A day of Good things

Finally a good day after a string of monotonous days of everyday nothingness; that has persuaded me to blog after a long long time...!!

First thing - woke up at 7!! - An achievement of the recent past; but had to get up for I had my MTP presentation due in the afternoon..
Although the day didnt have a great start - spilt milk and corn flakes over chutni - and in effect ended up eating a mix of Uttapam, Chutni, Corn flakes and Milk for breakfast; but the rest of the day went on pretty well.

Later on: "Pappu pass ho gaya!".
Done with the fearsome stage 1 presentation - that weighs in at 50 credits and hence important. I was quite tensed but it did go rather well..
Not that it was supposed to be a heavy burden; but now that stage 1 is done; there is time for the other things in academia...

Its placement season - so we are having a test or two every day.
Today there were two company tests. And I did considerably well in one and willingly screwed up the other(cause the job posting isnt in Namma Bengaluru..).
Perhaps the former company is the first one on which I have some confidence of getting shortlisted...

So November has started off well, and in the hope of this continuing :-)

The Rupee Utilization Conundrum

There is something that I usually do when purchasing a commodity - Calculate how much time it takes to utilize a rupee of the amount spent on that item..

For e.g I bought a Capri(fancy term for the three-fourth that we all know) at 350/-. Considering that I would wear it twice a week for say 40 hours for approximately a year; that would come upto somewhere 5 hours utilization for a rupee - Very good...

On the other hand, if I bought some T-shirt for the same amount - and wore it only 10 times when going out, that would make up only like 5 minutes for a rupee - Not so great...

Worse still are items of luxury or say for the geeky us - gadgets. My 33k laptop should run for over 10 years incessantly to match the scale of the Capri :D !!

Well of course there is a flaw in the above notion; every thing has its own purpose and value, and correspondingly a different utilization policy. Different things have different value - a clothing item by no means serves the purpose of a laptop....

But the rupee utilization scale helps in thinking before putting money on something - a 33k modest laptop does provide most of the needed functionality needed of an exotic 1lac model like a mac or alien-ware

On the downside - this does bring out the "kanjoos" side of oneself. 

Would'nt it rather be better to save some 500/- that you would spend per head at a hotel to have some delicious meal, by say purchasing some books ??

Or save up some money by not lavishly spending a day-out at some resort or tour ?

Surely it is a fun-kill when one applies it bizzarely in all situations!!

Going beyond money related utilization, like time utilization - the same principle can be applied...

The time I spent writing this post was certainly better utilized than that when I would simply laze around by watching some movie or sitcom; but if spent on the big things coming up: MTP reports and presentations and Placements - it would have been even better.

But what can I say - Human nature!! Always attracted to things that are in the long-run insignificant...

To conclude(well, no matter how hard I tried, this post did turn out to be an essay - so let me throw in a conclusion..), Rupee Utilization is one of many ways to effectively spend money on things you need, but most often than not it conflicts with a compromise of quality/fun/flauntmanship..

There come many situations where the latter holds prominence, so you dont care about how bad your rupee is getting utilized!!

(Ok, that did sound freakishly weird, but since I put some time and effort onto it - I am going to let it stay...)

Have a good day folks :)      

Google Test - A wake up call

Today was the first of the many placement shortlisting tests scheduled to happen in the near future; and it sure was a wake up call to buck up and be more serious for the tests to come..

Consisting of objective questions that ranging from OS to FAFL to general programming and a coding question - the test was fairly "easy" according to many of my friends...

The coding question was(I am not sure whether this comes under non-disclosure clause or not....) :-

Given a number of dices n, each with a number of faces m, find the probability of winning in terms of getting a sum total greater than or equal to x from all of the throws. 

And the wake-up call part - The test brought about the realization that understanding basics of any and all fields of computer science is important to crack the test and make it though to the interviews; and of course - you have to know how to write good and efficient code without a computer and without Google - even Google expects that :D

So wishing the others and myself a good placement session.... 

Worth Watch Documentaries

"It is wrong to think that IBM is present and Microsoft is the future; actually IBM is the past and Microsoft is the present,and the future is unknown.." (Triumph of the Nerds, 1996)

                                                                                         Larry Ellison - CEO, Oracle Systems

" We are all Star Stuff"

                                                                                         Carl Segan, Noted Astronomer

The above quotes are just two of many many enlightening facts that I came across by watching documentaries. Outside the movie and serial craze, this is one of the ways of me usefully wasting time :)

After coming to IIT, I have watched a sizable number of documentaries - that makes me ponder: 'There is a lot of useful stuff out there that ought to be watched before one dies!!'

So, I am enlisting some of the major documentaries I have watched until now....

1. BBC Horizon - An awesome long running series of documentaries, and each one different and intriguing than the previous one.

There are just too many of them, but here are some really cool ones:-

• What time is it?
• What is Reality?
• What happened before big bang? 
• Is seeing believing?  
• Is everything we know about the universe wrong?
• The six billion dollar experiment
• The day the earth nearly died
• Parallel universes
• Supermassive blackholes
• Richard Feynman - No ordinary genius
• What makes a genius?

Well, I wanted to give a one-liner description to each of them; but that itself is too much and wont even do justice. Watch atleast a few of them to appreciate their awesomeness..

2. Stephen Hawking's Universe and Into the Universe 

• Aliens
• Time travel
• The Unified Theory 
• Marvels of universe 
• and of course - what Hawking is well known for: Black Holes. 

Sherlock's Benedict Cumberbatch voices Hawking in Into the Universe - making it all the more interesting beside the super-science that is already there..

3. Albert Einstein's Life 

• E=mc^2 - A journey through scientific history and exploration of the events that ultimately lead to the all famous equation of Einstein that has profound effects. The documentary has a historic story telling feel to it too..
• Einstein's unfinished symphony - Another documentary that deals with the latter part of Einstein's life where he had to struggle with the upsurge of Quantum theory that was clashing with his strong belief in classical relativity physics

4. IMAX - Under the Sea

A visual treat that shows the less explored under-surface marvels of the Sea

5. India v/s China - Race to the top of the world

A relatively small documentary at around 25 minutes, but quite comprehensive in chalking out the differences, commonality and the effect of India and China's development

6. African Cats

Another fantastic documentary of the beauty that is nature - This time set in the African jungle that traces the lives of a herd of Lions in a struggle for supremacy, and the quintessentially lone life of a Cheetah and her cubs. Specially awesome if watched in HD..

7. 100 Greatest Discoveries in Physics

The name suggests it all - a quick recap of the greatest discoveries that have made great impact

8. Religulous

A curious documentary that questions the faiths around the world, ridiculing the various startling aspects that are imprinted blindly into people's lives. And indeed offensive to the firm believers..

9. Triumph of the Nerds 

A pretty old documentary that sheds light on Apple, MS and IBM in the world of  PC, operating systems and the struggle to out-beat others and be on top; and also where Larry Ellison envisions today's connected mobile world back in 1996 itself

10. The Universe

Anything and everything you have heard about the Universe - here is a documentary on it. Another series type documentary - it talks about virtually everything: Big Bang, Parallel Universes, Quasars, Pulsars, Magnetors, Black Holes, White Holes, Worm Holes, Blazars, Space Travel, Past Present and Future of Solar System, Every planet, Alien Earths, Weird Things in the Universe and more funky stuff

11. The Ascent of Money

A six part documentary that focuses on exactly money rules the world. From the history of money system to loaning ; from loan sharks to banks and finance institutes; to bonds and gold as a common currency; how money dictates war and peace and the rise and fall of nations; to stock markets and how its crashing affects us.

Plus a lot more like why printing more money does not solve the problem but just creates inflation and how the Spice trade allured Europeans to colonize parts of the world. In a whole - it covers all the causes and effects of Money

12. Nova - Hunting the Edge of Space

A comprehensive documentary on how telescopes have expanded our vision and propelled advances in astronomy and the discovery of universe

13. Universe from Nothing - Lawrence Krauss

Another quirky talk that says that even nothing a.k.a vacuum is made up of stuff, and correspondingly gives a picture of Universe - on whether it is expanding, stable or contracting. It also sums up the limits of exploration with time

14. BBC - Life

For those who are more eager on nature and variety of life on our planet - this series provides a whole deal of enjoyment. Different episodes pertaining to different kinds of lifeforms - Reptiles, Mammals, Amphibians, Fish etc makes high school biology more fun...

15. The Elegant Universe 

By now one would have realized that I am crazy about documentaries about the Universe. This is one more such documentary, that talks about current hot topics of Universal Physics - String Theory, Quantum Mechanics and a Unified theory that explains everything..

16. Richard Dawkins - The universe is queerer than we can suppose

Actually a TED talk, Dawkins talks about the capability and limits of human intellect in deciphering the code of nature and the universe; with lot of strong and sarcastic anti-religious statements - for he is a well known forerunner of the Atheistic Society

17. TED talks

Covering virtually everything that we have gathered as knowledge - TED talks are a huge collection of freely available videos that focus on ground breaking research and understanding.

This list is but a mere beginning - there are tons of more documentaries by Discovery, National Geographic etc. 

I look forward to some more awesome documentary suggestions....

   

Monthly Round Up

August has been an eventful month at IIT

There was a second convocation during my stay here - that of our senior batch - in the traditional Jubba-Pyjama attire. Eminent personalities like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Kapil Sibal were at the occasion. As expected, it was a fun-filled fan-fair of academicians, students and parents.

The counterparts - the junior batch are into the IIT life now - bringing up some nostalgia of what we were an year ago. There was a freshers welcome event by the Kannada Sangha for the people joining from Karnataka this year too...

Placement activities are gaining pace. Companies are coming for presentations, resume uploading has begun, and few practice tests have gone by; and individual preparations are at varying levels. I am still in confusion on how to graft a good non-technical resume that would span atleast one page - with not many activities popping in on that stream.

As a subsidiary of the placement process was the Communication Proficiency assessment - of which I spoke long and boring in the last post itself...

One thing that has been particularly noticeable is the modesty of monsoons - there was almost never a day where it poured throughout - something that Mumbai is well known of. Just like the other parts of the country - rains have been less this year here too.

On a more personal level - my project seems to be making a steady slow progress; and I dare not to refer to it as research in any context. Also, there was a dip in my health graph - coinciding with last year; seems like its a follower of the season changes.

As the Teaching Assistant of Linear Optimization - I did some form of TAship in terms of invigilation and paper correction - solely based on the answer key. 

As far as all other recreational and time wasting activities such as movies and facebook are concerned - they are fine :D. Atleast twice a week I get the advice by friends on reducing such frivolous stuff and concentrate on the more important things!!

    

Communication Proficiency Assessment

In view of the upcoming placement activities - we had a communication assessment - basically a recorded 8 minute one-on-one interview which was later analyzed for various language skills. It basically acts as a self-examination of the way we formally communicate. This assessment was carried out by a company called ValueInc.  

Frankly I had started out with the title - 'The Two Dreaded Interview Questions'; but after getting the feedback for the above assessment, I had to change my mind. Besides, I had been planning to write this post from the day the test happened(which was relatively ages ago..) - but the results came in first.

But I have to succinctly mention about the two famous questions which I feel are never answerable to the best possible extent: "Tell me about yourself..?" and "What are the other activities you pursue in your free-time?". 

The former has a very less margin of error - its a make or break question to create your impression. And for the latter - "I tend to be on my laptop, online or otherwise" never seems to be a very convincing answer!!

Anyway - I drifted away from the topic - low scores in Coherency (one of the evaluation criteria) for that....

I was initially very skeptical about the effectiveness of an 8 minute dummy interview - more so because of the kind of questions like - Which was the recent movie you had been to? What was your favorite character in that? Tell me about your project, What do you not like about IIT etc. Turns out each question had its own purpose - even if it was asked randomly.

To my surprise however - the report-out is pretty accurate. It voices out many concerns that I have personally felt or others have indicated, like that of bad intonation, use of too simple language, creeping native sounds and more such subtle points. So it was not a waste of time or money going through the process - although the results might have been different for different circumstances and mindsets.

Delving into specifics - the test quantifies our communication based on 6 areas - Comprehension, Language Structure, Phraseology, Enunciation, Fluidity and Coherency. Google up those terms to know more - I already feel like I am exceeding the readability word limit and going into the boring length. Accompanying the results was a spider graph depicting the acceptable levels, the excellent levels, and where we stand.

So I got an overall proficiency level of "B"; which must mean around average. There were some low scores in the Enunciation and Fluidity sectors - with suggestions such as Watch English News and Online Lectures, Record yourself and evaluate, Think and Organize before you speak etc as generic remedies. 

There was also another assessment based on a questionnaire to decide our type of learning - mine turned out to be predominantly Visual, over Auditory and Kinaesthetic (surely they do use those high-funda words to make the report look good :D). The report also contains those small and large inadequacies that we have while communicating - Jarring, Slang,, Foghorns, incorrect syllable stress, fillers, false starts, dead pan intonation and many more.(Apparently, I have 26 of those!!)

And finally, here are the verbatim words of the assessment:

"Sumanth is able to convey thoughts and ideas albeit with some inaccuracies and inappropriacies. Sumanth prefers usage of simple structures and has difficulty framing complex ones. Sumanth may have difficulty understanding native pronunciation and sometimes not follow a well-paced conversation."

Sounds just about right.....

To end this really long narrative, here is the link to a funny video played during the report-out - one that depicts the disorder called "Knack" of an Engineer and its effects (from Dilbert Comics):

2 reasons to wake up early

Waking up early has not of late been something I have been punctual at. But that should not be stopping me from pondering about the topic. Be that as it may, there are only two reasons that prompt one to wake up early - Motivation and Fear.

Motivation is something that is innate and drives you to do things - and it can be a definite cause of waking up early. The want to accomplish something for the day can be a strong reason to wake up and start early - and follow a certain order of things. Gradually this becomes a practice. Oxymoronically; there can be a "forced" motivation during early days of our lives - the environment, our family etc can be agents driving us to wake up early...

Fear, on the other hand, induces a compulsion to do something, or imposes a situation that has to be dealt with by an early wakeup. This mode is perhaps more familiar to us from our school days right from when we were kids - Wake up, Wake up; or you shall miss the school bell and lose attendance!! One of my recent ignorance of this factor lead to almost a situation of me getting kicked out of a course for missing a class(well, it wouldn't have been so bad if the class was at 8.30 - this one was at 11.30!)

As we grow - the fear gets replaced by motivation. We grow more responsible of ourselves and our work; and one way of displaying that is to have a schedule that starts early and following it rigorously. Of course, you can relapse into the fear-mode like I have if you grow less responsible - by choice or by habit...

Disclaimers: 

1. The post solely considers those normal beings who have a fixed workcycle that runs in the day; unlike some odd IT jobs and research jobs where people work overnight and lead an inverted lifecycle...

2. I don't claim that waking up early works wonders - but it is a certainly good practice.

3. Well, considering that I am writing this post at 3 in the late night/early morning - I am most probably not going to follow what I have just said :D !!