My Pensieve

After a long time since I decided to write a book (which I dearly wish that no one else will read :), I was struck by the most interesting thing I could write about. The ideas that roll inside the mind of a CS nerd, the ideas that geeks find fascinating.

More "specs" about the book:
 1. This book will be a collection of essays. possibly interconnected. each essay will explain a fascinating idea.
 2. The book will be aimed at non-CS people (but who are computer/tech savvy). It will be aimed at anyone who has a curious mind (specially kids).
 3. It will avoid almost all the buzz-words and 'technology' stuff, including the internet. specially the internet.
 4. If you liked Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything, you'll like this book. This book will be to CS ideas
  what Bill Bryson's was to science (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery).
 
I in no way claim to be the authority on what I write. I will assume the same role Bill Bryson played in his book.
I will also use the words of experts, real CS people :)

Sample topics:
 * Birthday paradox
 * Machine learning
 * Sorting
 * Computing
 * Software Development
 * Programming

It will not be a droll text book. It will not be a compendium of all important CS concepts/ideas.
It will not be a history of CS (though I find it interesting enough to sprinkle it among the essays - most things don't make sense unless the history is known).
Interesting read will always take priority over depth or breath. The whole aim of this book is to show that most ideas are interesting (no matter what domain) and simple enough to make sense to anyone if made accessible and enjoyable.

Why this book? (you must be a CS nerd to understand this)
 CS ideas have had a huge impact in our society. Algorithms, specially. Can you think the scale of data sorting that goes on
in this world and how we take take for granted the fruits of reduced algorithmic complexity? Most things we enjoy, most
billion dollar revenues depend on certain simple smart ideas someone came up with while taking a shower :)
I am sure many people will enjoy wrapping their minds around these ideas just like how many people enjoy understanding how things work or how the universe works.

a sample essay topic:
Computing

possible start to the topic:
    When someone thinks of a computer scientist, they probably think of someone doing some activity that involves the computer. Possibly he is typing away with a florescent glow on his face. After all, a rocket scientist works with/builds rockets and a brain surgeon opens the skull and works on someones brain. But, one of the most popular computer scientists of all time, Edsger W. Dijkstra never used a computer for decades till his colleagues persuaded him to. He then used it for just
for e-mail and web browsing. After all, many of us are more computer savvy than he was. If so, what makes him a renowned computer scientist and not us?
 

Just friggin' stop it!

Look this is not about me. But, there are many eligible nice guys out
there who would rather prefer to find/meet the girl they want to
settle down in their life by themselves and not take the arranged
marriage route.

I know a few themselves and I would glad recommend to single girls
looking for simple, unpretentious, nice-guys (will I be at the top of
the recommendation? I can't tell you that! :).

The situation for such guys is already bleak, given the current
marital policy of our Indian society, which seems to overall encourage
arranged marriages.

And I also have heard from a couple of girls who were pretty much
stalked, harassed or otherwise annoyed by single losers who are
enterprising enough not to give up in their chase.

Now, I feel it is perfectly OK to pleasantly/politely inform your
intention to the girl you are interested in when you feel like (when
you feel confident of getting a positive response, for example). But,
just ONCE!

Here's what I have to say about that:

1. Please, for the love of god, try to empathize with the very person
whom you are so desperately trying to woo. If you do, you'll know you
are giving them pain, anguish and they don't want that! So, give up
and move on or be smart enough to woo them without making their life
miserable (which means - not accosting them, not soliciting anything,
not being a douche bag. get it?)

2. Girls are wonderful people in general. I don't understand them
(most men will concur that they don't either!). But, they are to be
respected as equals. Do not take advantage of them just because they
are being nice or timid in their rebuke. Believe me, from what I
understand, they can make your life hell, if they decide too :)

3. By scaring these girls, you are doing a disservice not only to the
girl but to all those eligible nice guys! I believe, a girl who has
gone/is going through such a traumatic experience might be negatively
biased (skeptical) towards interactions with any of those eligible
nice guys (in general). Thus, all you are doing is to expand the rift
and spoiling the chances of those guys!

So, stop being a criminal. Stop screwing up the society, a girl's
mental peace and your chance of karma/heaven.
For once, if you cannot be a nice guy, at least stop making it worse
for the nice guys.

I have my reasons for strongly considering a life where I am single forever.
Given I am in grad school in U.S now (away from almost all people who deeply care about me),
it gives me a chance to practice and learn how it really is/will be.

But, I do not want to enumerate my reasons. I will miss many points.
But, I would like for my friends (through comments of this post, possibly)  start a thread on why
it is plain wrong/why I should not be thinking that way.

I want to listen, understand how other people think, and see if it makes sense.
Because, from what I know and understand, me being single forever seems to make a lot of sense :)

Because the ranking is flawed.

I am no way suggesting that India is competing with the developed countries or anything. But I am sure it is not just 14
places above Sudan. Come on!

So, India is placed in the 139th position because of its HDI of 0.619. When things are taken to 3 decimal places in ranking, you need to
take a closer look.

I am also not saying that the ranking is pulled out of a hat. But, the algorithm definitely needs fine-tuning.

What is more interesting me is the HDI trend for India, from this link: http://hdrstats.undp.org/countries/data_sheets/cty_ds_IND.html

Human development index (trends), 1975	0.419
Human development index (trends), 1980	0.450
Human development index (trends), 1985	0.487
Human development index (trends), 1990	0.521
Human development index (trends), 1995	0.551
Human development index (trends), 2000	0.578
Human development index (trends), 2005	0.619

As you can see, that's a good improvement. I am darn sure it will keep improving. Probably at a higher rate.

In general, I like the concept of such indexes. Sure, most of the numbers will not be accurate.
The weighting of the individual parameters are going to come under scrutiny. But, such indexes
mathematically approximate to the real underlying "true" index if the statisticians know what they
are doing (and I am sure they do). Also, the law of large numbers works to the index's advantage.

Also, I recommend that you look at this: http://hdrstats.undp.org/indicators/16.html

Playing along with this index, China reached our current value somewhere between 1985-90 (

0.595

0.634

respectively). It current HDI is 0.777 giving it the 81st rank.

Malaysia (63), Thailand (78) had our levels of HDI by 1975 itself.

In the last 5 years, Kazakhstan's (73) HDI grew the most.

India's HDI grew faster, then growth dipped, and picked up in the last leg.
(period)          (growth)
1975-1980 0.031
1980-1985 0.037
1985-1990 0.034
1990-1995 0.03
1995-2000 0.027
2000-2005 0.041


Thanks to  _dodo_ for introducing me to this interesting data.
I would love to get more questions, queries related to analyzing this data. I'll try to find answers.

I don't exactly know how I got this particular fixation. I want to write a book.

I wanted to go through the process, more than anything else. The whole shebang of coming up with a concept
for a book, dividing up the chapters, making the book grow one page, paragraph, line, word at a time.

Getting other people to read the said book is not an aim. I will never even consider this. Thus, I am free of
all social obligations. I will definitely put it up online somewhere, probably while its being written.
Being a CS nerd makes this easy. (LateX, svn, interwebs...).

In Tamil, we have a proverb, rather a challenge - "Try to build a house, try to execute a marriage".
I will not do either in my life, for sure.  But a book? Maybe,

I am sure I will get a kick out of it, given that there is no deadline, pressure, obligation or rules.
The only rule I want to stick to is - the end product must be a book. It must be written that way.
It must not be something that was "put together" as a book. (A book of blog entries, an
anthology of poems, dictionary). But, must be built from the ground up as a book
(my definition - you will not be able to get the individual pieces elsewhere prior to
the book).

There is no other structural requirement - It might not be a single, big fat novel. Probably
sizable chunks that have a common theme (I am a Tarantino fan). Might be non-fiction.
No constraints on style either. I would prefer for the process to be pleasing to me.
I will stop the moment when I find its not fun anymore (even if not a single word was
actually written!).

I have decided on the structure of the book - it will be like a bunch of "reports". Some will be
based on fact, some purely fiction.But it will not be evident just from reading the report what
class it belongs to. There might be a subliminal thread that connects some of them/all of them.
I don't know yet.

I will blog about it, again, once I reach the next step. Again, that might be a lot longer
than you think :)

Love this song.

Thanks to RP, who put it as his status message.

Its a brilliant, creative song.

Someone took marriage band music, wrote lyrics that was a nice interplay of the contemporary ("bol, bol why did you ditch me?")
and the old and made sure it sounded "marriage band like" and to great, pleasant effect!
Love the "emosanal" spelling.
The video is stupendous too!

This is pure creative genius. I wish more stuff like this happens in Indian Cinema, where there is a regular shade of
the stuff that is rooted in our psyche from when we were very young (marriage bands, for example).

Friends, please point me to more such wonderful stuff, please encourage such stuff too!

1. I lost 7 kgs after I came to Atlanta.
2. I worked out in the gym for the first time this week (includes bench press and running).
3. I played squash and beat my lab-mate 3 sets in a row
4. Feel human again 

One can say:

          " My bowel is strategically aligned to the level of caffeine in my body"

Or:
         "I cannot crap unless I have coffee"


Choose :)

I just "got" the basic idea behind Fast fourier transform and I am blown away!

Almost every engineer studies this in their undergrad but it was just mumbo-jumbo to me back them.

That said, I need to dig deep and comprehensively understand it.

I strongly recommend this Algorithms book: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html


As an aside, Euler's identity, Square roots of unity etc., looks magical to me. I really need to
understand them.

Now I am going to rant and ramble. This is going to be a long post. Caveat Emptor.

I will remember 2008 as one of the best years of my life.

Mid-year, I moved to Atlanta to start my Master's at Georgia Tech. And my life has been just great since then!

I never thought that there will come a point where I'll "feel" that my life is just great. But I do so now.

What are the reasons?

1. I learned a lot. I learned a lot about life, people etc.,
2. Everything single thing worked out very well for me. I got a part-time job, a tuition waiver for the spring semester, an internship and almost in the brink of getting into PhD.
3. Got exposed to robotics. Blown away!
4. My part-time job is working in a Georgia Tech start-up, building a full-blown system from scratch. Its too much fun! I'll post here once the pre-alpha is up.
5. My office gave me an iPhone with unlimited data (and I don't have to pay the bills). Heavenly. Its become a great value add to my daily life.
6. I got to work hard on things that mattered to me.
7. I had decent control over what I wanted to do and what I did with very little interference.
8. Overall, the best part is that I got to meet and know some wonderful people.

I never expected things to go this well. In fact, I was quite cynical when I started out with my Master's.
But, now my life feels like I am in the opening sequences of a Karan Johar movie. Too much happiness.

There is so much to write, so many experiences. But, I guess I am too lazy.

Lots of new pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/venkatasubramanian

My class project. Robot catching a bug: http://blip.tv/file/1581180

My Geogia Tech website: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~vmahalin/

My life seems to be finally taking shape.

Some of  the best I saw:

http://500px.com/channels/advertising/4180
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/3799
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/4017
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/3948
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/3159
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/3325
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/3163
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/2744
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/2656
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/2530
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/2309
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/1399
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/2036
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/1977
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/1898
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/1938
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/1935
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/1799
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/1071
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/1631
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/1487
http://500px.com/channels/advertising/1051

Here are the instructions:

(If you don't believe in God, please skip this post.
Here Govinda means God. The poem is based on Hindu faith.)

1. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhaja_Govindam
2. Read the English translation.
3. Try to focus on reading it fully.
4. Try to avoid skipping and tolerate those parts you don't like much.
5. Make sure your prejudices don't deter you from reading it in a flow. The poem is kind of harsh and straight forward.
6. Let it all sink in.
7. See/listen to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy1vn0u5dBU
8 . Bhaja Govindam

One of the advantages of being a grad student at Georgia Tech is the free t-shirts you get along the way.

And I am childish and cheap enough for it to matter for me.

So, I decided to log my collection. I plan to update it as and when I get one and I remember to do so.

   1. Yahoo! T-shirt:
        Where and How: At the Yahoo! tent they put outside Klaus Advanced School of Computing as promo. Stood in line and gave my
        e-mail id in return.
        Description: Greyish colored t-shirt with Buzz on it... nice one...

  2. Bosch T-Shirt:
       Where and How: Swapped it with my friend for a 1 GB pen drive. Both the t-shirt and pen drive were given for free at the Career Fair.
       Description: White t-shirt with Bosch written on it.... The pen drive was given to me by another friend for free because he had too much
       stuff with him already.

  3. Georgia Tech Student's Center T-Shirt:
       Where and How: For answering simple questions that appeared in an internal magazine.
       Description: Bright yellow with lot of stuff printed on the back.. worst of the lot...

  4. Vibha Run T-Shirt:
        Where and How: Given by my senior when he moved house. It was a pack of unused t-shirts from a Run that
        happened in 2003. Distributed among friends.
        Description: White T-shirt with a running man logo in the front.

  5. NVIDIA T-Shirt:
         Where and How: Came with the Fed-Ex that carried my intern offer letter.
         Description: White T-shirt with NVIDIA log on it... bit tight...

* Saw a Segway. Yet to ride one.

* Watched Jupiter (and its moons Calisto, Io, Europa and Ganymede)
and Moons craters through the telescope at Georgia Tech Observatory. Planning to go there
on all public nights (once every month).
   
* The only things I have borrowed from the Library are movies.
I can borrow 3 movies at a time for 3 days. And they have got all the
great movies. Even if a movie is out, I can go and collect it once it
comes back. I love the library.

* I watched a football game between Georgia Tech and Jacksonville.
It was like watching India vs UAE cricket match (Jacksonville being UAE).
Came back home after the first half.

* I have become the authority on free stuff on campus. Specially free food.

* Food is a major problem for vegetarians here.

(Below on one day - Sep 5)

* Played Nintendo Wii for one hour - My longtime dream come true.
(I was good at Boxing - knocking out (computer) opponents in a row.
There were a few people standing around me - watching and enjoying)

* Got a free ticket to the Atlanta Braves vs. Washington Nationals baseball game.
 The game was not very exciting. But, the fireworks at the end of the
 game was nothing like I have ever seen before!

* Won 2 free tickets to the Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra
 at the Graduate Student Picnic today.

After a lecture on Mobile Data Management, I aksed this question to the professor.

"Say, Professor, you talked about methods to find k-Nearest Neighbors for mobile objects.
What if I keep a continuous cache of the 5 nearest neighbor mobile objects for each object? It will be
very fast - right?.
(Because, seriously, 5 ought to be good for everybody)"


Prof: "No one in the research commuity will buy that. What about the police? They might ask for 100 Nearest
neighbors in the vicinity"

.End of Converstation.

It is well known that PageRank is at the heart of Google's technologies (at least, when it was growing).
Ask someone, "why is PageRank called so?".... They will tell you, "They rank pages. Page... Rank... get it?... duh.".

But, Page stands for Larry Page's last name!

Also, the output of PageRank is an eigenvector. As simple as that.

So, someone called it the $ 25 billion eigenvector!

It pays to be good at maths.

To understand PageRank, I recommend that you read the following (in order):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/pagerank.html
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~bryan/google.html


Interesting Snippet: Larry Page's brother was a techie too. He sold his eGroups company to Yahoo! for
a cool half a billion dollars

Dear Friends,
 I will be in Mumbai between Jul 18th Evening to Jul 22nd night.
 I wish to meet all of you there.
 Please let me know if you will be available and when, so I can plan it effectively.
 I will be spending at least a day or two with my cousin sister's family at Andheri.
 Please don't ask me for treats. I am broke and I am not kidding :)

 I would like to visit C-DAC Kharghar one day.
 I would like to visit Nandina also.

 Please help me to make my days at Mumbai most valuable.

Thanks.

Hi,
I attended the F1 Visa Interview (Student's visa) and I got it.
Here's the interview.
(The visa interviewer's white hair and specs reminded me of Richard Gere).

My interview was at 11.10 today morning.

Visa Officer (VO): Good afternoon or rather good morning.
Me: Good morning, officer.
(I pass my docs to him).
VO: Georgia Tech! you will make one helluva an engineer!
Me: yeah.
VO: (types away to glory) How long have you been working in Veveo?
Me: 2 years.
VO: (something like) Mr. Michael Jackson (Mahalingam is too hard for him to pronounce), you are good to go. You will receive your Passport at your Chennai home within a week. Enjoy your time at Atlanta.
Me: Thanks. Have a nice day.

That's it. I was in and out of the U.S Consulate in Chennai in 20 mins. (They had some
meeting scheduled later on, so they speeded up things). No documents asked. (No waiting in the queue!)

If all goes as expected, I will be in Atlanta on July 29th, my M.S in C.S course at
Georgia Tech begin on Aug 18th. (Orientation is on Aug. 12th). I don't have any aid
from the college yet. (But, most students get it by the end of 1st or 2nd semester there.)

I will be leaving Bangalore by Jul 12th and will be in Chennai after that.

Most probably, I will be surrendering my reliance connection soon. You can call
my home: 0 4 4 - 2 2 3 9 2 3 5 5
or my dad: 9 3 8 0 8 7 1 4 2 1.
(My mom and dad will be with me, so regular hours please :)

In India, everyone belongs to "a" caste. Some castes (and tribes) are even "scheduled".

If you are an Indian, you know your caste and what people of your caste are supposed to work on.

But, I assume you are not doing that work.... Since you are reading a blog entry, I assume you are not doing any work at all :)

But fret not my cubicle-dwelling friend! I have come up with just the right solution to bridge the gap between the caste you belong to, and the work that you are actually (supposed to be) doing.

If you have kids and worry about how they will get to join a decent college (or a decent job) you have got more reasons to get excited!

My solution is to create a caste called the 'Codahs' - the people who are 'programmers' for a living. Now, this definition is restrictive - let the Admins, Tech Support people, Tech writers form castes of their own. From our experience we know - the more (castes) the merrier.

Here is 'our' plan:

* Have a database of Codahs (we are programmers after all). A letter from HR saying that you write programs to get paid is all that is necessary. We can hold 'top codah' competitions to increase our base.

* All of us collect up and live close. This step is quite unnecessary - we have Bangalore.

* Tell others that you belong to the Codah 'tribe'. Explain the concrete jungle in case of doubts. Dressing like Mowgli is cool.

* Now comes the important part - Claim for all that the government can give you. For this, we go to Rajasthan and harass Vasundara Raje, since she is the easiest to succumb, as she is weak and tired already. Don't worry about Bangalore not being part of Rajasthan, that will be first in the list.

* Make sure every politician talks about the Codahs. If he protests, subtly explain him what a forwarded mail is and their importance in the Codah community. Even more subtly, eye his laptop.

* Now that the Codahs are established, some fools will talk about how all Codahs are well to do. Tell them that we are 'socially backward' (you don't actually have to tell. Dress shabbily, drink and burp out carbonated drinks - just like any other programmer. Pizza stains on dress for added impact).

* Now, (obviously) all political parties will only field a 'Codah' in any part of Bangalore. Rejoice.

* Then on, take any objective exam and tick all 'A's (or 'B's or 'C's ... whatever suits your taste). Don't worry about the results silly! Just go home and celebrate.