On eyes being the door to another reality

He was headed towards the quadrangle in the hostel to play a game or two of cricket, dressed up in his usual gear of tshirt, shorts and now ofcourse, his 2 year old reebok shoes. He could see some junta assembled on the ground and as he took a closer look at them from the second floor he was on, all the while walking towards the stairs, he was given a thorough shoulder shake. Pg (as he was called much to his dislike) gave a nod to his friend, Safari who had pleasantly surprised him but then his presence had been a harbinger of something unexpected. Suddenly things didn't seem all right, or atleast he wasn't seeing things right...
"Safari, I am not able to look straight, my vision has tunneled down.. literally. I can't see you, but I can see your legs. I can see the door we are approaching right now, but I can't see the bolt on the door nor the room number. The only way I can look straight is by moving my head up. My vision is slanted and it sucks man.", Pg spoke hastily with desperation reflected in his speech.
Safari replied nonchalantly, "So you want to play cricket right now?".
"Ob, aren't we headed over there right now", remarked Pg with a touch of annoyance.
'Yeah, but then your vision is screwed up right', continued Safari.
"So what do I do?" replied Manoj clearly uncomfortable and wanting a way out of this seemingly preplexing problem.
'Why don't you look up and force your eyes to look straight, what's preventing you from forcing your eyes open?', replied Safari.
"Hmm..yeah my eyes seem to be half-closed. Let me try opening them to their full functionality". It was as if he was unaware that the solution to his current problem might be to just open his eyes.
Now, Pg found a stiff resistance to this exercise of opening his eyes. His eyes seemed to have conspired into being partially functional...for some reason.

Pg didn't give up. He pressed harder in an effort to attain clarity of sight. His eyes couldn't take the strain anymore, and he found himself opening his eyes into the waking state. That was a beautiful dream he thought, a dream that had a physical connection with reality.

Right now

I am nostalgic.

Nice video

Kenenisa Bekele

External and portable hard disks

I have been doing some reading on external and portable hard disks, mainly because I am planning to buy one of them in 100gb - 200gb segment.
External hard disks are primarily used for back up of files on your computer, but they also offer great mobility and can usually function well when connected to USB 2.0 ports (disks with memory of say 100 gb and higher or a thickness of 3 inch and more need an external power adaptor to supplement the USB 2.0 connection). USB 2.0 ports(30 MBps or 420 Mbps) are an improvisation on the USB 1.1 ports which can support a maximum speed of 1.4 MBps or 12 Mbps and external hard disks work much better on USB 2.0 ports than on their former version.

I see a range of prices on offer, right from 60$ for a 120 gb hard disk, 100$ for an 80 gb hard disk to 150$ for a 160 gb portable hard disk and others in between. It seems from what I have read in the forums and other web pages, there are a few things to be considered before getting an external hard disk:

1) An external casing for the hard disk is always preferrable especially if you are going to move them around . Some brands like Western digital offer them for a few models, while Seagate offers an external casing for most of the models that have a memory of greater than say 100gb.

2) Speed - If you are going for a memory of 80gb and higher, it's better to go for a higher rpm of say 5400 or 7200. It seems that despite the usb 2.0 inteface having a limited capacity of 30 MBps or 420 Mbps, having a higher rpm would help sustain higher speeds over a long period of time.

3) If you are looking for mass storage, there are 500gb and 1 tb(tera byte) models that offer pretty cool prices. For example: Seagate offers a 500gb for 300$ and 750gb for 400$, while Lacie offers one of the 500gb models for 175$ and a 1 tb model for 1000$ !!! (1 tb models actually look like a scaled down version of the CPU). Fantom G-force offers a 1tb for around 400$, so you see these price variations are sometimes hard to comprehend and a big price doesn't necessarily mean better quality or even service.

4) Other aspects such as portability: Portability necessiates doing away with power cords as far as possible and making the hard disk slimmer and hence more costlier too.
For example: Seagate has two models that offer 160 gb:
a) A 3 inch thick * 8 * 5 hard disk with 7200 rpm at - 103 $ requiring the use of power. This is ofcourse portable but heavier and requires the use of power.
b) A 1 inch thick * 5 * 3 hard disk with 5400 rpm at - 150 $ requiring the use of only a USB 2.0 port. This is a slim, power free but costlier model.

5) Some minor aspects that nevertheless count are the sturdiness of the disk (thick metal cover etc), the level of noise produced during operation, presence or lack of irritatingly bright leds', errors after formatting. Now, formatting to NTFS needs to be done as soon as the hard disk is purchased since FAT 32 doesn't support transfer of files of size greater than 4gb onto the external hard disk. On some models, when this formatting is completed, some error messages keep coming up which could be a pain.

On the whole, selecting a model from among Seagate, Lacie, Western digital, etc comes down to the budget at hand, portability required, frequency of usage and the 'anticipated' size of back up and usage of external hard disk. Ofcourse I haven't mentioned customer service here, some brands such as Seagate have a reputed customer service, a few others are supposedly average in their response. All this information is gleaned from discussion forums and product reviews at websites such as newegg.com, cnet, etc and hence the authenticity is debatable.

P.S. I would appreciate feed back from people who have bought external hard disks, on how they perform, etc.

Where am I headed?

This post might seem suspiciously similar to a blog with a similar title I posted a while back: Where do you go?. Well it is similar in the concerns expressed, but the context(expect a lot of word and meaning dance on this word) is different.


The following text is structured into 4 sections. Each section is independent of the other and can be read as such with minor interlinkages. Section II is essential to this post and is relevant to my current state of things, the rest of the sections are add-ons and sometimes plain fluff. But, you might find sections III(connecting three seemingly different fields) and IV(inter-linkages and abstraction) more interesting than the other sections if you dig technical stuff.

Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4


I. Introduction

 Jump to II 

Where am I headed? I find myself asking this question often, so much so that I have a notion of being "lost in life", and it comes up as a status message on google talk inadvertently while I keep reverting back to 'available' and my friends seem amused. Not sure the previous sentence made sense, but yeah, the sentence is open to interpretation: The meaning you look for, you shall find. Now, another thing I am also 'being' these days is philosophical. Infact you can look to the right of this page and see that a whole new blog has transpired because of this tendency. One might argue that this post should rightfully belong to that 'other' blog. I have my reasons for posting it on this blog, anyway, where am I headed? Right now, nowhere in particular, I mean I need to get back home and catch some sleep, but that can wait.
But seriously, where am I headed? Well again, nowhere in particular. I mean I have just started out on a Phd, where do you think graduate students are headed? I mean for another 4-7 years, depending on my procrastinating abilities, I shall waddle around looking at the ducks at the Drumheller fountain in the campus, as I pass by them to my lab and back everyday. So yes, there is research and temporary coursework to fit in the details of these 4-7 years, but the big question is where's the big picture?


II. Levels and states

Go back to I
Jump to III
Or IV

There are three broad levels and many states that can describe 'where I am headed'.

The broad levels are basically all plausible possibilities that I can see myself getting into, say 5-6 years down the line. The states are essentially what happens within the context of these levels, it can describe what I think of where I am headed at any given point. The levels and the corresponding states are described as follows:

Level 1) Get into the industry after my phd, earn dollars or rupees and life goes on.

State: This is a fuzzy thing right now, I am not particular about earning big money and hence my aspirations in this field are negligible as of now.


Level 2) Continue research after a Phd, which can happen in a few ways: Faculty at a university, Research scientist at an organization or industry.
I am describing a few possible states at this level:

State a) Big picture clear, but the details are fuzzy: Here I refer to the 'area of research' as the big picture. This state is more or less a temporary problem and is usually considered normal. Can be worked out. I mean you will have glitches in your research and you may be less motivated at times than others, but you are sure which area you want to work on right.

State b) Deatils are on, but the big picture is fuzzy (similar to 'lost in life' I mentioned earlier):
Now, this means that you are doing research and course work, things that grad students do, but you are not sure if you want to stay in the area of reasearch you are currently on. Now, this by no means is a temporary problem, indeed to determine if this is a problem at all requires time and thinking. It's like when you say, 'give it time, things will sort out for themselves'. Only that, we are talking 4-7 years in a given area and once you are decided on an area its hard to shift to areas that are a little unrelated.

Hence area of research needs to be more or less the same, with minor variations over time.
My state right now is that my big picture is a little fuzzy in that I am undecided on the level of theoretical or mathematical rigor I would like in my research. I am also undecided on whether to decide anything about this undecisiveness. To understand the previous statements in detail, visit section III.


Level 3) ??. The ?? or question marks are fuzzy areas: Things that I am 'open' to, things I am not clear about, dreams, etc. For instance, I am 'open' to the idea of being an entrepreuner, but I recognize fully well that I lack the skill sets especially on the financial and managerial aspects required for a successful start-up.

State: This is ofcourse a wild dream, but I am just open to it as of now. Entrepreuners are the order of the day and are needed big time back in India, is one idea I believe in. We have a lot(or many??) of IT startups but how many technological start-ups? What are the core needs that India might face in the next 10 years? Well these are really broad questions and may have little to do with one being an entrepreuner per se, but one needs to be aware of the state of things before plunging into it and I am sure I would be more aware of these details as I proceed down the time line. But its nevertheless fuzzy right now.


III. Brief diversion into intepretation of optimization in Math, Industrial Engineering and Transportation:

Go back to II or I Jump ahead to IV

This diversion is essential to understanding the context behind my dilemma and can be read independent of the rest of the post.
Consider the three broad areas of transportation engineering, industrial engineering and Maths. At first these may seem unrelated areas, but a closer look can bring out possible connections.
Transportation engineering has to deal with operation and management of transportation systems. (I am more into the operations part of it, though management and operations are inter-related for example in decision support systems). Transportation systems could be systems involving rail transit, bus transit, air, shipping, etc. Transportation, again is a very broad area, atleast to transportation engineers(you see how narrowed down research can get) and the area I want to work on is optimization applications in transportation. Now here, what we have is a methodology (optimization) being applied to a field (transportation). For instance, I can have a problem where I want to optimize the operation of a transit system i.e optimize the routes and schedule of the transit to minimize costs, waiting time, etc.
Now, industrial engineering is again a pretty broad field with connections to mechanical engineering in inventory control, etc, and operations research. Operations research is the science of optimization: how to twiddle or tweak the parameters of a system so that the system performs better. It basically is a methodological field with applications in many fields including manufacturing, electrical systems , transportation, chemical engineering, basically any problem that entails "better performance".
So you have the nail(optimization) and the head(transportation in my case), you can't really separate them out, but you can state the degree to which you would like to use each of them or look at each of them - basically your focus.

Now, we are already heady with all the nails and heads and the hammering, along comes math to make it even more bumpy. Math is again a very broad field with topics ranging from abstract algebra, number theory, optimization, calculus, harmonic series, etc.
Did you just notice that optimization came in the list. So how is "mathematical optimization" different from what industrial engineers call "operations research".
Again its the area of focus: Mathematicians tend to be more rigorous, they are more into the mathematical "exactness" of the subject. There is a structure, there are axioms, theorems and proofs. You can't just state something loosely about optimization methods without inviting criticism from Math professors (and this has been my personal experience). Everything needs to be laid down in white and black.
Everything's got to have a proof. That's the bottom line.

So we have just seen three broad areas of research and as you proceed from Math (optimization) to Industrial engineering (operations research and its application) to Transportation Engineering (Pure application), things get pretty watered down in terms of 'preciseness' and the 'theoretical rigour', but they also get pretty exciting, since the real world is by no means laid out in black and white and unpredictability arouses excitement. By the way, there is a whole area of research on unpredictability: Stochastic processes. Reasearch in transportation is sometimes very data oriented(e.g. Intelligent transportation systems) and hence a whole lot of time is spent interpreting data sometimes in an unstructured manner and this is where I am currently facing a problem. This is where I am 'lost', I want to decide very soon, the 'degree of theoretical rigor' I want in my research and this could mean shifting directions, shifting research and getting more of the 'nail' than the 'head'. Getting more of the nail, could either mean bringing in more theoretical rigor into research(can get very boring at times) and possibly shifting into researching better optimization algorithms and techniques or could mean taking the middle path also known as operations-transportation or OR-Transpo and actively update myself on current state of the practice in optimization, all the while keeping tabs on potential applications in transportation(congestion in container ports, public transit, intermodal transportation, etc).

So what am I doing about me being lost? Well, I am alert, I am keeping options open and let's see how things go.

So to describe my state in level 2, I have brought in my understanding(or lack thereof) of optimization in math, industrial engineering and transportation - Interesting.



IV. Related and unrelated final comments

Go back to I or II or III

Post-script and Gripe: This whole division of areas of research into engineering, science, philosophy(yes even that), humanities, arts (making a good power-point presentation is an art, as many would agree) at a very broad level don't make sense, since new science, new engineering are merging rapidly with other fields. Quantum physics necessiates the need for an observer, it brings in subjectivity and consequently philosophical paradigms. Many inter-disciplinarly fields of quantum-bio-computing, mathematical finance, and possibly Philosophy of science(really?) call for inter-disciplinary collaborations and we are now seeing a shift from traditional divisions of knowledge into such and such areas to this, that and them areas put together. I see this in some universities: Department of electircal engineering and computer science or department of civil engineering and engineering mechanics, etc.

Post-Post script: Why does optimization fascinate me. We all seek perfection in life, in work, in relationships, etc. However optimization is not just about perfection, which could also mean being effective. We are looking for efficiency in this effectiveness, the thought that there is one possible way or a set of possible ways in which a system can perform at its optimum is something fascinating. But then a question arises on the context of this optimization. What scale are you looking at? How big is your system, etc. You can be efficient in a given system but can cause unfavourable ramifications in a system nearby or a related system. So you see, subjectivity comes into optimization too. But operations researchers are very clever, for that matter engineers too, they restrict themselves to the 'scope' of the problem. This restricting to the scope is something environmentalists don't appreciate apparently(in a related context). But all is not lost, this 'scope' is broadening, as we see the effects of our technology on the environment and we are in a general sense, becoming more aware of the need to broaden this scope - this inter-disciplinary thing is one way in which that can happen.

Post-post-post-script: This post purely describes or questions where I am headed in terms of a career in life. Other possible connotations are out of scope of this blog and are left to the reader's imagination.

Flirting with Death - Dan Osman

The above pic shows Dan Osman lunging upward towards a hold you can see at the bottom of the pic.. He was in the air for a second when he did that...at 200ft asl. (Check 4:20 of the following video for more detailed action).

If this video isn't bad ass, what is? Maybe this one. You look at crazy, insane, wacko, fearless and larger-than-life men like Dan Osman and what do you say? You say nothing. You are in awe, filled with a real deep respect and you wish you could do a minute fraction of what he's done. We are not talking about rock climbing here, we are talking about free soloing - climbing rock cuts or faces without ropes and no other support whatsoever. To be able to do what Dan Osman's done requires transcendence, plain and simple. Even the slightest fear, which reflects a lack of confidence( and how does confidence come in such an extreme max sport?), would invite panic and panic, when you are hanging in space if not immediately brought down will ultimately bring you down...free fall to the ground and death.

P.S. Dan Osman died at the ripe young age of 35 in 1998, not while free soloing but during controlled free fall (similar to bungee-jumping but in a natural setting), when the rope attached to his body got cut. Dan lived life the way he wanted to and to that end I bow down before the man.
The song in the first video is from Metallica's first album (known as Metallica or The black album) called The Unforgiven II

More videos: Fire in the hole
Blues riff

The jet lag route to heaven

When I landed here in Seattle, a few months back - I was sleeping at 4pm and getting up at 1am. Weird but that's extreme jetlag for you. IST is 12.5 hrs ahead of Seattle (that's without day light savings ofcourse), so all hell broke loose when I landed in Seattle after a weary, gruelling 26.5 hrs of journey time(Hyderabad - Frankfurt - Portland - Seattle). But in a way it was good, because it was an opportunity to experience the freshness of early mornings. Unfortunately it didn't last long, soon I was back to sleeping at 4 am. My friend commented on how I was sleeping IST in seattle - that's not exactly true but, yeah(btw, in that vein I used to sleep East US time in India).
The point I am getting to is, for people who are on the border line as I sometimes get to - sleeping at 6 am - 8 am and getting up at 2 pm in the afternoon, there's 'another' way to get back to normal sleeping times, by normal I mean sleeping around 9 - 11 pm. Just extend the jet-lag principle, you are halfway into it anyway.
This for example is an excerpt from my sleeping routine some time back:
Day...Sleeping time
1 .....4 am
2......5 am
3......7 am (when you are used to sleeping at 4 am, so far is manageable. The pain starts from the next entry)
4.....8:30 am
5.....10 am
6.....2 pm (This was a little too much for me, but keeping the end result in mind, I endured)
7....4 pm (Note, I have reached the time stamp I was sleeping at when I landed in Seattle, from now on is familiar territory!)
8... 5 pm (End in sight, keep it going)
9... 6:30 pm (Going good, a few more days before I stabilize)
10... 7 pm
11... 7:30 pm
12... 9 pm
13... 9 pm
14... 8 pm
15.. 9:30 pm (More or less stabilized)

So it took me around 13 days to stabilize to 'normal' sleeping time. That's ridiculous you say, not to mention the pain of staying awake for an extra hour or two or more every day so that you can go down the time line. Well, the point is, it works and I have tried it out both during the recent winter break and during the last quarter loaded with assignments and quizzes. Besides, it was only day 4 - day 7 that seemed really tough for me, days 1 - 3 and days 8 - 13 was familiar turf. This method is more suited for people who have 'real' flexibility in working hours and other committments; if it were not to be so, this wouldn't apply to you anyway since you would more or less be having a set routine. Having said that, you need to be more or less desparate to take this route, having given up on all other methods.

So how do I come about sleeping at 4 am anyway. Well, I have always been good at procrastinating things and so if I have a deadline tomorrow, say in documenting some work, I don't start still late into the night at 11pm. So that I sleep at 6 am the next day. Now, keep repeating this 6 am thing and you would soon stabilize at 4am, when I say stabilize, it means the body is ok with sleeping at 4 am but it's not a 'great' feeling getting up at 11 am.

On the other hand, sleeping at 10 pm and getting up at 5 am is actually heaven, especially if you were to go out early in the morning for a jaunt or run. Even if you don't that's fine, I am sure you would have a window or two to open up. The freshness of air, the cool breeze and a more or less heightened state of awareness resulting in better functioning of body and mind are a few things that make it worth your while if you were to sleep early and wake up early.