Random thoughts of a random guy

Wishing everyone a very happy Diwali, Id, New Year, etc :)
Isnt it great when multiple festivals occur simultaneously!
Moreover even Halloween is just round the corner!

Don't look too far ahead, it may hinder your vision of the present.

to just post this link
Still feel lazy to resume actively..

Have cut down heavily on orkutting and chatting as well.
This place isnt good for me :P

I happened to be on the Khar train which suffered from the bomb blast. Was in a bogey 3-4 bogeys away from the one affected. There was the blast, the train stopped, people panicked and jumped out, initially there was a lot of confusion regarding the cause of the blast. Then saw the bogey which was blasted. Went there, the scene was quite bad as everyone knows. Tried helping out a bit, in terms of lifting the wounded and so on. Implored near by people from buildings to call ambulances and the like. Then saw stretchers coming. Decided to move on as was quite tired because of a night out the previous night. Walked a long way and then finally reached home by getting hikes and walking. The stench was with me a long time and the images and memories will be there for a very long time I guess....

A whole lot of friends are graduating this year (some have already gone). Well, am feeling senti currently :(. Well, this group of people rock awesomely and had and still am having a lot of fun with them. It does seem right now as if things are going to be a lot more dull after these friends move on. Wishing all of them the very best in all that they be doing.

hazeldusk and kashyapp have already posted about koldongri.
So I won't go into describing the place. My favourite set of photos from the place are
available here
That is in addition to the photos already posted by pdot and hazeldusk.

Wishing everyone a very happy Vishu!

Between attachment and detachment, I am currently tending towards detachment,
And between action and inaction, towards inaction.
However, this is just the current snapshot, and I keep swaying from one end to the other.

Yesterday there was this great PAF "Kharashen" by Hostels 6,10,13 and Tansa. I first heard the script and
my comment on hearing the script was, it seems okay but everything depends on the execution. And boy, was
it done beautifully. The lights, choreo, voiceovers, performances, prod, everything rocked!

PAF: Performing Arts Festival. Its a drama++

Update:
PAF has a wikipedia entry here

The weather was really pleasant today, with mostly a slight drizzle and quite cool.
In the evening when I went to the lakeside, I got a great surprise, there was a
double rainbow to be seen in the sky!! It was really beautiful. There was also a good
breeze blowing and the setting sun was also a real pleasure to see! Some pics taken by
Aniruddha with his mobile phone camera are put up here. The double rainbow is not seen
clearly in this. There were several other iitians at the boatside and I have seen some of
the pictures and short videos that they have taken. I'll probably get to put up a couple
more pictures after getting it from them where the double rainbow is more clearly visible.

Here's wishing nvivek an awesome birthday!
Hope that you have a great time dude!!

( Here is something banal that I wrote )

"Being a graduate student is like becoming all of the Seven Dwarves. In the beginning you're Dopey and Bashful. In the middle, you are usually sick (Sneezy), tired (Sleepy), and irritable (Grumpy). But at the end, they call you Doc, and then you're Happy."
- Ronald T. Azuma (in "So Long and Thanks for the Ph.D." )

There isn't a moon in the sky tonight and the sky looks brilliant
with all the stars. There was also a pleasant cool breeze blowing
by the lakeside. Its a pleasant change from the sultry weather during
the day. I was meandering staring at the sky and just missed
stepping onto a chotu snake. Chotu snake had a close shave :P

This is a late blog as in the event happened quite a while back. I had been to this conference,
Asian Conference on Computer Vision which was held in Hyderabad from Jan 12 to 16. It was an
awesome experience and we had a whole lot of fun. There were 14 of us students from IITB
attending the event and it suffices to say that we also sometimes managed to attend the
conference amidst all the mirth :). Nil and Malay also joined us over there.

Quite a few stalwarts in the field like Andrew Zisserman, Andrew Blake, Harry Shum, Takeo Kanade,
Baba Vemuri and Larry Davis were there. I got to interact with a few of them. Also met up with
the other graphics and vision junta from India, most of whom I was already knowing. The plenary
talks were really good. Among the sessions I liked the Tracking session, a few talks from the
Variational sessions and a few more talks like the one by Venu and Ankur Aggarwal. In the posters
I found a few interesting ones like fast SIFT and view synthesis with translating objects.

Over there I also happened to surprisingly meet Sasi who had come down for an IJCAI related meet
and Vivek Mehta who also attended the conference and was with us for a bit of the lukkhagiri.
A couple of photos are posted here. There are a lot more of the photos and videos but I won't be
posting them here. Anyone wanting to see them can ping me. One of the best things of going
to hyd was meeting up again with Dixit, Jaya and Maitreyi. It was a real pleasure meeting them again
after such a long while and Dixit and I carried on for some time into the evening.

Well this dry account sort of sums up one of the most joyous trips for me.

Well, so another year has drawn to a close. It had been pretty
good for me and I hope that this continues into the new year.

In Tennyson's words

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow: (yeah no snow in mumbai, but you get the idea,,;)
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.


Have drawn some abstract new year resolutions for the coming year. They are:
1) Learn More
2) Live healthily
3) Have fun

Wishing everyone a very joyous, successful and memorable new year.

I am the eagle, I live in high country in rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky.
I am the hawk, and there's blood on my feathers.
But time is still turning, they soon will be dry.
And all those who see me, and all who believe in me
share in the freedom I feel when I fly.

Come dance with the west wind and touch on the mountain tops.
Sail o'er the canyons and up to the stars.
And reach for the heavens and hope for the future
and all that we can be, and not what we are.

John Denver
Album: Aerie

Wishing everyone a very happy Diwali and Eid.
Hope everyone is having a rocking time.

I have just finished reading a very interesting book. Its titled, "the curious
incident of the dog in the night-time", by mark haddon. Its about a fifteen-year
old boy, Christopher who is autistic. He does not understand human emotions but has
a great logical brain. The insight the author displays in depicting the protagonist is
really amazing. I would highly recommend this book.

There were three things for me to do for a month. Managed to
do one of that properly, the other I wasn't able to do properly.
Tried hard, but was too tired from the first effort to do a good
job on the second work (it was a rebuttal). Well, have to gear up
and try hard to do the third job well. Haven't yet started on it
seriously, but it is high time that I did.

The good thing is that it is exactly the kind of work that I have
always liked, i.e. trying to solve specific problems that I choose
for myself.

There is an extremely visually striking flash sequence made about the
poverty stricken people in Africa, juxtaposed with scenes of affluence.
It is quite disturbing, and the situation is true, I guess, of some parts
of India as well. The clip is over here.

This was posted in the internal newsgroup over here. Have often thought
a lot about it but then they have remained just thoughts and then one gets
back to the usual humdrum, with a nagging feeling of abandonment. Some day
I hope to do something.