Competition Fiasco

In the backdrop of the all-so-prevalent election fiasco these days, it's funny how political parties focus on all the misdoings of their opposition, rather than focusing on their own manifesto of all the greatness they'll bring along. Not too far from its parallel in the common life, is it? In the name of competition, we end up focusing on being better than the rest, rather than being our absolute best.

:)

Days like these make you realize how beautiful life is. :)
'Zindagi bohot khoobsurat hai'

Mettle Work

There is an extremely thin line between being naive and being dumb.

Jaane Kya Baat Hui...

Yun Toh Koi Gilaa Nahin
Sab Kuch Tha Kya Naa Tha
Phir Bhi Jo Ikk Kami Si Thi
Uska Pata Naa Tha

Yun Toh Koi Gilaa Nahin...

Yeh Kaun Mujh Mein Chupke
Mujhe Dekhne Laga
Itna Hassen Pehle
Kabhi Aaeena Naa Tha

Yun Toh Koi Gilaa Nahin...

Jaane Kya Baat Hui,
Jaane Kya Baat Hui...

Haan dhoop mottiyon si
Jhaankti thi na kabhi
Itni to raat-rani
Mehekti thi na kabhi

Mausam hara to tha magar
Itna hara na tha
Gaate hain phool patte
Bajate hain taaliyan

Khush ho ke naachte hain
Trakaton pe daaliyan
Khamoshiyon ko bolte
Pehle suna tha

Yun Toh Koi Gilaa Nahin...

Jaane Kya Baat Hui,
Jaane Kya Baat Hui...

Purest at heart... :)

Came across this beautiful article on the Teach For India Blog. Must read.

Unravelling the Mystery of God in a 2nd grade classroom

This testifies how pure kids are at their heart, unadulterated by the adult opinions of the world. A couple more such excerpts I completely loved:

"Kids are wonderfully honest. Kids are also fantastic actors. Kids are transparent. Kids also hide. But, the beauty is, for every kid who is an actor, there are many others who’d want to impress the Teacher by telling the truth." :Part of a post on the TFI blog

"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
- Pablo Picasso

From the Bhagwad Gita...

"There is no end. For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does it ever cease to be. It is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval..."

Music Saves My Soul

Whatever would happen to me, if there weren't any music. So many times have I thought of making a list of all my favorite songs. Just to keep a track of which one I am mesmerized with currently, may be I should constantly post the ongoing favorites. Here's the one I am humming right now:

Main Tenu Samjhawan Ki, Na Tere Bajhon Lagda Ji... by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan.

Awesome Song with equally awesome lyrics. Though I hardly pay attention to the lyrics of a song, this one completely beholds my soul for the time it flows.

Iterations of My Self

I was thinking today if I would want to go back and re-live my life till this moment; Correct all the mistakes that I ever made; set right all those instances that can be improved and relive all those moments I enjoyed to the fullest. I realized that I won't.

The worst experiences in our lives teach us the best lessons. Lessons that change us completely, make us a different person, change our definitions and make us feel glad to have had those bad days at the first place. Given a chance to go back and edit them, would I do that? No, because then my learning won't be the same anymore, my experience wouldn't be commensurate anymore, my roots wouldn't be strong any longer. I don't regret most of the mistakes I ever made, don't want to change any of the most awful experiences I sustained. Because with each of those gales, I know, I just grew a little stronger, a little bolder, a little wiser and a little kinder

The intent of our lives...

"The purpose of life is not to be happy - but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you have lived at all." -Leo Rosten

This quote doesn't mean that the intention of our lives is to be sad either. All it portrays is the difference between directing our actions to our happiness and procuring happiness automatically as a result of our karma, the reason for our existence.

My Facebook Internship Saga

Without any experience in the professional world, without ever having stayed at another country, but with knowledge that instigates any undergraduate computer science, I got this extraordinary opportunity to work at one of the biggest web giants of the Silicon Valley, Facebook. Being an ardent user of this addictive site, I always wondered how things worked behind the scenes: how did they build stuff, monitor statistics and dealt with the herculean challenge of handling humongous amounts of data. Getting this matchless prospect to work in the heart of the internet was akin to a dream come true.

Wadding up my stuff in early May, I had no idea about what to look forward to. It was only during my first week at Facebook that I realized the extravagant bonanza in store for me. At Facebook, I was given complete freedom to decide what project I wanted to work on for the major part of my internship and shape it the way I wanted. Brainstorming with other engineers about cool features we could enhance the site with were part of the diurnal conversations. And the impact I was making was astounding. My tasks within the first few weeks itself involved deploying some functionality on the live site, impacting the experiences of more than 500 million users globally. Not before joining this splendid place had I envisaged such an impact as possible, specially when I hardly had any prior web development knowledge. Virtually all the languages and tools I was playing with were novel to me, I hadn't even heard about a number of them before but comprehending them was made so much easier with the abet and encouragement of all the engineers around. Adhering to Facebook's motto of 'Move Fast, Break Things', during my 3 months of internship, I enhanced my web development skills colossally and learned innumerable intricacies of social networking!



A major contribution to my remarkable experience was made by the people I was working with. At Facebook, you get to work with the smartest people on earth. Everyone around is an ace in their work and extremely enthusiastic about whatever they are building. The energy in the company is just amazing! I remember listening to the VP of engineering for Facebook during the Grace Hopper Conference 2009 in Arizona. He said, the best thing about your job should be to love what you do. It was during this summer that I realized how true this is. Nowhere else in this world do you get to sit and work with the best coders on earth, have meals with the veterans in the company, play high school sports with your managers or have barbecue at the CEO's house. Facebook is truly amazing.

I had oodles of fun meeting with people from all over the world and participating in intern events like Scavenger hunt, Go Game or Beach Boardwalks. Taking a shot at all those things I ever wanted to do was incredible. Rafting, Skydiving, acquainting my taste buds with every existent cuisine on earth, Facebook Summer Party celebrations and a 3 day long Hackathon provided the icing on the cake. I have clearly had my best summer ever. Having such a great time with a limitless personal and professional enrichment all the time, I can say no less than, Facebook is awesome! And now that I am back, I am much more energetic, revived and excited to be learning so much more. With so much freedom, independence, awesome mentors, smartest co workers, impact, web presence and unlimited fun, I am absolutely sure I couldn't have asked for a better start to my professional journey! :)

An Interesting quote I read...

People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.

The road to eternity...

Though this is not related to my curriculum in any way, I just had to post this on my blog... This is something my friend told me when I was upset(more with myself than with others) and asked me to remember for the rest of my life... :) Here's a biiiig thanks to you !!!

Gul te khar paidaish ikse, ik bag chaman de dovein,
Ik shabumar gulan di oshak, par khar rahe nit ovein.
Thoda rehna kabool pyare par, tu khar na hovein,
Hassham aan milein gal hasske, chahe ik pal pass khalovein.

Translation:

FLowers and thorns take birth in the same garden... Flowers shed themselves after sometime, but the thorns stay there forever... Prefer to live a shorter life than become a thorn, meet everyone with happiness even if you meet him for a moment!!

I'll always remember this!!

Ruzena Bajcsy... Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award winner

This was one of the best sessions I have attended at the Grace Hopper Conference this year... to hear this technical lady of astounding impact talk about Computer Vision, a field that I have always had interest in.. :)

With a list of innumerable qualifications and awards having become quite synonymous with her now, Ruzena is a professor in the University of California, Berkeley. She has made substantial impact in today's world, by combining the various research areas together to make contributions to technology. For about an hour in today's session, the time that she spoke, She completely left me amazed about all the advances that one can make using Computer Vision...

Starting with a description about the requirements of Tele-immersive environment setup, Ruzena enlightened us about how the clusters of cameras have to be positioned at different angles, to be able to grab a 3D vision of the object under consideration. Not only do the collaborations have to be same, but also the internal and external parameters for all the objects participating in the environment. It's more of a joint 3D world that she and with her, others in this field work on. They way scientists in universities in different parts of the world, collaborate with each other, collect data, analyze data and work on a 3D reconstruction of images without even being physically acquainted with each others physical environment.

On of the main areas of concern is the Real time usage of such systems, which is more concerned about understanding human dynamics and based on interaction with the virtual environment. Another one is about the representation of data in a way such that it not only requires less bandwidth to be transferred but can also speed up reconstruction. All these interesting tasks are intriguing, but great to learn. As I heard Ruzena speak, there was definitely a thought in my mind about what serves as the source of motivation for her ans so many other technical women here at the conference as well... And here's the answer, it's the vigour to face and stand against the scientific challenges and more importantly, the applications that the usage of all such technology serves to the world around.

I witness seeing some of the nest technical (and artistic :)) work at her session today, displaying the efficient usage of Computer Vision to accomplish innumerable tasks. Based in the idea of interacting and communicating in a virtual state, as if we were in the same physical state. The example that popped up right there in my head was that of Second Life... no wonder individuals can actually interact and have meetings using second life as if all of them are sitting on the same table, irrespective of whatever part of the world you reside in. A few such examples I saw were about teaching different types of exercises and dances or any other physical activities to individuals specially the ones for which trainers are not usually available, recognition of human activities, using artifacts etc. A nice one was dancing with your own self.. :P.

After such an intriguing talk, Ruzena ended by allowing others to think about some language that we could have to code or define physical movements of humans just like the way we speak or even music for that matter, which would make all such tasks a piece of cake irrespective of whatever place you come from..:)

I loved writing this one... Please leave your comments if you liked it or any views about it.. :)

Time is on my side...

On the exciting second day of the Grace Hopper Conference, attracting people in all age brackets, an interesting workshop I attended was the one on Time Management, Time Is On My Side, organized by Lockheed Martin. When there are innumerable things to be done at the same itme, the ability to properly and efficiently use our time to complete various tasks becomes of utmost importance. This one was less of a discourse and more of a discussion... Relating myself with all the time bandits and time management problems that others have as well, I could'nt help nodding my head constantly... :)

Beginning with a discussion on the many struggles that people face with managing their time, I realized that the problem majority faced was to handle both work and school regularly, and things even more difficult for those who have to look after a family as well. Something I should ponder about, cause I just have to go to school, unlike many others who have to handle a plethora of things in their lives, and even then fail to devote the appropriate time to tasks invariably. One of the many reasons that women face problems with time management is because they just cannot say 'NO', which virtually always makes them end up neing overscheduled. Something that happens with me as well. Many a times you realize that you have so much to do that it's hard to segregate what should be put first on the stack. And their comes the concept of undersytanding and differentiating between what's urgent and what's significant. Invariably, we find ourselves being caught in this web of the 'TO DO' things and at that time it becomes important to realize as to what has to be done first and what thereafter, something which only the subject can decide depending on what tasks are more significant to affect his life in the coming time.

On today's earth, where if we sit with a paper and try to jott down a list time bandits, it will turn out to be incessant, almopst everyone in the hall figured that the majority of time they wasted was on the internet chatting with theri friends, texting and virtually always ending up maximizing their break time... As these are some of the things I find myself trapped in as well, I understand, and so do many others, that the only possoble solution is self constraint, and to realize that you have tasks of more priority to be done before you.

As almost everyone at some point of time, makes a list of things to be done, it's important to understand the sequence of their being done as well, by making a clear distinction between what is urgent and what is significant... After all, it's good to have a schedule, it;s good to have a clear picture of the next day in front fo you, as that just helps me to complete tasks with all myself and all confidence... and also gives a sense of satisfaction and happiness once I have done them... (No wonder we love to strike out the tasks from the 'to do' list once they are done.. :P). But they are my individual opinions, what do you think about time management? Is it good to make a schedule? Are their better practices to be followed to make ourselves more organized? Feel free to leave a comment... :)

Jo Miller Session - Becoming a person of influence

Woah! What an exciting first day at the Grace Hopper Conference 2009...

With a series of events lined up from the very morning, I was desperately looking forward to the session by Jo Miller on Becoming a person of influence, having heard a LOT about her from all the last year attendees... and the praise did stand... Jo makes you think about nothing else for the time she is speaking. :)

With the topic of discourse being one with the most standing weightage in today's world, of becoming a person of influence... I could'nt help agreeing with each and every thing Jo spoke. Frankly, I was able to relate myself with almost all the instances she spoke of.

Starting with the description of the emerging leaders' quandary which includes the conflict between the need of a higher level job and the needed leadership skills, something that haunts almost every individual willing to get to a higher position, the best way undoubtedly is to show that we have more capabilities than those needed by our present job, by taking up more projects and building a network of influence around us. When I see around myself, almost all the students being hired right now, are not just done on the technical basis but primarily on their networking skills, thier ability to connect with others, their ability to influence, and that's exactly what Jo spoke about. A typical example demonstrating the importance of our influence is one where two persons give the same idea, but for one, when it is not even heard porperly, for the other, it is taken as a sign of sheer genius-- just shows how important influence is... How important it is to make our presence felt... to display our area of expertise and not just wait standing with a bent back for someone to grant us permission to speak.

One of the best part of today's session was this quote, "Our behaviour teaches people how to treat us", a very simple one but with a great impact. Quoting an example of the dog psychology centre, Jo convinced me about this one, convinced me to the fullest. It's only our influence that tells others what we are, and the best way to do that is through conversation.

Going forward to talk about the sources of influence, Jo talked about the 6 main ones... namely relationships, the base one for all other types of influence... because if you have great relationships with people, you have an image of credibility, .. next , direct influence, one which requires the implementer to be fair, firm and professional. The most important thing to remember when doing so is to focus on a bright vision for the future... something that many people dont realize the value of. Next in the queue is the influence that we impart on others by being an informational powerhouse, by knowing the latest developments in our area of expertise, in our organization. Being an undergrad in an engineering institue, I believe this is one of the most important ones for me, considering that everyone one around you wants to learn from you... having a finger on the pulse of everything that is happening surely helps. Next one is the resources influence, Many a times women in an organization donot ask for the resources they would need to accomplish a particular task, thereby refraining from proving themselves to be a fair custodian of resources. According to me, asking for and efficiently utilizing the resources also helps us to make a special position for ourselves and gain visiblity. But nevertheless this is something that women harldy use along with the next one, expertise influence. Derived from our resume, this one works more on how well we display and let others know of what qualifications we have, rather than underestimating ourselves and taking a back seat for our achievements. It is matter of extreme importance to speak up, rather than waiting for an invitation. In industry, this is the primary one for all those willing to get themselves recruited, beacuse until and unless we prove ourselves worthy enough of a particular task by making our qualifications visible, why on earth should someone hire us in front of a hundred others. And the last one in the line is the positional influence, the ability to educate others about who you are, what you do and why should someone come to you. And this one works for sure, with a few examples of such 30 second commercials to introduce oneself, it became quite significant that their proper usage can make one go to places, after all, the first impression is the last impression.

According to me, all these stand of equal value and are worthy enough of being implemented in our day to day meeting with people and situations, to become a person of influence, but for me the most important one which needs work is the the first one, the relationships influence, the base for all, cause I believe I need to be more social with everyone around me. Am starting it from today, my first step towards becoming a person of influence... :) What about you? Which field do you need to improve? What field are you the most strong at?.. Feel free to leave a comment, so that I may know your perspective on this session as well... :)

Literally... The Pirates of 'The Silicon Valley'

"The fun in doing something lies only when the problem is tough and challenging." Something which Bill Gates firmly believes in, and Microsoft, a breathtaking example of this. As is said, some individuals are unique, and so is the very case with him, I dont know if it just with me or with everyone else around, but the mere fact that someone of his stature is in the same hall as me, fills me with awe. May be it's because of the positive vibrations these people carry along.. whatever it is, Mr. Bill Gates has always inspired me, ever since I was a child, and more so now, that I can understand his contributions to the world better.
I remember watching this movie, "The Pirates of The Silicon Valley", an awesome flick for anyone intersted in knowing more about these now-global corporations like Apple and Microsoft.I never even dreamt that these multinational establishments eventually started from insignificant garages, with their owners running around like crazies :P !! Dude... They've done things that one cant even envisage. Only after watching the flick, did I realize their 'evolution'..the journeys of these computer generating machines themselves, but more importantly learnt one nice thing, These inordinate individuals like Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates(all of them were drop outs... surprisingly) never really had world class education like we guys do, but the mere inborn curiosity they had imbibed within themselves, ability of viewing things differently, the plethora of confidence and their love for whatever they did made them what they are right now, people who have "rewritten the history of human thought" and definitely made a "dent in the universe".

Microsoft Research India's 5th Anniversary..

With people from virtually all spheres of life, namely, academics, industry, politics and media, The Kamal Mahal in The Maurya Hotel, New Delhi, hardly had any stepping space left, as the symposium on the 5th anniversary of Microsft Research India kicked off at about 10:30 today morning. Starting with a welcome address by Dr. Kentaro Toyama, Assistant Managing Director, MSR India and a progress report by Dr. P Anandan, Managing Director, MSR India, The aggregation was significantly addressed by the Chairman of Microsoft Corporation himself, Mr. Bill Gates.
His existence served the reason for the huge number. He talked about the need for research in today's world and more so, in a country like India, where there were so many problems that could be efficiently solved using technolgy, to name a few, education to all, proper heath care, agricultural awareness and an incessant list of similar ones. With the kind of human capital residing in this part of the world and the maximum demographic divisions amongst all countries, achieving unimaginable goals is no more an a trepidation. Stressing on the need of more research in the field of Computers, he chuckled that if it werent for his Charity Foundation, he would himself have loved to sit in these labs and research.. Being amongst high IQ people, no tight schedule, loving what you do and above all, enjoying it all makes you feel as if you are back to your college days. He went on to name a few of his projects on which research is being carried out presently in the Microsoft Labs, namely , WikiBabble, an effort based on collecting the huge amount of data stored in varied laguages on the net. Using Artificial Intelligence, making the computer learn how to translate from one language to another... just like a human does that, Digital Green, which will help farmers educate about the various crops cultivation in different conditions, to actually be able to capture all the processes done in a video and use it for educational purposes thereafter.

One of the coolest projects he mentioned was about Photosynth, a software which allows you to connect all the different parts of a picture together to produce the orginal one... Saw one of it's applicaiotns in a demo, where using three of such technologies , one could actually create guided tours of different places, with the used beng free to play around with the views the way he wants.. found this one really COOL!!:) Mr. Gates also focused on their criteria of selecting individuals for internships and research by stressing on the ones who were paasionate about their ideas, and were ready to take the incentive... After all, 25 years back no one had ever visualized the stature Microsoft owns now... the way it has transformed from a creator of personal computers to research lab in more than 3 continents around the world. In the end, he had a message for India, highlighting the sheer need of research that can not only solve, virtually all the problems the country is facing right now, but also take it to a global frontier :).
Thereafter Mr. Kapil Sibbal, The Union Human Resource and Development Minister had a message for the assembly centered around being able to see change as a challenge and not as a threat...to absorb everything possible from the global forum, while still retaining aur values as Indians. Followed by a panel discussion on the topic of need of higher Reasearch in this field, and a Question Answer session, the higher dignitaries took leave and we had a fair sight of the demos and projects being handled at the MSR labs at present including Multilingual Systems, Polynomial time primality testing algorithms, matrix manipulations as in DNA, facial recognition and what not.. All in all, It was nice experience.. an enriching one.. one I'll definitely look forward to in the future as well.

"I'm not slacking off. My code's compiling."

Ahan! This is what Randall Munroe, The father of xkcd webcomics, believes increase your programming ans sword-fighting skills to 18.. :D.

This comic strip for the Computer Geek became an overnight hit with about a million fans all around the Globe substantiating the sheer genius creativity. Mix together a little Linux, a handful of romance, a spark of profanity, and a hint of genius, and you've got Randall Munroe and his webcomic, xkcd.

With about every one around scratching the gray matter off thier heads, wondering as to what do these letters stand for, Munroe reveals that they just emerged out of a combination of different letters he was working, already bored of the names that meant something. He'd always been doing this, in his notebook though, that one day he deicide to post them, on the net and lo! Here we have one of the biggest technical webcomics ever, popular enough to allow him to sustain his living. Munroe finds his inspiration in daily life. "I think it's really important to have a source for new ideas. Try using new programs, see what's going wrong with them these days. Try working on math stuff," he says.

A large number of the strips are mathematics or computer science jokes. These jokes often feature university-level subjects, although many are written in such a way that a clear understanding of the subject is not required to get the punch line. Romance is another subject often visited in the comic, with many strips not intended to be humorous. There are also many strips opening with "My Hobby:" and usually depicting the nondescript narrator character describing some type of humorous or quirky behavior often involving language games. All the varied sectors just display the genius' ability to extract stuff out of what is happening around and portray it with the exact amout of humour. On several occasions, fans have even been motivated by Munroe's comics to carry out, in real life, the subject of a particular drawing or sketch. Whether it be a 'Wikipedian Protester' or sneaking Chess boards onto roller coasters, each of Munroe's creations has a tint of brilliance. Given below is something I loved at the xkcd website,

"Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)."

Cheers!!