester, before I leave the college. Lets hope I will be able to do what I have planned to do.

- Posted at 06:47PM Feb 28, 2009 by Vittal P in Sun

Comments:

very nice..

Posted by nitin on February 28, 2009 at 06:53 PM IST

It was a very good event. Very interesting crowd. Loved the session I gave. Hoping to make more such events happen before we leave. Congrats to You and Nitin for doing a fantastic job.

Posted by Sattvik on February 28, 2009 at 10:48 PM IST

Sun SPOT Hack at Yahoo! Hack Day India

2010-01-22T12:16:00.000+08:00

Well, in my previous blog entry I had told you all about how the Yahoo! Hack Day India 2009 event went along. But, I did not specify much about the actual hack which we did. This blog entry is meant for that.

One of the requirements for Yahoo! Hack Day India, was to develop a hack. The choice and the topic was completely in the hands of the teams participating in the event. I came up with this idea of integrating Sun SPOTs in our hack. I had a couple of ideas as to how we actually could use the Sun SPOTs. I conveyed my idea to my team mates and they all liked it.

Once we met on the hack day, we started brain storming as to what actually we should be doing with the Sun SPOTs. After a lot of thinking and even more thinking, it was decided that we would integrate the Sun SPOTs with Facebook. Each time a friend adds a comment, the status message of the Yahoo! Messenger would change corresponding to the comment and the Sun SPOT LEDs would glow indicating the occurrence of some event. To find out what the event actually was, we planned to use the accelerometer in the Sun SPOTs to display message.

We divided the work amongst ourselves. I was to take care of the Sun SPOT interfacing part and everything related to the Sun SPOTs. Phaneendra was ready to do the Facebook part and Nitin was willing to help him out.

I started out by by establishing connections between the basestation and the freerange SPOTs. Once that was established successfully, I made the LEDs on the freerange to glow once it received any packets from the basestation. That too went on very well. By the time I could do this, it was close to midnight. Being a complete novice in Sun SPOT programming, I thought I did a pretty good job at it.

The hack has two front-ends, the Sun SPOT part and the other being the facebook part. To integrate these two we needed to have a commom backend and I suggested we use a file or a database for the interaction. We decided on using files as they are easier to manage, given the short time we had on our hands. Things were going on very well. But at about 1am, we faced a problem in the facebook integration part. It seems that Yahoo! were not accepting any plugins. So we could not upload our plugins. Phaneendra tried all that he could. He enquired a couple of Yahoo! Crew members and also went on to talk to Christian Heilmann about the problem. We got a negative response from everyone saying that we could not go forward this approach.

This was a low point. One part of the project was coming up perfectly but we were stuck in the other part. So, we decided that we would ditch the facebook and try to interface Flickr. Each time a a person comments on your photos, the Sun SPOT LEDs would glow. Again, there was a dead end here. The plugins were extremely difficult to write and there were also other problems. We could not go forward on this approach.

In the meantime, I had successfully established communication between the SPOTs, and the LEDs would glow whenever a file was modified to our needs. But doing this was not much of a satisfication as the other part of the hack was not moving forward.

Finally, we decided that we would do a very simple thing just so that we could complete the hack on time. This time, we thought of getting a notification on the SPOTs, whenever a friend sent a message on the Yahoo! Messenger. Phaneendra and Nitin started writing the plugin for the Yahoo! Messenger. The two of them were successful in achieving this but not without any problems. Phaneendra was using Javascript to write the plugins and we eventually found out that we could not write to a file using Javascript. This was a huge blow for the hack. At this moment, the two front ends were working perfectly, but there was no means to integrate this with each other.

Everyone was at a loss. I thought of many things for fixing this, but none were feasible. I found out that when the save chat history option was checked in the Yahoo! Messenger, there was a file which was getting writtenupon each conversation. I was so excited on learning this, but agian reached a deadend. The file which was getting written was a .DAT file and the contents were all gibberish. Absolute GIBBERISH! I could not read the file and hence was not able to extract anything valuable.

Finally, I had a stroke of brainwave. I could not extract the event, by reading the file directly, but I could do the same thing by looking at the changes in the file size. I stored the file size of the .DAT file before the start of any conversation and again checked it after some time. If there was a change in the file sizes, I could come to a conclusion that there was indeed some conversation which took place. This was a saviour of a discovery. I had to make some changes to the Java program so that it could recognise the change. Once this was done out hack worked beautifully.

But that was not the end of our problems. The deadline for the submission of the hacks was at 12:00 noon. We could get our hack work only at 12:15pm. So this meant that the deadline was up and we could not submit the hack anymore. We went to the organisers and requested them to give us a chance and explained to them out situation. They were kind enough to say that, if there was extra time at the end, they would allow us. Luckily for us, a couple of teams which had registered for the hack submission, withdrew their submissions. We were thrilled.

David Filo (co-founder of Yahoo!), Spohie Major and others were the judges for the competition. Each team had only 90 seconds to present their hacks. We now focussed on time management and how to effectively demo our hack in 90 seconds. After all the drama, it was time for the demo of our hack. The demo was perfect. There were no loopholes and there were no unexpected events to throw us off guard. When I actually showed Sun SPOTs displaying "NEW MESSAGE", the crowd went bonkers and this is the best cheer I have ever received from any crowd.

After the 90 seconds, I gave a short talk about Sun SPOTs to the 300+ crowd. David Filo was one among them. He is the most high profile person I have ever talked to and given a demonstration to. It was such a euphoric moment for me. One that I will never forget!

Click here to have a look at all the hacks that were presented on Yahoo! Hack Day India. The last one is ours. Here is a screenshot of some of the responses we got on twitter about our hack.

- Posted at 12:38PM Feb 17, 2009 by Vittal P in Sun

Comments:

Real cool stuff. Great hack dude.

Posted by Tirthankar on February 17, 2009 at 05:49 PM IST #

Thanks Tirthankar ! :)

Posted by Vittal on February 17, 2009 at 06:48 PM IST #

Yahoo! Hack Day India 09 @ TAJ Residency, Bangalore

2010-01-22T12:15:00.000+08:00

I am still at the Yahoo Hack Day India, and am enjoying every bit of it. The Hack Day India started at 9 AM, on 14th February, 2009. It will go on till 6PM, 15 February, 2009. I will be updating this blog frequently throughout the event. Theres a comprehensive coverage of the event. Visit the blog for the latest updates.

Day - 1 ---- 14th February, 2009

8:40 AM : Reached the TAJ Residency, Bangalore. The lobby was bustling with eager hackers and newbies. We were each given a Yahoo id card and were tied a Yahoo wrist band after which I went to the buffet table for my breakfast. There were idlis, vadas, mashed potatos, scrambled eggs, corn flakes, chocos, doughnuts, a couple of other things which I forgot, papaya juice, watermelon juice, tea and coffee. After a sumptous breakfast it was time to get ready for the hack.

9:00 AM : Attended a session at the Trinity Hall on BOSS (Build your OWN Search Service) by Christian Heilmann. The hall had loads of Yahoo bean bags and I made myself comfortable on some of them.

10:00 AM : I was now in the Vijayanagar 1 Hall to attend the session on YQL (Yahoo Query Languge) by Nagesh Susarla. It was a great insight into how we could use SQL similar statements to query the WEB!

11:00 AM : There was another shift in the hall. This time from Vijayanagar 1 to Vijanagar 2 for a session onYahoo! User Interface Library (YUI) again by Christial Heilmann. It was a rejuvenating event into the world of User Interface. YUI API's is aimed at providing the developer a browser indepedent UI development tool.

12:00 Noon : I was back in the Trinity Hall. There was another session going on, but was in no mood to attend it. Me along with my team mates, Nitin, Lakshman and Phaneendra started discussing on what Hack we could develop in a span of 24 hours. The trinity hall was loaded with Yahoo! Bean bags and we made ourselves comfortable on them. Each of us arranged two to three bean bags to suit our comfort levels. I was on these Bean Bags for about 90% of the event :P

01:00 PM : Sharp at 1PM, David Filo, the co-founder of Yahoo entered the room and started off the Hacking session. The room had a LCD screen which started countdown from 24:00:00.0. After his brief talk, I had the chance to meet him and take a photograph with the Yahoo! co-founder David Filo! A really superb moment.

Me (second from left) with David Filo (second from right), co-founder of Yahoo!

02:00 PM : Lunch time. Menu - Frankies, salads, juice. Only things in the veg category.

03:00 PM : Back to the Trinity Main Hall. Installed the softwares I required for the hack day. JDK, NetBeans, ANT, Sun SPOT SDK.

05:00 PM : High Tea. Some snacks for rejuvenation.

06:00 PM : After a lot of discussions, settled on a hack idea. My job was to interface the SPOTs with the PC and make it do some tricks. :P

07:00 PM : Coding ...... Free Red Bull. There was a huge bucket, We could drink any number of cans :)

07:30 PM : Time when Hack-a-Valentine started. There was a dance team called Shadows-1 who performed a group dance, and duet Salsa and finally another group dance.

09:00 PM : Dinner time. Menu - Rotis, Ghee Rice, a couple of side dishes, Russian Salad, Green Salad, Dhai Papdi Chat and for desserts, fruits, Rasmalai and strawberry pastry. The dinner was Yummmmm........

10:00 PM : Coding ...... Communication between the basestation and the freerange SPOTs was established.

11:00 PM : Coding ......

Coding all through the night

----------------------------------------- END OF DAY ONE ---------------------------------------------------------

Day - 2 ------- 15th February, 2009

00:00 - 05:00 AM : Coding .......... :)

This was how comfortable my location was :) The pic was taken around 3:30AM.

05:00 - 05:55 AM : Sleep, Joking with friends laughing out loud, disturbing others.

05:55 - 06:20 AM : Was updating my blog......

06:20 - 07:30 AM : Sleeping .........

08:00 - 09:00 AM : Sumptuous Breakfast. Menu - Paneer Parotas, Bread, Corn Flakes, Chocos, Cakes, Doughnuts, Omelette, Potato Wedges, Fruits, Grape and Sweet Lime Juice, Tea and Coffee.

10:00 AM : Faced a huge crisis. A major part of the project was not working. Tried all sorts of hacks and tweaks, but to no avail.

11:00 AM : Ongoing Crisis. Thought of withdrawing from the competition. Side-by-side, I was still trying to find a way out of the crisis.

12:00 AM : I found a way to go around the problem. Utterly stupid idea, but it got us out of trouble. I finally got the project working at 12:30 PM. What a relief that was !!! Phew !!!

01:00 PM : Lunch. A light lunch, with a minimal menu for veggies. But at that time, I was thinking only about our demo later in the afternoon.

02:30 PM : Demos start with David Filo, Sophie, and others as the judges. We were the last team and we wanted to make a huge impression on the crowd when we left the stage.

04:00 PM : Time for our demo. Had a stupendous appreciation from the crowd, especially for the Sun SPOTs programming. Nevertheless, the whole project came out very well. The Sun SPOTs displayed "NEW MESSAGE" when my friend sent a me a message through the Yahoo! Messenger.

04:30 PM : Tea with lots of snacks. Mini pizzas, Veg Puffs, some burger-kind-of-a-thing, cakes, sweets and Tea and Coffee.

06:00 PM : Results were set to be announced. We were in a very high spirit, especially after the response we go from the crowd. Sadly, we werent the winners. The Hack which was conducted by the winning teams, had used a lot of Yahoo! tools and software. So that is where, I feel we lost out on the prize, an Apple iPhone !!! :(

06:15 PM : End of event!

I am still pissed off that we didnt win the prize, but nevertheless, I came out with tonnes of goodies. Things which I came out with:

1. Yahoo! Research and Development Pen.

2. Yahoo! Stickers. Lots of them.

3. Yahoo! Swag Bag.

4. Yahoo! Hack Day T-Shirt.

5. Yahoo! BEAN BAG !!!!!!

Yahoo! allowing each of us to carry an Bean Bag was extremely generous of them. I am so happy that I have a bean bag in my house now. :)

- Posted at 08:34PM Feb 16, 2009 by Vittal P in Sun

OSUM - Registrations

2010-01-22T12:11:00.000+08:00

Recently we had our intra-collegiate fest i.e. on Nov 7th and Nov 8th 2008. Our college fest is named "Parichay". One these 2 days there are a lot of technical events along with cultural and literary events which take place. I used these 2 days to my advantage for conducting a mass OSUM registrations.

On these 2 days I kept our college Internet Lab open and took in people for the OSUM registrations. I made announcements on the stage that such a registration is taking place in the Internet Lab and each person who registers gets a Open Solaris Indiana Student kit, the Netbeans CD along with the SUN Keychains and Pen.

Goodies

The response I got was amazing. There were a lot of people who came for the registrations and I had to literally control the crowd. Along with me was a friend (Sharan G.S) who helped me with the registration process. We asked each person to take a PC and log into the OSUM website. While they were creating a profile for themselves we explained about the benefits of joining OSUM and we got a good response from the crowd. We then directed them to join the RNSIT OSUM group. Once this was done each registrant was given the goodies as promised. They went out with a happy face. :)

This mass registration enabled me to get over 100 members in out coll's OSUM group. This was a very satisfying moment for me. Once I reached the 100 mark, Gary sent a mail saying that I had earned my team a Pizza Party. Thank you very much for the generous offer Gary.

More Registrations

Apart from the 100 registrants there are also a couple of other things that I would like to tell you. As the registrations were going on, and we were distributing the goodies, there were a lot enthusiastic people who enquired about the contents of the DVDs. I told them the benefits of using Open Source Software and the variuos features of the Indiana OS and Netbeans IDE. They were keen to try it out and I am sure some of them would have gone home and installed the softwares to have a look at it.

- Posted at 05:07PM Nov 15, 2008 by Vittal P in Sun

Comments:

It's very good organisation to concret student carrier.

Posted by punyasloka Muduli on March 10, 2009 at 12:10 PM IST

It's Sun platfom student are interact eachother & perfom own ability.

Posted by Punyasloka Muduli on March 10, 2009 at 12:13 PM IST

Software Freedom Day - A Huge Hit!!!

2010-01-22T12:07:00.000+08:00

Well guys, I finally finished conducting the first SFD celebrations in our college. And it was a wonderful feeling. Here in this blog I will tell you all the important things that happened over the course of the day, I will try to put in as much information as possible.

When I reached college at 8:15 am there were people who had come already and were trying to get into the lab. At around 9 am there was such a huge crowd that we had to take some serious measures to control it. There were more than 100 people trying to get in and unfortunately we couldn't let them all inside as there was a space constraint. There were also some technical issues that were to be handled, so we postponed the event to 9:45am. But once the event started, there was nothing to hold us back.

Open Solaris Indiana installed on all the PCs. This picture was taken just before the start of the session.

The event started at 10:00am with Introduction to Open Source Technologies. I was the one who gave this presentation and this was the first time I was addressing such a huge crowd. I wasnt at all nervous which is quite a big change in me. As the event was delayed I had to go a little bit fast and that I did. But when I saw the time at the end of my presentation it was 10:35am. I had talked non-stop for 35 minutes!!! I couldnt believe it myself. I had never thought that I could go for such a long time alone. Now that I have done it, I have gained a lot of confidence and am ready to conduct more such events in the future. My Introduction was about the essence of Open Source and how we as students could contribute to Open Source. And the major part was how SUN had contributed to Open Source and a brief overview of SUN Technologies.

This is me during my presentation.

After my presentation there was an Installation fest. This was taken up by Nitin Rao (7th sem, ISE, RNSIT) and he did a very good job at it. He taught the students how to install a guest OS on an host OS using Virtual Box. The students were also excited to try it out on their own. This took place till 11:15am.

Once the mass installation was over it was time for Sham Pavman (JSSATE SUN CA) to take the center stage. We introduced Sham to the crowd and told them that he had recently won an award for his contribution to Bellenix OS. There was a huge cheer for him and he explained in detail about what he had done for his project to get the recognition he got. You can go over to his blog to learn more about his project. Once this was done he took up the task of giving an Introduction to Open Solaris. This he did so well that people were keen to listen more about the OS even after his presentation, His presentation went on till 12:30pm and by then many people were hungry. As we had started late we didnt give any break in between and hence gave an early lunch break at 12:30pm asking people to come back at 1:00-1:10pm.

The Hi-Tech lab was clogged during the sessions.

After the mass had gathered again, "The Big Bucks Bunny" video was played and everyone enjoyed it very much. Me mentioning that the video was made completely using open source technologies left many people aghast and as a result there were more eager faces to learn more about open source.

Harvesting this eagerness we started off with the NetBeans session which was conducted by Rohit K.V. (7th sem, CSE, RNSIT). I must say he did an amazing job. His session was very well planned out. He first gave a good introduction to what NetBeans was and how to start using it. He then went on to show how a mobile application could be developed using NetBeans Mobility. As this was a Hands on session all the attendees were trying it out along with Rohit K.V. He showed the people how to build a calculator for a mobile. The ending was also brilliantly planned. He showed how to transfer this application which was built right in front of them onto their mobiles. This live transfer of the application really got the crowd interested. They too tried and transfered their applications that they had built, onto their mobiles and were very happy to see their first mobile application work on their own mobiles.So great job there Rohit !

After all that bit of coding, it was time for some fun. The next session was again taken up by Nitin Rao and was about Compiz-Fusion. A small video was shown about Compiz-Fusion which got the crowd drooling. Then he showed how those things in the video could be done manually and each of them were very happy to try it on their own. The finale was again brillitant, where he wrote 'SFD 2008' using FIRE! What an effect that was. Thank you very much Nitin for doing such a wonderful job.

Finally it was time for the virtual internet session. And sadly I missed the whole session. :'-( I had to go home and get the goodies which were supposed to be distrubuted to the students at the end of the day. This session was taken by Sattvik Chakravarthy (7th sem, ISE, RNSIT). I will link the page to his blog so that you can read how that session went on.

I came back at 4:10pm and his session ended in 5 minutes' time. After that we distributed all the goodies to the attendees and by the looks on their face I was sure that they would have all gone home and tried out a couple of things done during the day, if not all.

All those people who had to go back by college bus left the hall. but more that 50% of them were still there. So we thought of entertaining them a bit more and had a surprise demonstration for them. That was SUN SPOTs!!! Sham Pavman had brought his SUN SPOTs to the event. So he gave a small demo about what SUN SPOTs actually were. He showed the ball game he had coded into the SUN SPOTs, which was really cool. In the other SUN SPOT there was a bit of a surprise for all of us. When he was moving them normally, there were a bit of lights flashing here and there and no one could make out what exactly was going on. But then he asked us to concentrate on the lights and started jerking the SUN SPOT only to our amazement. The movement brought out the letters "THIS IS A SUN SPOT" on the LEDs and he got a huge applause for that piece of magic.

So there ended and excitement filled day. It is really hard to pick the highlight of the day as I thought all the events were highlights on their own. But if you ask me to pick one event which made the day, it has to be the SUN SPOT demo. Hats off to Sham for such a nice demo, and I would like to thank him very much for coming to our college and making the event a huge success.

Finally I would like to thank all my friends who helped me in organising this event, helping me out in setting the PCs right and+ helping out the attendees during the course of the event. Thank You very much guys. None of these would have been possible without your support. Hoping for a similar involvement in future events.

SFD volunteer team !

Ok, then, thats all there to tell. I have been typing from a long time and my fingers are starting to ache. So see you all next time (hoping its not too long away), Bye till then.

- Posted at 12:59PM Sep 23, 2008 by Vittal P in Sun

Comments:

excellent work dude!!!!

Alas am not in any photos there :(, apart from the group photo!

Posted by Sham Pavman on September 28, 2008 at 11:09 PM IST

Not exactly. Look into the second photo. You are there in it, trying to take a photo at the far end of the lab :P

Posted by Vittal on October 13, 2008 at 09:12 PM IST

Plan For SFD 2008

2010-01-22T12:06:00.000+08:00

This is the first SFD-Software Freedom Day, I will be conducting after I became the SUN CA for RNSIT. I was excited to conduct such an event in our college. There were lot of pre-event details I had to take care of like meet with the HoD, principal, director, etc etc. All these meets went well and I was allowed to conduct the event in our college. After this approval I contacted some of my friends who are also interested in conducting such events. They were excited about this and agreed to be an integral part of the SFD program and I thank them for helping me out.

After a couple of hours of brain-storming sessions and a visit to SUN Microsystems, we penned down the agenda for the day. The agenda was intended to cover as much as possible in one day and bring awarenes about open source technologies.The sessions were also planned in such a way that there were some fun events in between the technical or theoritical ones. So heres the agenda we put up for the SFD.

9:00am-9:45am :Introduction to Open Source --- Vittal (7th Sem CSE,SUN CA, RNSIT)

9:45am-10:30am :Open Solaris Installation Fest ---- Nitin Rao (7th Sem ISE,RNSIT)

10:30am-10:40am :Everyone present introduce themselves

10:40am-11:00am :Tea/Coffee Break

11:00am-11:30am :Introduction to Open Solaris --- Sham Pavman (SUN CA, JSSATE)

11:30am-12:30pm : DTrace Introduction with Hands on Experience of DTrace --- Sham Pavman (SUN CA, JSSATE)

12:30pm-1:00pm : Introduction to NetBeans --- Vittal or Rohit K.V.(7th Sem CSE, RNSIT)

1:00pm-1:40pm : Lunch

1:40pm-2:30pm : Hands on Session on Mobility --- Rohit K.V.(7th Sem, CSE, RNSIT)

2:30pm-3:00pm : Compiz Fusion demo --- Nitin Rao
SUN SPOT Demo --- Sham Pavman

3:00pm-4:30pm : Vitrual Internet --- Sattvik Chakravarty (7th Sem ISE, RNSIT)

4:45pm : End of event.

I had asked our HoD to provide the Hi-Tech lab so that we could conduct hands on sessions side by side and we were given it. So the next thing for us to do was to set up the PC to our requirements.
Me and my friends spent a lot of time in the lab installing all the softwares in those PCs. We also installed Open Solaris Indiana on all of them. And finally there was the problem to network all the PCs for the Virtual Internet session. After hours of gruelling installations the PCs were ready for the event.

After this there was one more thing that needed to be done. That was campaining of the event. We went to every classin the CS and the IS department and announced about the event. The response was terrific and there were about 100 registrants. In fact there were even more people trying to register for the event but we could not accomodate them. We had to stop the registrations at 100 people which was sad. So I felt we did a very good job in campaining the event.

I will tell you about the event itself in my next blog post.

- Posted at 12:58PM Sep 23, 2008 by Vittal P in Sun

JASHAN - The Grand Ashoka

2010-01-22T11:54:00.000+08:00

Finally the day arrived! 22nd August. This was the day I was waiting for from a long long time. This was the day that the SUN Annual Day celebrations JASHAN was scheduled to take place. The venue for this celebrations was the 5 star hotel The Grand Ashoka. From the moment I heard about the venue I was completely excited. I have stayed in Bangalore for most of my life and have heard so much about this magnificent hotel. But I have never been there. Now I have a chance to experience all that I have heard about this hotel on my own.

On 22nd I found out that the time for our performance was at 6PM. I had to attend college on that day as I had my lab in the afternoon. As soon as the lab session got over at 4PM I rushed back home and zoomed off to The Grand Ashoka. I finally reached the venue at 5:30 PM.I was awestruck by the majesticity of the hotel and its appeal. I was standing there staring the grand building.When I came back to my senses I realised that my other CA friends had already arrived at the place and were having last minute practices of the play. I too joined in at once. We were then asked to assemble at the backstage at 6PM. We all did so willingly. Some of them were nervous and some were not. I must tell you that I was not feeling nervous and I really dont know why I was feeling so. I usually get nervous before going onto the stage. But this time there was no such thing. In fact not feeling nervous made me nervous, if you know what I mean.We were then called onto the stage at 6:15PM and our play went on for 6 minutes. The play went on pretty OK. I say pretty OK because we knew we could do better. In fact we did much better during the rehearsals time. So we were having our high expectations about our ourselves. Saying this, I am not telling that our performance went bad. It did go well. The audience were appreciating and applauding the play whenever there were some catchy lines in the play and whenever the song syncing perfectly matched the tone of the play. So that was big satisfaction for us. But the thing that we could have done better will always be there in the back of our minds.

After finishing with the play, we headed out to the end of the audience looking for some softdrinks. And what we found over there was a bar! This was the first time I have ever visited a bar. There were all kinds of drinks being served over there for free. People were drinking beer, vodka, etc, etc. We students werent into drinking so we started heading back to some of the empty seats at the end. We were then told that softdrinks were also being served there. So we got ourselves a glass of sprite and started enjoying the show. The performances put forward by the SUN professionals were mostly good. We were amazed by the talent in those engineers. We enjoyed the dances, plays, etc and were chatting about how well we could have done in our own play.

After all this excitement it was time for dinner. This was the best part according to me. There were so many items on display that I was having a really hard time deciding which to try. If you are a food freak like me then you would have been in a real dilema.I apetizers in themselves were so many that I felt it like the main course. There were biriyanis, rotis,salads, chats, some item prepared in curd, two paneer items, a side-dish made of dal, sweet corn and spinach, rajasthani bindi fry, pastas, and many more. And all these things were on one of the many rows. I tried to have as many new things as I could, but still I couldnt try everything that was there on the menu. I was completely full by the time I had tried half of those items, and I had not yet come to the best part, the Desserts. The desserts section had mouth watering items. There was rasmalai, sweet syrup, pista ice cream and the my best item, the Chocolate Mousse. The mousse was so soft I just melted in my mouth, and if you were a chocolate lover like me, it was heaven! I couldnt control myself and had a big scoop of the delicious chocolate mousse.

Just when we were finishing u p with our desserts, the DJ started playing some cool music. There was this guy on the stage who was about my age (maybe 2 to 3 years older that me. He was supposed to be a great remixer. The remixes he sang were amazing. He had remixed completely different geners into one song and I must tell you it sounded very nice. The moment he started singing many people gathered around the stage area and started dancing. His music was so addictive and was pulling people towards the stage and making them dance.Theres one more thing. The singer was an IITian!!! He was from IIT-Chennai. The moment we heard this, we were stunned. I had never thought that an IIT geek could do such things. If you hadnt known he was form IIT, you could have easily mistaken him for a member of some band. The partnerhsip between him and the DJ was really good. It was like each were guessing each others next moves and the songs and music were being sung and played accordingly. The stage area was going berserk. Everyone were shaking their bodies to the tune of the songs. We CAs too joined in and enjoyed the atmosphere that was created. I have never had so much before. The dance floor was let loose and people of all ages were portraying the child in them. I am sure everyone would have gone home completely exhausted after the dance.

A small glance at the watch told me that it was 10:30PM and I had to travel a really long distance to get home. So I reluctantly left the dance floor, and so did my friends, We really wanted ot stay till the end of the show, but getting home was top priority. It was 11 PM by the time I reached home and I was completely exhausted. The next thing I remember after getting home is waking up the next morning.Its four days since all these things happened and I can still feel the euphoria in me hasnt died out. I have had a really wonderful experience by taking part in JASHAN. So I thank SUN whole heartedly for providing such a wonderful platform due to which we had some really sweet memories that will be embedded in our memories for ever......

Posted at 12:58PM Sep 23, 2008 by Vittal P in Sun

SUN Annual Day - Preparations

2010-01-22T11:53:00.001+08:00

A couple of days back, I was called on my mobile by Mr Rajesh, SUNCA co-ordinator, and was asked to hold on for a conference call. I waited till the rest of the Bangalore CA's joined the conference call. We were all wondering what this was about? The Mr Rajesh said it out. "We are having a SUN Annual day on the 22nd August 2008, and we (SUN Team) would like the CA's to do something on that day."

Most of us were excited about this and agreed to do something. As it was an annual day, we had to perform some cultural activities and not have a technical presentation. Now that we had agreed, we needed to think about something to do on stage. A lot of ideas popped into our minds like enacting a skit,a group dance(which many opposed to), etc, etc. As the majority of them agreed for a small skit we stuck to it. Now we had to think of some nice small play to enact. We googled for it and found many plays, but none of us liked them.

One of the CA's Kavya from MSRIT suggested we do something like the one in "Mind Your Lnaguage". This was a tentative idea, and all of us wanted to discuss upon it. So we decided to meet at the SUN office the following day. When we all met the following day, another CA, Prajwal from UVCE, had thought of another small play and all of us liked it. So we decided to go forward with the new idea. Now the excitement rose. We discussed about this idea with the co-ordinator and once this was agreed, we started writing the script.

The script writing was fun. Each one of us had our own ideas and we took the best of them all. The dialouges were made as funny as possible. We tried to have multi-lingual dialouges and added filmy songs in the middle where ever we felt it was appropriate.The end product was a great script, which would make people laugh out.

Today we met for the informal reharsals. It went pretty well. There were yet more improvisations made to the script. There were some funny moments while we were acting and all of us had a great big laugh in the end. Once we thought we had caught hold of the expressions, we dispersed for the day. We CAs will be meeting again this week once before the actual D-Day. Hoping everything goes fine. Will tell you how it all went on after the actual show.I will also write about what the play was after our performance. Bye till then.

Posted at 12:56PM Sep 23, 2008 by Vittal P in Sun

Shifting of Blog posts from my SUN Microsystems Blog

2010-01-22T11:40:00.000+08:00

For those of you who didnt know, I was a SUN Microsystems Campus Ambassador (SUNCA) during my final undergraduate year. Being a SUNCA has been one of the highlights of my UG life. It has taught me a number of things by me to express my skills while working with the team in SUN. When I was a SUN CA, I used to maintain a blog which I used to constantly update as and when I organised an activity in my college, or was part of an activity organised by SUN. With the recent developments of SUN's take over bid made by Oracle being approved by EU, I thought it would be a good idea to shift my blog posts from my SUN blog to this blog and I would be doing that immediately.

Back To Home

2010-01-04T16:54:00.000+08:00

It had been close to 5 months since I had been away from my parents and moved to Singapore. This was the first time in my life that I had stayed alone for an extended period of time. When I first arrived in Singapore, I knew that it would be a challenge to be living alone without the help of anyone close to you. It sure was tough adjusting to this 'lonely' life in the first couple of months since I had moved here. But, then you have to move 0n and get acquainted with what life throws at you. And that I had done well. But as it got closer to the date of my flying back to Bangalore, all the beautiful memories of my childhood days came back to me and I was excited to get back to my HOME.

I knew that I would be staying there for a very short duration of time and that I had to make the most of it. And what better than stay at home and eat the good home cooked food and spend time with your parents? I must agree that I did not roam about much across Bangalore as I used to when I was living there. I stayed at home most of the time relaxing to the comforts of the environment that you know so well.

Before going back to Bangalore, I felt that I would embrace the place as soon as I land there and it would feel different (good different) to live in my room in my house, which I had missed for so long. Surprisingly, it did not feel at all different to go back to doing my old routines. It felt like I had never been out of that place and had been living there all these 5 months. This was shock to me as what I was feeling was completely different to what I had expected to feel. I had to come to terms with it and it took me some time to do so.

Just like all good times, the two weeks that I spent in Bangalore flew quickly and here I am, back in Singapore typing this blog post wondering how time never seems to be on your side by passing away quickly when you want it to slow down and being lethargic when you want it to fly away quickly. Nevertheless, now that I am back in Singapore, I cant wait to start working on my research which is the main reason for which I have come all the way here...

IMI Workshop on Computational Aesthetics and Photography

2009-12-13T22:01:00.000+08:00

Over the past two days I have been completely busy with the IMI Workshop on Computational Aesthetics and Photography held at NTU, Singapore organized by my Professor, Dr. Ramakrishna Kakarala. I had volunteered to assist the organizers in any possible way and I am happy to say that the event went on on smoothly.

The two days that I spent listening to prominent speakers was extremely knowledgeable. It all started off with Dr David G. Stork talking about "Computer Image Analysis Of Art". First of all let me tell you that, I had spent the whole of my previous semester reading one of the books that he had co-authored, "Pattern Classification". Each time I read it, I was astonished at how well it was written and also at the immense knowledge that I used to gain even with a small sitting. The book is written in such a way that it makes the reader think about the Pattern Classification techniques and makes them visualize the concepts. Its a 'top-notch' book and I would recommend every one of you in the field of engineering to read it. I respect the authors of this book . That said, you can imagine how it must have felt for me to sit about 4-5 feet from Dr. David G. Stork and listen to him talk about his research area and the specific details about the topic mentioned above. I was truly amazed by the expanse of Dr. David G. Stork's research area.

The second day was an even more hectic day filled with talks from various Professors and Researchers from across the world. I would like to mention about a few of those talks (the ones which caught my attention). To start off, there was a presentation on "Mobile Visual Computing" by Dr. Kari Pulli, from Nokia Research Labs, Palo Alto, CA. It was fascinating to hear about the amount of computation that is actually possible on a mobile phone and the research areas that he was working on. It was only from his talk that I got to know that he was working with the team in Stanford that built the "Frankencamera". The camera runs Linux, and its metering, focusing, demosaicing, denoising, white balancing, and other post-processing algorithms are programmable. Best of all, the APIs are Open Sourced.

The second talk was on "Affective Image Classification For Art Images" by Dr. Jana Machajdik. The reason I am mentioning this is that, I had worked closely on the same topic as a mini project in Computational Intelligence course during the first semester at NTU. I was surprised to see that the techniques she had made use of for the classification matched so closely to the ones that I had used in my Mini-Project. And, also the results were comparable (mine had more constraints attached to it though, considering it was for a mini project).

One other talk that I appreciated was the talk by Dr. Ron Kimmel, who spoke about "Metric Geometry In Action". I was blown away by the immense knowledge that he possesses, not only in the topic that he spoke about, but also about a lot of other things which came to light over the two days by looking at the quality of questions that he posed to the other speakers.

Finally, I have to say that, these two days were very productive and informative. I got to know about the major research areas in the field of Computational Photography and most importantly, I was able to get to know who the experts were in this field. I am definitely looking forward to more such conferences.

First exam at NTU

2009-11-24T21:54:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, I wrote my first major exam at NTU and it was a new experience all together. I have to say that the way the exam was conducted was not much different from what it was in India. There was the same final minute preparations from the students outside the exam hall, the same sound of frantic flipping through pages, which makes you more nervous than the person flipping the pages actually is, and the similarities dont end there. I feel that these similarities actually exist because, these are some things which are universal. Where ever you are in the world, students are nervous about exams, some are confident and make the people who are nervous even more nervous, students have a feeling they have forgotten what they have studied over the course of the semester and hence try to recollect everything by browsing through the complete notes within 20-30 minutes, etc, etc.

Having said that, there were some marked differences between exams in India and exams in Singapore. First difference is that in India, we used to write the exams in the same classrooms where we attended lectures over the semester. But here, there are dedicated exam halls which have an 'aura of an examination' emanating from them. These exam halls are not just a room with desks and chairs, they are multi-leveled halls. There are toilets WITHIN the exam hall. The ground floor is where the students sit and write the exams and the first floor houses the toilets. This saves considerable time for students who want to use the toilets during the exam (not that I used it).

Secondly, here, you are allowed to take you cell phones inside the hall, but in switched-off mode. I know that the result is the same, but it was worth mentioning to highlight the fact that the were no restrictions on what the students carried inside the exam hall as long as they didnt use them in illegal ways. You cannot imagine the invigilator allowing you to carry a cell phone inside an exam hall in India.

Thirdly, in Singapore, the halls get freezing cold as time progresses. Not that it is unique to an exam hall as every room here is air-conditioned, I felt cold for the first time in Singapore inside an air-conditioned room. For the next exam I will be carrying my jacket with me, just in case...

Finally, one of the most important differences lie in the fact that, the questions in an exam in Singapore are more application oriented, i.e. they consist of problems which require some amount of thinking to solve. In India, 70% of the paper used to be filled with theoretical questions. So, most of the people used to answer them correctly and hence if you were not able to answer all the questions, it would be sign of bad omen. But here, you can always be sure that not everyone will be able to solve all the problems as they 1)require time to think, which is a resource that you cant enjoy, and 2)There are bound to be some really tough problems which test your ability. So, you can still come out of an exam having a good feeling about yourself even though you were not able to answer all the questions. But, me being a perfectionist, find it hard to accept that not being able to solve a problem should not be much of a concern.

So, to sum up, there are some notable differences between how the exams are conducted in Singapore, but in the end, one thing remains the same whether it is in India or Singapore. Students are stressed about exams and the pressure to do well will always be there!

Up Close with the Ferrari Drivers

2009-09-24T19:57:00.000+08:00

Today was one of those wonderful days, which every Ferrari/Kimi fan would have loved to experience. I had been to the ION Mall on Orchard road to get a glimpse of my driver idol, Kimi Raikkonen. Ferrari had set up a stall to display their wonderful Formula 1 car. Though it was barricaded, it didnt matter, because the only thing I could not do was, sit in the car. I was at a touching distance from the F1 car.

The drivers were supposed to arrive at the display spot at 2:45 pm today. There were scores of people, all waiting to have a glimpse of their favorite driver. e crowd had gathered long before the drivers were scheduled to arrive. Kimi and Giancarlo made a splendid entrance on their Ferrari (not the Ferrari F1 car, of course). Kimi was in the driver's seat and they just whizzed past us on the Orchard road. After the split second yet great, glimpse of the red Ferrari, there was a short wait of about 10 minutes for them to park the car and enter the display area.

Ferrari Stall in the Background

The kind of rush that I saw today was never before seen by me in Singapore. All the fans, were excited and almost all of them had their cameras in their hands. There was a huge round of applause when the drivers made their appearance on the stage. I was there standing in between people, with a camera in my hand and screaming out to Kimi. This was the first time that I had seen a Formula 1 driver up close. The drivers were about 5 feet away from where I was standing. Kimi on the left and Giancarlo on the right (to me). There was a small interview where were directed to the two drivers. They were asked about the excitement of the night race, the brilliant fight that these two drivers had two races ago (Fisi was in a Force India then) and also about the beautiful city of Singapore.

Once that was done, there was a small game held between the two drivers. There were pit-crews who had assembled a fuel rig close to the car. The competition was to see which of the two drivers could fuel the car the fastest. Utter fun !!! Fisichella 'bravely' asked Kimi to go first. Kimi took close to 1 minute to understand the exact way to fuel the car (he does believe in getting to know the rules completely before he ventures into any kind of a competition :P ). There was a loud cheer when Kimi started 'fuelling' the car. Once he had finished it was Giancarlo's turn to show that he could beat the Iceman. Though I dont remember the exact timings, I remember the fact that Kimi won the competition by being 0.03sec faster than Giancarlo. Poor Fisichella. Once the winner was announced there was an even louder cheer for Kimi than what there was before. That was one fun event!

After all this excitement, it was time for the drivers to leave. They were escorted into the mall and were briskly taken away to the parking lot after which I can only presume they zipped away in their Ferraris. Once the drivers were gone, the barricades were removed and we were able take pictures of the car from up close. After some 200 odd pictures of the car, I moved on to the official Formula 1 store. Though I did not buy anything, it was great to look at the (overly priced) merchandise. One cap was S$59 and a T-Shirt was S$169! I did have some fun by taking lots more pictures over at the merchandise shop.

So, thus came an end to the exciting day which I will never forget in my life. I have heard that there are similar displays from other teams across the city, but, I do not know if the respective drivers would be making an appearance those places. On Saturday (two days from now), I will be going to the circuit to have a feel of the Formula 1 atmosphere. I guess I now know what to expect and how it is going to be like.

Long Time Since

2009-09-24T19:33:00.000+08:00

Its been a really long time since I have used this blog space. I used to use it to share the links of the various sporting events that used to take place. I have stopped doing that now, at least here. I still update Arsenal football match links in the orkut community, Arsenal FC Multimedi a. So, if you have not been able to view the matches and/or find links online, you can always go there to get them.

Next, I want to tell that, I will be using this space from now on for blogging about a lot of other things. Usually, they will be about research and the various other happenings that I feel interesting. Also, there will be personal blogs about me and the thing that I accomplish in the future or perhaps even a blog down the memory lane to tell you all about the things that I have done in the past.

I can guarantee you that this is the best place to visit, if you want to learn more about me. Keep looking forward for the new post. Its not going to be too long now.

How to remove MUHAHAHA Virus!!

2008-05-05T22:33:00.000+08:00

The next time you get the message :“Orkut is banned you fool, The administrators didnt write this program guess who did?? MUHAHAHA!!” don't panic. Remove it by using the steps I mention in this article

Step1

MUHAHAHA!! is a W32.USBWorm virus which displays such messages while opening Orkut and Youtube.The very first step: Open the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del and go to processes tab .

Step2

Locate svchost.exe under the image name. There will be many processes by that name but look for the ones which have your username under the username.

Step3

Just kill these processes by pressing Del key.Only kill those which have your username under the username and leave the rest.

Step4

Open the run command and type C:\heap41a and press enter. This is a hidden folder. Delete all the contents of this folder.

Step5

Open the registry by typing regedit in the run box.
Search for heap41a in the registry by using the find command.

Step6

You will get something like this “[winlogon] C:\heap41a\svchost.exe C:\heap(some number)\std.txt“. Just delete the entries by pressing the del key.

Step7

Close the registry editor. Now the virus will be gone.

Sepang F1 Curcuit

2008-03-26T01:37:00.000+08:00

The Sepang F1 International Circuit is located to the south of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is the most technically challenging circuits in the world. Sepang circuit boasts superb pit garage and media facilities, as well as impressive grandstands and patron amenities.

The circuit was designed by renowned German designer Hermann Tilke, who would subsequently design the impressive new facilities in Shanghai, Bahrain and Turkey.

The main circuit, normally raced in a clockwise direction, is 5.54 kilometres long, and is noted for its sweeping corners and wide straights. The layout is quite unusual, with a very long back straight separated from the pit straight by just one very tight hairpin.

Singapore MRT

2008-03-26T01:17:00.000+08:00

Singapore's MRT(Mass Rapid Transit) is the best managed transport systems. It forms the Backbone of the railway system in Singapore spanning across the entire city. Singapore MRT has stations above the ground, underground and on the ground.

Every station has at least four General Ticketing Machines (GTMs), a Passenger Service Centre, LED and plasma displays that show train service information and announcements. All stations are equipped with restrooms and payphones, although some restrooms are located at street level.

As seen in the above map, the MRT covers the entire city in a well planned manner.

Many of the trains run automatically. The trains in themselves are a beauty of their own. The punctuality is amazing. There are LCD Displays in every station indicating the time and the remaining time for the arrival of the next train. These facilities make life in Singapore easy. Hoping for such a system in every major city in the world.

Connect to the internet after bridging

2008-03-16T17:45:00.000+08:00

In my previous post I have given the steps to bridge a modem. Now that is done lets see how to establish a net connection.

Pre-requisites : Username and password provided by your ISP, and you should have logged in as an administrator.

Steps to establish the connection:

Click on Start, go to Control Panel.
Double click on the Network Connections Icon.
Click on the "Create a new connection" button at the top left hand side of the window. A "New Connection Wizard" window will open up.
Click on the "Next" button.
Select "Connect to Internet" (the first option) and click "Next".
Select "Set up my connection Manually" (second option) and click on "Next".
Select "Connect using a broadband connection that requires a user name and password" (second option) and click on "Next".
Type the ISP name in the space provided. "AIRTEL" for an Airtel connection and "DATAONE" for a BSNL Dataone connection (without the quotes) and click on "Next".
Type in the user name and password provided by your ISP and keep the two check-boxes checked. Click on "Next".
Check the "Add a shortcut to this connection to my desktop" check-box and click on "Finish".
Now you must fina a new icon on your desktop, named "AIRTEL" or "DATAONE".
Double click on tht icon. Check the "Save user name and password for the following users" check-box checked. Select either "Me only" or "Anyone who uses this computer" option according to your wish.
Click on "Connect" button.
Now you have established the internet connection.

How to bridge your modem?

2008-03-16T15:11:00.000+08:00

The bridging technique varies widely depending on the modem you have. I'll be giving out the steps to bridge two widely used kinds of modems.

1. Beetlel 220BX, ADSL2+

This modem is usually given out when you subscribe with Airtel for your internet connection.
Pre-requisites: The username and password provided by your ISP, and you should be logged in as an administrator.

Steps for bridging:

Open your web browser and type 192.168.1.1 in the addressbar.
Give the username as "admin" and password as "password" (without quotes). Now you will be in the home page of our modem.
Click on WAN in the left hand side of the page. This will take you to the Wide Area Network (WAN) Setup page.
Click on the edit button.
Set VPI: [0-255] to "1" and VCI: [0-65535] to "32". Then click on "next".
In the connection type page select "Bridging" and set the Encapsulation mode to "LLC-SNAP BIRDGING". Click on next.
Check the enable bridge service checkbox. And type the service name as "br_0_35".Click on "next".
Confirm that you have typed everthing properly. If so click on save and reoot your modem.
Now your modem is bridged. The steps for connecting to the internet is given here.

2. Sterlite, Huawei Modem
This modem is usually given out when you subscribe with BSNL for your internet connection.
Pre-requisites: The username and password provided by your ISP, and you should be logged in as an administrator.

Steps for bridging:

Open your web browser and type 192.168.1.1 in the addressbar.
Give the username as "admin" and password as "admin" (without quotes). Now you will be in the home page of our modem.
Expand the "Home" tab.
Click on "WAN Settings" to proceed to the next phase.
Change the wan type from to RFC2684Bridged.
Click on "Apply".
Save the modem settings and reboot your modem.
Now your modem is bridged. The steps for connecting to the internet is given here.

Petronas Towers!!!

2008-03-15T20:50:00.002+08:00

The Petronas Towers is one of the most beautiful structures I have ever seen. The first time I lay my sight on the Petronas Towers when I entered Kuala Lumpur is unforgettable. The majesticity of the towers is worth watching. I would love to visit the towers again and again and again.............................................

Here are some of the facts about the Pertonas Towers which you might enjoy.

History
These towers, which were designed by César Pelli, an Argentinian architect, were completed in 1998 and became the tallest buildings in the world on the date of completion. The 88-floor towers are constructed largely of reinforced concrete, with a steel and glass facade designed to resemble motifs found in Islamic art, a reflection of Malaysia's Muslim religion. They were built on the site of Kuala Lumpur's race track. Because of the depth of the bedrock, the buildings were built on the world's deepest foundations. The 120-meter foundations were built by Bachy Soletanche, and required massive amounts of concrete.

KLCC Park

Outside the building is a park with jogging and walking paths, a fountain with incorporated light show, wading pools, and a children's playground.

Suria KLCC is one of the biggest shopping malls in Malaysia.

Skybridge

The towers feature a skybridge (constructed by Kukdong Engineering & Construction) between the two towers on 41st and 42nd floors. The bridge is 170 m high and 58 m long. The same floor is also known as the podium, since visitors desiring to go to higher levels have to change elevators here. The skybridge is open to all visitors, but passes (limited to around 1400 people per day, which usually run out before noon) must be obtained on a first-come, first-served basis. Passes are free. The skybridge is closed on Mondays.

Kuala Lumpur

2008-03-15T20:50:00.001+08:00

Hello again. As I had told you in my previous blog in the last week of my Singapore trip I had been to KL Malaysia. It is the biggest city in Malaysia. KL is a 5.5 hr drive from Singapore. I went to KL on bus(Oh! what a bus it was. I felt like i was on the plane . I stayed in the Cititel Hotel located near KL Sentral.This was by far the best hotel i have ever stayed in. See this beauty here. The hotel is located just beside the Mid Valley Mall one of the biggest malls in KL. I had been given an room on the 26th floor and I was in for an awesome treat. The view of the city was amazing especially with the two giant buildings The Petronas Towers and the KL Tower(Menera KL) in the background.

While in KL I had been to the Batu Caves. It is a temple dedicated to Lord Subramanya. It comprises of 10 caves of which 3 are the main ones in which the temples are located. Apart from that there is a huge statue of the Lord at the entrance of the caves.

The next hot spot was the KLIA. Kuala Lumpur International Airport is in the outskirts of the city. There is a train directly form the KL Sentral where i stayed to KLIA non stop. The journey takes about 30 minutes. The viewing lounge at the KLIA is one of the best. It gives a clear and spectacular view of the Airport with planes taking off and landing.

Close to the KLIA is the Sepang F1 Circuit. Being an F1 fan myself a visit to the Sepang was a must for me. Sepang is 15 minute drive(at 120kmph) from the KLIA. On reaching Sepang I was over the moon. What a feeling it was when I sat on the seats in the Grand Stands. The beautiful architecture of the Grand Stands is the main attraction. I really wish to be there again on April 8 to see the Sepang F1 Grand Prix. But having a look at the track itself was a dream come true for me.

The main attraction in KL is The Petronas Towers. I was awestruck looking at its mighty structure. Then there is the KL tower also called as the Menera KL. It is a communication tower and is the 4th tallest tower in the world. The view from the top of the KL Tower is amazing. One can see the whole of KL from it. This is the perfect place to capture your photo with The Petronas Towers behind you.

Then not to forget there is the Genting Highlands. This is a theme park with amazing rides and cool stuff. There are 3 theme parks at the Genting Highlands. The Genting Indoor Theme Park, The Genting Outdoor Theme Park and not to forget the Water Park. The Genting Indoor Theme Park has a skydiving venture. It is the only one of its kind in the entire ASIA! I spent a whole day at the Genting Theme Park and had a go at each and every ride there was.

This short 4 days trip at KL Malaysia came to an end and I returned back to Singapore.

Singapore Trip

2008-03-15T20:43:00.000+08:00

The long awaited and one of the most exciting trips of my life time started on January 10th 2007. I left for Chennai from Bangalore via train and reached there on the same night. I had to board my flight Air India Express Boeing 737-800 the next day at noon at the Anna International Airport in Chennai. The journey was amazing after all it was my first time outside the country. I reached Singapore's Changi International Airport at 6:20pm local time.One glimpse at the airport told me the trip is gonna be one hell of an experience.

I stayed in Singapore for 18 days. The places I visited in Singapore were Singapore Science Centre, Singapore Discovery Centre, Singapore Zoo, Night Safari, Singapore's Jurong Bird Park, Sentosa Island, China Town, Suntec City, Esplanade Theatres on the Bay, Clarke Quay, some temples, VIVO City, and 1-2 places which I guess I have forgotten.

Singapore Zoo is supposed to be the best zoo in the world with extremely high Hygiene conditions. You can explore the beautiful place here.

Night Safari was awesome. It is a must see if you visit Singapore.This is the first of its kind in the world. You get an amazing opportunity to learn how the animals behave in the night and all about their nocturnal life. See more here.

Jurong Bird Park is located on the west of the Singapore's main island.There is a spectacular collection different kinds of bird species.I was amazed by the colorful birds flying around you without any fear. Learn more about this beautiful Bird Park here.

Sentosa island is the southern most island in Asia. This is where the great Merlion is located in Singapore. Merlion is half lion and half mermaid. The top part is a lion and the bottom is a mermaid. This is a true spectacle and a must watch. The most famous underwater world is located in Sentosa island. See more about this fantasy island here.

Vivo city is the largest mall in Singapore. It is located at the Harbour front and gives a great view of the Sentosa island. The terrace is spectacular. Especially with the artificial beaches on top of the roof!!! What i liked most about this place is the the awesome view from the terrace and the free consoles to play on the Xbox and PS2. And one more thing the MRT(Mass Rapid Transit) station is located directly below the mall and there is direct entry into the mall if u come in the trains. All in all this is one hell of a City in itself!!!

The city center is a beautiful place with hundreds of skyscrapers. The center of Singapore the Suntec City buildings. It is set of 5 skyscrapers and in the middle is the Fountain of Wealth. This is the worlds largest fountain. The night view is spectacular. Any angle you turn into u find a magnificent huge building. Don't miss this the next time you are in Singapore.

In the last week of my trip I visited Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.

Then came the 29th Jan 2007. This was the day I returned back to India. My flight was in the evening. Had a trip around Singapore in the morning and visited some spectacular temples in Singapore. At 7:20pm I boarded my flight back to Chennai(Air India Express Boeing 737-800) and landed in Chennai at 9:30 IST. My train to bangalore was waiting the next day and I was back in Bangalore even before I knew it.

Every good thing has to come to an end. The same is true for the article and my Singapore trip.

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL STOP 0xD1

2008-03-13T22:58:00.000+08:00

SYMPTOMS

Your Microsoft Windows based computer stops responding, and you receive a STOP 0xD1 error message that is similar to the following:

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

CAUSE

This problem occurs because of a problem in the SCSIPORT driver. The problem occurs when incorrect areas of memory are overwritten or are written to disk. This problem occurs only with SCSIPORT drivers that do not use map buffers for I/O transfers. To determine whether your SCSIPORT driver uses map buffers, contact your Independent Hardware Vendor (IHV) or your Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM).

RESOLUTION

Updating the SCSI Driver should help solve the problem.