Ravikanth

First program in Qt

2010-10-25T21:41:00.000-07:00

I am assuming you are working on linux.
For IIT Madras users. It was always a big pain for me to set the repositories. Here is the deal for ubuntu users of IIT Madras.

System->Administration->Synaptic package manager
Set the following two things
1)Settings->preferences->network
Click on Direct connection to internet

2)Settings->Repositories->Ubuntu software (by default it will be on ubuntu software)
select download from http://ftp.iitm.ac.in/ubuntu - you can do this by selection other in the selection which will lead you to the ftp site i mentioned

Click RELOAD once this is done- please dont forget to do this. Repositories are set :)

As I mentioned before I am assuming you have installed qt by downloading it from the nokia website. Once you have installed qt do the following

uninstall:
libqt3-headers
libqt3-mt-dev
qt3-dev-tools

install:
libqt4-core
libqt4-dev
libqt4-qt3support
qt4-dev-tools

source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=593183

Download "C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4, Second Edition
by Jasmin Blanchette; Mark Summerfield" from gigapedia.com. Yes it is an ebook. Write your first program. The instructions are very clear in the ebook - even I could do it :P

Replies to kirthika's comments

2010-10-22T18:59:00.001-07:00

you should have read this http://g-ravi-ty.blogspot.com/2010/10/innovation-vs-invention.html before you read the following. The italics are my answers to the non-italics :)

Fantastic! I was waiting for this. I wanted some CS guy to get angry with what I posted which is why I made sure my post is ambiguous compared to my usual posts. If you notice the title is not apt.

    There are lots of things in this post that I as a CSE student take offense to - (note that I use *CSE* - Science and Engineering, and I do believe nobody combines the aspects of pure science research with systems engineering as well as my discipline does, so CSE is justified)

I did not want to hurt CS guys but I wanted them to take offense to get hot replies like this. Actually this is the perfect setting for my next blog post(probably posts from the comments I see here).I am sorry it was that nasty.

    0. Extremely wrong to put "(computer science)" as an alias for programming. Go through the CS section in the BTech Curriculum book and you will see how little of naive programming is mentioned in there. Most of CSE deals with pure research like theoretical CS or systems like network and programming is just a means a to an ends, though it is a very important means.

What you said is damn right! - I have been through the curriculum. I am one of the very few guys who took courses from all branches. I did 6 out of my 7 mtech electives outside my branch-had to almost con my fac ad for that. He was ranting"Ravikanth, you cant get mtech in Aerosopace Engineering by doing courses from other branches which are not even related to this!":P In the first paragraph I was not talking anything about invention or innovation or programming or CSE! I was really talking about my screwed up experience with programming because of my wrong opinion about it. This paragraph had two purposes one is to get your attention and the other is to entice/provoke you(CS guys to be frank) to comment on the rest of my post.

    1. Programming is _not_ engineering. Just like other branches, CSE also lays importance on programming as a _tool_, not as engineering in itself. A typical CSE course does include _software_ engineering, but thats only from the point of view of how to design, maintain and work with such a large scale system (the system in this case being millions of lines of code and complex modules interacting with each other).

Agreed. its a tool. I told you I was enticing you. You fell for my classic prank Ravinga. Ok that did not work. Please dont give that stern look-it scares me out. smile please :)

    2. Google (representative of search engines) is not an invention ? I really suggest you read up more about the history and complexity of search engines before coming up with a line like that. Think of the sheer complexity of dealing with data of the order thats much larger than 10^18 and finding the exact match for 1-2 search terms in the order of microseconds time. If you look at it closely, there are an insane number of systems design issues that come into picture. If you were to look at it as a large-scale engineering system, my guess is that complexity wise Google should rate on par with (or higher than) the largest factories/refineries/plants ever.

This is the real meat(or pani puri if u dont eat meat). The idea of google is a search engine. who does 'not know/figure out' that a search engine is of great use? I also know that there were search engines before google- . I also know that they sucked big time which is why google was a hit compared to the thers. I am not talking about what it takes to build something as awesome as google. I am not talking about the complexity involved. I am talking about the idea of a search engine.

It is far easier to build a cycle after you get convinced that it can be done. It is orders of magnitude tougher to build a search engine like google even if you come up with the idea of search engine. BUT the idea of google/search engine is something any idiot can come up with.

    3. About Facebook again,one indicator I would suggest you to look at is the amount of research funding across the world that is going into social networks - you will be amazed. From among the millions of user accounts that Facebook stores on its servers, how is it able to fetch updates of your friends in no time at all and display when your page loads ?

SO is the idea of social networking. I am not even talking about CS! CSE is the means to enable social networking. I am talking about the idea of social networking. If you notice I am on your side :P

    4. Finally, just dont under-estimate something because its *not physical* (as is the case with most comp sci stuff) or the concept appears simple on the face of it. Your post is a classic example to explain why CSE rocks - it deals bests with abstractions, providing solutions to the most complicated problems of the world yet abstracting the gory details out in such a way that the layman never realizes the extent of whats happening and feels there is nothing in there at all. The very reason to why its such a celebrated field is that underneath those layers of abstraction lie complex systems and solid theoretical research.

Thank you for the advice. I wish someone has given that to me before the end of my second year. I already know this right now. It is not just CSE! Any field of science/engineering is like that. Who is going to buy a metal piece of which weighs as much as Airbus A380 for 20,000 crores? If you know someone who does I want to know I am interested in selling him :P

On a related but a different note I would like to mention a quote of my prof "If you cannot appreciate a field of study it does not mean that field of study is stupid it means that you are not smart enough to appreciate it"

    PS: I would be glad to provide more examples (ever wondered about how banks manage to combine ATM+mobile banking+internet transactions into a single interface dealing with millions of people and yet never messing up your account balances?) - not sure if you are interested though.
    Yes, I am a CSE fanatic.
sure. Actually I am interested :)

    October 22, 2010 4:12 PM
kirtika said...

    Wikipedia describes -"Innovation is a change in the thought process for doing something, or the useful application of new inventions or discoveries" and Invention as the process of coming up with something new. If you look at it, the PageRank algorithm Google uses was a big *invention* by the founders, who were then CSE PhDs students. The Google search engine itself is the pot-pourri of not one, but hundreds of such inventions.

Pagerank algorithm is a different idea kirthika! I dont know enough about it but is probably better than google itself. Google stands on search engine. Facebook stands on social networking. Even before facebook came people were social networking. Even before google came people were searching. Even before cycle came people were locomoting. There were search engines before google. It is highly possible that there were social networking sites before facebook- I didnt check. There were no cycles before macmillan invented one.

Google and facebook made searching and social networking FAAAAAAAAAAR more easier. Every body appreciates that - I use facebook and google daily. who doesnt?

Innovation vs Invention

2010-10-21T06:01:00.000-07:00

Long time ago when I was more idiotic than I am right now I came across programming for the first time. The idea of thinking programming(computer science) as a branch of engineering used to put me off big time. I used to look down upon programming. I never really liked calling it engineering. It did not feel like engineering! :P. I paid my price for such an attitude. I never learn't programming to my heart's content.

Similarly I used to look down upon "inventions" like google and facebook. I know that I misused the term inventions. Google search - Common! what is so impressive about the idea of google? Nothing! Similar is facebook. The ideas themselves are not impressive as such. It is something which any idiot can come up with. The reason these companies became popular is because these companies are useful to us! It is not because they are great "inventions". I heard these are called innovations.

To get a dose of the point of view I have. Contrast the above said examples with an invention like bicycle. I have no clue how Macmillan got convinced that one could balance and ride a two wheeled machine! It takes quite an amount of time for someone to learn riding bicycle. Imagine what it is to believe that it can be done at that time. Inventions like this were far more impressive when I was littler :P. Of course even now..

An unrelated but similar conversation happened when I came to Vizag a couple of days ago. I met Harsha who worked for three years in a civil engineering firm in USA and came here (ya to vizag) to start a civil engineering design consultancy firm. Guess what he says? He says it is way easier for someone to start a IT firm here compared to an engineering firm. Politicians don't bother because they don't understand IT business. Since 'civil= real estate', the person who knows more about who has to be bribed to what extent seems to have an upper hand over the person who actually can do civil engineering. There is a fact which goes around like a joke.Indian government did not involve itself in two things IT sector and IITs. If you notice they did pretty darn well.

Here is a random photograph I shot at when I went to Bheemli

If you have a facebook account you can check more of them at
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=49165&id=100000480453082

Conversation with Dean Academics of IIT Madras

2010-10-13T05:33:00.000-07:00

NUT CASE!
This is what most of my friends think of prof. Santhakumar who was the Dean Academics of IIT Madras. I have learn't one thing among other things in my stay at IIT Madras. A person who is orchestrating the efforts of people in any good organization always has a view point and usually is very strong about it. Whether we like it or not there is some truth to it and they are very strong about their point of view. I have a deep respect for him. Unlike most people he is a real engineer. He seems to know about all the branches of engineering! It is fantastic to sit and listen to his class. It is true that he cribs about a lot of things. It is also true that what he teaches for the rest of time is fantastic. Also, there is truth in all his cribs. It is just that we don't like to hear it.

This conversation is the following. A lot of profs in IIT Madras are in the bandwagon of the claim that coaching centres are screwing up the quality of the students entering IITs. I am against this. I dont think coaching centres are doing this.
Me: Sir, What is wrong with coaching centres? We just get better teachers there. What is wrong with that?
Some I like them better than the ones who teach at IITs

Prof. Santhakumar: AHA! You obviously find them better because they make your life easier.

Me: what is wrong with making life easier?

Prof. Santhakumar:Everything!

Me: what do you mean?

Prof: Dont you ever wonder about these things? A lot of us don't use power point slides even though we are supposed to be technologists. We still use blackboards. You probably also wonder why the contents of what we teach is almost same for the past 50 years.

Me: I wonder a little but I know the reason for the second part. The laws of science dont change whether it is 50 or 100 years. Newton's laws are going to be the same even after thousand years.

Prof: Its nice that you know that. It is technology which changes not the laws of nature and we dont focus on technology much. Now about the coaching centres. You don't recognize the difference between education and training.

Me: I don't think I know the difference.

Prof: Exactly! that is where the problem stems from. We dont train you we educate you.Our aim is to make you think better. If we make life easier while you are learning you wont grow. This is the reason behind us not simplifying the learning process. We are also in the business of teaching you engineering. That is the reason why we do this educating process through teaching engineering.

Me: Well, it makes sense.

Prof: Most of you kids wont end up in engineering. We know that. The reason why a lot of you kids end up successful is because you get educated and not trained.
(all the old profs call us kids :P)

Me: Its funny that I am hearing this when I am almost about to graduate.

Prof: Dont worry you get a lot of training when you are working(on job). No body is going to educate you there. This is the reason why we don't focus at all on training.

Me: Why don't you tell this to us when we are in first year?

Prof: That is how life is kid. This is why you should listen to profs :P. The coaching centres focus on training you not educating you. That is our problem with coaching centres. The bigger problem is you expect us to do the same when you come here.

I have my thoughts on coaching centres but one cant neglect what he said. The profs want us to learn a LOT in two years. The learning style completely changes from the learning style in school. While there is a lot of focus on rote learning in school, it is of little importance for JEE. It is difficult to make this switch without good teachers when you are 15 years old. Good teachers end up at coaching centres because they pay them more.

On an unrelated note I made a few punctuation mistakes which were pointed out in my last blog post. @Harsha - thanks.
@others:
If you like something tell others by commenting on the blog if u dont like something tell me personally :)

Teaching English to my mom!

2010-10-07T17:28:00.000-07:00

I really think I teach very well. One of my future plans is to become visiting faculty(definitely not full time) in some amazing university like IIT Madras :P. I could teach in some lower grade universities like IIT bombay or IIT Kgp or other IITs but I prefer IIT Madras :). I am serious though. I used to teach swimming to people when I used go for swimming in college. I actually took 12 people along with me to the deep pool(from shallow pool) and that was their first time. The funny thing is 8 of them are better swimmers than I am! They swim faster and longer than I can. This is only one incident.

My mother is an enthusiastic learner. She actually picks up things faster than most people. She does not believe even though I tell her this. Like all IITians I left my old computer at home and set up a broadband connection. My dad does not use computer at all and has no interest in learning. The only thing he likes is to listen songs in the computer. My mom was interested so I told her a few things and left. A couple of months ago she re-installed windows on her own- she occasionally called me up if she had doubts in the process. I tell her that its a big deal for anyone who sat before computer for the first time in their life 6 months ago. She does not believe it - well not enough.

Recently, she got comfortable using computer and now she wants to learn English. One of her biggest fears in her life apart from public speaking is learning English. Looks like she had a dreadful line of English teachers through out her education. All her batch mates believed a rumor that when NTR becomes chief minister of AP he is going to ban English from teaching. Their fear was dreadful enough to make them believe that! Now I know that I am dealing with things beyond my control :P.

Did you ever come across this book called "Indlish" by Jyothi Sanyal? It is an amazing book. I should have read it completely. He talks about the reasons why Indians screw up English. A lot of us (including me and you to some extent) speak our native language by translating the words to English. Those better speaking mortals change the structure but most of us dont do it well. They guys who does this change of structure are usually the better guys at English. If you are from Chennai and you find it in some book store please buy it. I will take it from you. I did not finish reading it.

The following is one thing which pisses me off big time. Do you know how correct English is agreed upon? There is a sect of people among the English using population and whatever this elite group uses seems to be the correct english. source: Word power made easy. Its not like science where you make an experiment and decide who ever is right. Its an unfair game I decide the rules and I also participate in the fight of what is right - I always win!.

The following is what I told my mom. Go to the BBC website where they teach English. They have these audio files and the content of the audio files is written on the page. I asked her to read it first and listen to it later and see if she understood it what they are speaking. The second and more funnier thing which I asked her to do was to write an article a day and send it to me for corrections. I asked her to write about cooking so that she can probably start a blog like this. I am sure my US friend would love it. She is an amazing cook. This is not my testimony. It is a testimony of her competitors- I mean my aunts. I am sure this should work out with your moms if they are not already good at English.

By the way the BBC learning guide of English can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/

If you dont want to buy a book but if you still want to read it. Here is a way if you are either in Chennai or Hyderabad. My friend Amrutash has this company http://www.iloveread.in . If you subscribe to it they deliver any book you want like pizzas to your home and you get to keep them as long as you want- no deadlines. If they dont have it they are going to buy one for you. He says - Once you are subscribed to them you wont need to buy a book ever as long as it is non-academic. If you are not from one of these cities ask him to start one in your city.

The second best book I have read in my life

2010-10-05T02:01:00.000-07:00

Foil:You are so gaga about being smart. What will you do if you end up
marrying a dumb wife?
Me: I will make her intelligent

Foil is a human being and a good friend of mine who is now heading the Centre For Innovation.

I subscribe to the premise that anyone can do anything. I am a big fan
of rejecting the idea of talent. Rarely you come across a book which
shatters everything you have been believing."Now discover your strengths"
by Marcus Buckingham is one such book.Unlike
most books he defines what he means by talent and the role it plays
in being exceptionally great at something.

Human brain is the only organ in our body which shrinks. It does not
shrink in size. It shrinks in the number of connections. When you are born
the number of connections in your brain are in the order of billions. As
you grow the brain severs the number of connections. It does that way
to keep you sane. When you have so many connections the brain ends up
drawing several interpretations of its environment. To avoid this
confusion your brain severs some of the connections.

What is your first reaction when you see a particular situation?
When the news of the Taj bomb blast came in the news paper. I skipped the
news article and moved on to the next one. That probably is not the case
for you. you might find me evil/cruel looking at my reaction. My argument
is that when I can do nothing about a situation what is the point in
reading about it. I dont mind reading it if it is interesting to me but otherwise no.
It also does not mean that I dont read newspapers at all. I do sometimes skim
through them but not regularly. I have been accused of not knowing things which
seem to be common knowledge. You can see more of that in the about me section
on the right hand side of this page.

You must be thinking - Enough of telling about yourself just get to the point.

Talent as defined by the book depends on the kind of top of the mind
reactions of your mind when you see a situation. These are not under your
control. They just happen. They depend on how your mind severed connections
in your brain.

Marcus(author) found that there are 34 different themes of talents.Your innate talent is
decided by the top 5 themes of talent. The top five themes
of talent depend on how your mind severed the connections. How your mind
has severed the connections depends on how you grew up.

Whomever I have recommended this book thanked me profusely. I suggest you
get a copy of the book and read it.
caveat: when you buy the book make sure the code on the last page is not
scratched. You will need that to find your top of the mind reactions.

The one when you have a nut case on the review panel!

2010-09-30T06:14:00.000-07:00

hapkido=hap-ki-do=coordinated-energy-method = method to co-ordinate energy

Thats the martial art I learnt from my prof(Dr. Muruganandam) for about two and half years while I was doing my engineering. One of the three principles of this art is non-resistance.
"Hapkido-ist does not stop that force or apply a force in the opposite direction, rather he/she will just move away from that line of force that the attack becomes ineffective or probably amplify that force in such a way that the opponent loses balance." Its a good thing if it made sense if it does not it just means the following- dont oppose force, either avoid it or use it to your advantage.

OMG! the plane crashed.
Mr.Kamallakaran: Common ravikanth lets start flying the next plane
Me: What about the crashed one, sir?
Mr.Kamallakaran: We will pick it up at the end after we are done with our flying.

(By flying I meant Remote controlled airplane flying.) after sometime.
Me: How could you be so calm?
Mr. Kamllakaran: for two reasons. 1) there is nothing we can do now. 2) I know what would have happened to the plane
Me: What do you think would have happened to the plane?
Mr. Kamallakaran: It would have broken at the middle of the fuselage(body of the plane).

To my surprise that is what happened to the plane. I was in total awe of him. He then told me how he knew about it. He makes the plane structurally weaker in the middle of the fuselage. In the event of a crash the plane breaks in the middle and nothing happens to the rest of the plane. All he has to do is go back home and just attach it there.

Most of the building skills I have in aeromodelling are because of him. One of the biggest reasons IIT Madras has a good aeromodelling club is Mr. Kamallakaran.

Ok. How the hell are these two things related to handling a nut case on the review panel?
I did manage to use them in a couple of occasions. Make your presentations weak at places where you can handle questions :) Its that simple. Once the nut case gets convinced that you know enough of what you talk you have earned his confidence. If the people on the review panel are sane they will forgive even if you make a couple of mistakes here and there. If you have a nut case who is bent on screwing - make your traps :).
We have done two things - did not oppose force (of the nut case), planned for a crash. Let me know if you do use it in any occasion :)

Morons of Canara bank

2010-09-22T05:46:00.000-07:00

Me:I need to open an account
clerk: (busy checking papers)
Me:Shall I come back after some time?
clerk:(busy checking papers) wait
Fill the form, attach two photographs, attach a xerox copy of passport, do you have a pan card?
Me: yes.
clerk::Then you need a copy of that too.

Me: Why did you not tell me that when i called you on phone?
clerk: you did not ask
Me: You mean I should have asked if I need to get a pan card?
clerk: yes and you need an introducer's signature.
Me: Thanks! (moron)

Next day:
Me: I have everything
Clerk: The introducer's signature is different from the specimen
Me: can i take a look at it?
Clerk: The specimen is horizantal and the one on your application is at a small angle
Me: Common. dont ask me to come again!
Clerk: I wont accept the application
Me:(moron)why do you need an introducer's signature? That was before passports came into existence.
Clerk: Get the introducer here or get it corrected

The day after the next day
Me: I think the application is ready and I want online bank account also. I filled up the form asking for that

clerk: come tomorrow and collect the passbook. You have to apply for it separately after you get your
passbook.

Me: What is the point of having those extra columns asking if i want an online account?
Clerk: we wont process it that way

The day after that
Me: I called on phone and you said the passbook is ready and I can collect it
clerk: Ya take it.
Me: The atm card and the application for the online account
clerk: Take the application for the online account and collect the atm card tomorrow
Me: why dint you tell me that if I came tomorrow I could get both passbook and atm card when I called an
hour ago?
Clerk: you dint ask

They should change the name of Canara bank to Moron bank It will at least keep the customers informed that
they are dealing with morons. I love SBI in iit madras. They are really good with their work and they handle 10 times more customers.

yours angrily,
unproud customer of moron bank

How I make my presentations

2010-09-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

Professor Ananth: The floor is open for questions
Pankaj(my super senior):This is not related to the topic you spoke about but I still would like to ask you.
How do you speak so well?
Professor Ananth(amused and laughing): A cockroach gets very curious about how a centipede
moves around with so many legs(100). One day the cockroach meets a centipede and asks how it decides which one has to be moved at any point of time. The centipede who never thought about it, gets curious and tries to figure out how it actually moves. It tries to figure out and gets totally confused and stops trying to do that.

source: pankaj- I did not attend this talk. Pankaj was the hostel affairs secretary of IIT Madras when I was
in second year. He is the only IITian who never dressed like an IITian

Professor Ananth's point was that it developed naturally. While there is some merit to what he said it was not
entirely natural for me.

Rash: You are right. Thats exactly what I do.
Me: what do you mean?
Rash: Its not just you who likes to listen to stories. Its good that you admit it but everybody likes it whether
they admit or not
Me: hmmm. Thats interesting so you use it to get their attention.
Rash: yup. Thats when I start selling.

Rash does not live on my stomach. Rash is the name of my senior which expands to Ravi Shanker. I had amazing
conversations with him around mess tables in cauvery. You can like him or hate him but you cannot ignore him. He is working in some ad company silently planning to take over it.

The point is that stories get attention whether you like it or not. For instance one of the reasons why most of you like my blog is because I embed stories in it. This is the only thing I learnt consciously.

It is more difficult for us to write about things which come naturally than those which we develop consciously.
Before you get interested in incorporating humor in your presentation first decide whether it would be appropriate to have it in the presentation. If it is not appropriate use it with caution. For instance I would not make fun in presentations made to prof.Idichandy.

The humor sort of came naturally. But there is definitely one common element in all the ways humor is
created - surprise. You just have to surprise the audience by saying or doing something.

Pay FULL attention to what you are about to read. I usually charge 10,000 bucks per session to teach this stuff-TEN THOUSAND BUCKS. ok! Thats a complete lie but this stuff really worked for me.

1. Make an unbelievable lie and give a moment for them to absorb it. Tell them immediately that you lied! I tried it in the previous statement I dont know if it worked. This definitely works for me when I speak. Let me know if it worked:)

2. Tell/ask them something which seems totally unrelated. Then go ahead and relate it to what ever is relevant
to the topic.I was recently asked to make a presentation on how the competition happened. I started with "Do you guys like science fiction movies?"

3. The last one I know is called common enemy. You can see this in Steve Jobs' presentation. He usually uses
against windows(Microsoft). You sit and laugh with him even though the computer on which you are listening to his presentation is windows. If you are from IIT Madras you can see Shaastra guys using saarang as their enemy to have have fun in their presentations.

Thats all I could recall. If you use something else and you are aware of it let me know by commenting

Escape routes:
Usually most presentations end with Q and A sessions. One of the things which I dreaded most in my second year was "How would I look if I did not know the answer of a question which is asked?"

Firstly, No body bothers if you just say "I dont know. I will find out and let you know."
I do it a little differently. Usually if it is a question asking for more information I would just say I dont know
if I did not know

If it is a question on logic or something which needs thought and I dont know the answer. I dont like to say that I dont know. I hardly encounter such questions because I am usually sound in what I learn. I myself ask too many questions when I learn stuff :)

When I dont know the answer to such questions I throw it back at the audience. I would say "Now, thats a good question (obviously because you could not asnwer it). Since you have listened to all I talked about why dont you guys figure out the answer. It would really give a lot of satisfaction to me if you could answer. If you cannot figure out answer just send me a mail I will reply to your question." If some one answers its solved, if not you just escaped :) I used it only once when I was giving a talk in Anna university.

Nothing is complete wihtout talking about powerpoint slides. Its best if you could just keep it as
bullets with not more than 6 words in each point. If its too much information just make it visual. I am not
great at this. Actually I almost suck at this. I usually get away with it because my talk usually is interesting.

coming up next is "what can you do if you have a tough nut to crack in your review panel?" . I will not title it that way because there are profs on my gtalk list :)

The life and lies of my presentations

2010-09-13T05:37:00.000-07:00

Incident 1:
Teja: Anna, are you speaking in the CFI(centre for innovation) talk?
Me: are you referring to the one mentioned in the notice board?
Teja: ya
Me: How does it matter? If you want to know more about CFI just attend it.
Teja: I am not very interested in CFI but I like listening to you speak
(Me to myself: cool! -with the ego kick I just got- you are doing good in presentations)
For those of you who are CFI challenged - Centre For Innovation(CFI) is a lab at IIT Madras built and run by students for the students. I spent most of my life in IIT in this place.You can check out the website at http://cfi.iitm.ac.in/cfi/ - Wait! Dont leave the page check the site later - anyway its not clickable :P

Incident 2:
Kedar: What the fuck happened to you?
Me: I know
Kedar: You put fundaes to me on how to present and how can you make such a substandard presentation!
Me: Ya man. It really sucked compared to the way I usually present. It was pretty boring. was nt it?
Kedar: yes. Anyway forget it - I am just pissed because I was expecting something very interesting.
By the way his part of the presentation was fantastic on that day

I happened to do presentations which totally rocked to presentations which are really bad.By rocking I mean - Six months after a presentation made to freshmen I met a girl which led to the following conversation.
Girl: The other presentation you made was simply amazing
Me: What do you mean? You dint like this one
Girl: This is very good. But the other one is just stunning. I dont think EVEN you will be able to make something like that again.
Me: I dont like the last comment but go on
Girl: My friends and I wanted to know who you are and wanted to meet you. We came to know that you are passing out this year and dropped the idea.
(Me to myself: shit! I should have capitalized on that hype :P)

A presentation which was really bad went this way - My legs were trembling out of stage fear.The audience seem to have split into two groups - One group was sleeping and the other group was waiting for me to finish off. The thing which I dreaded most in my life never happened YET - Nobody ever threw foot wear at me to get me out of the stage.If this ever happens it would be fun to write a blog post about it!

In recent times the presentations usually suck only if I am in a really bad mood. Just before the presentation which I mentioned in incident 2 I had a fight with my friend. I was in a terrible mood. I really feel bad if I make a bad presentation because I miss the kick which I usually get when I make a good one. I promised to myself that I will never make a bad one again and stay away from mood spoilers before I make a presentation.

A little while ago a couple of my juniors asked me to give fundaes on presentations. I gave them a few tips and recently thought that may be I should write a blog post about it. I have asked Sayan an year ago to write about this. He had time and would have wasted it on http://havetimewillwaste.blogspot.com/ but he never wrote about presentations. I guess he forgot about it and I never reminded him too. By the way Sayan is the best student speaker I have seen in my student life.I kept my audience on high (I mean captive) for half an hour but he did it for about two and half hours. That is something to pull off.

I am going to assume that you dont have problems with stage fear for two reasons-1) quite a few of the people on my gtalk have made presentations before 2) It takes an entire blog post to write about it. If you do want me to write on it just ask me.

The first thing you need to know is - why the heck are you presenting? Knowing this very clearly is the most important thing. Even if the guys who asked you to make it dont know you should know about it. You should know why the audience would want to listen to you.The presentation I mentioned in the incident 2 partly sucked because even the organizer was vague about why he wanted us to present. I should have thought about what the audience would want to hear. To put it succinctly you should know what you want to happen after the presentation.

If you know why you are presenting and whom you are presenting you have begun well. Since well begun is half done you are half done with your presentation- just kidding. Start writing down what you want to present- write all the key ideas you want to convey. It should be very easy since you already know why you are presenting and whom you are presenting. If this is difficult trust me you are not clear on why you are presenting and whom you are presenting. Go back and fix that.

Once you are done with writing down what you want to present. I am assuming it is exhaustive and it is too much to present in the time given to you. A one hour presentation should be having about 4-8 key ideas and I dont like making it more than one hour because the audience will probably loose attention. Keep it on the lowerside. Less is more when you are presenting because what the audience takes away is more important than what you give. Make their life easier they will love you.

Now dont say "Oh my god! I have a lot of things to tell. I cant bring it down to 4-8 key ideas."
There are two things you need to know-
Our director professor Ananth keeps quoting this "The teachers job is not to cover the syllabus. His job is to uncover a part of it so that the student picks up the rest of it." I am not a teacher but I prefer to just uncover a part of the whole thing.

Have you heard of pareto's principle? It is also called 80-20 rule. Roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. My whole life rides on this one thing. If you know a guy who is very lazy and still is getting away with things you can be sure that he knows this. What is in it for us? It just means that you can knock of 80 percent of what you have listed and still convey them enough. This is particularly important in presentations because less is more. You will be conveying what you have in a much better way. All you need to do is to just list down everything in priority order and knock off the bottom 80 percent :)
Your aim is to not tell them - it is something else which you have decided when you are trying to figure the "why". You probably want funding for your project or get the people impressed or get a good grade for your DDP etc. Focus on the aim.

Coming up next is "How to present?"(rather How I present!). If the blog is not long I will tell you something which is extremely useful if you have a tough nut on your BTP or DDP review panel.

I have not thanked the one person who has helped me with this blog in the beginning. He took my pictures and made the header for me! Thanks destiny. You can find him at http://destinydecoder.blogspot.com/ .After ten years you will find his name in theaters :)

Thanks for all the comments for my previous post! Some even took time in pinging me and telling me that they liked and want more of such posts. I like that but I like comments on the blog too :) Feel free to suggest/contradict anything on this post. i know that quite a few people on my gtalk list are good speakers.

Lastly the CFI website is http://cfi.iitm.ac.in/cfi/

How was your trip?

2010-09-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

This is the most frequent question i got since Ianded in the midnight of sep 2nd. I thought I will just write a blog and redirect people here.

In case you have not seen any of my status messages I ended up going to USA for a competition called International Aerial Robotics Competition. You can find the link to the competition here http://iarc.angel-strike.com/ . Nobody won this year. I will talk about the competition in a future post.

My travel path was the following chennai->San Juan(Puerto Rico, USA)->Mayaguez(Puerto Rico)->New York->Washington DC->Columbus(Ohio)->Dayton->Westchester->New york -> Chennai. I would say I did decent for a 20 day trip with the competition taking the first few days :).

I experienced a little of a lot of things.
Some Facts:
we are not any bad compared to USA in terms of the technical competency for building our robot.

Quite a few number of people even in US (general population) know about IITs. We met these Univ of Michigan guys and introduced ourselves that we are from IIT. One of the girl in their team comes the next day and says "Shit! You guys are like MIT in USA. I dint know that." I dont like telling people that we are from an awesome institute but I really like it when they find it out and come to us saying that. It gives some kind of ego pleasure i guess :)

Forts in US dwarf before the forts in India. They dont stand anywhere in comparison to the forts in India.

Hispanic girls are beautiful. no more comments :)

Salsa originated in the island where we stayed - puerto rico.

The island is a beautiful island with awesome beaches.

Puerto rico is a carribean island which was attacked by "pirates of carribean"

what I learnt:
I learnt
1)about about 25 words in spanish.

2) little bit of salsa. The learning stage progressed from terrible to bad. I met this very nice girl who taught me a couple of steps.

3) quite a bit of "how to start conversation with girls arbitrarily". This is pretty useful even here

4) that US guys are pretty methodical

5)that rum and booze taste decently bad. lost the fear for booze but I am still wary of them

6)the rules of poole-I could have learnt it here but never took time - and the guy taught me so well that I beat the guy who taught me in the first game :)

Some Interesting Incidents:

Incident 1:
New york hall of science(science museum):
female volunteer: oh. are you guys from India?
me: ya
female volunteer: do u guys know this famous college in India which is better than harvard, mit and stuff?
me: where did u hear about it?
female volunteer: CBS 60 minutes

me: we study there

silence for a couple of seconds
female volunteer: you have to throw all the three balls with the same force.
me: I cant throw with the same force
female volunteer: Have you not done science experiments? Dont you know that the external conditions should be same for the experiment

me: I did science experiments but I never did them right!

Incident 2:
Geography and Kedar went into quite a decent distance in the beach and they were swimming back. They saw a couple of girls in bikinis from distance who were playing in the beach. They started swimming towards them.

They just reached the beach and
girls: (smile)
Geography and kedar: Hello beautiful girls! We are from the ocean and we came to meet you!
(no comments on what happened next.)

ok. thats enough. The usual crib is that my posts are long! So I stop here. write to you later :) I will end this with quote from laplace which I found in the New york hall of science. Please click and open the photograph in a new window

United states of America: The land of instructions!

2010-08-27T03:51:00.000-07:00

Pranay: Three tickets to new york port authority terminal
bus driver: each one of them costs 12.30 so three tickets cost hmm
me:uff
bus driver: 12 and 12 make 24, 30 and 30 make 60 thats 24.60
us: omg!( lolling)
bus driver: we need to add another 12.30
me: its 36.90.
bus driver: thanks for that

I sometimes wonder how they manage to live like that. When I talked to my aunt here she said the bus driver was probably not educated at all. i know my grandpa. He has never been educated and he used to run a shop. I just passed my 5th class and got into 6th class. I went to him to the shop. He asked me if I knew how to add. "Of course I do! do you think i passed my 5th class without knowing that?". He smiled. We went to the shop. There was a customer and he gave a big list of things and my grandpa scribbled the prices beside each item and asked me to add. The list was about four pages long and each page had about 25 items. I definitely added things in my life but never such a big list. I start adding and I would suddenly forget/miss if I added the number i was looking at. I still remember him making fun of me. He does this job really fast obviously. He bought a calci but never used. When asked he says it takes too much time to punch in the numbers.

When I remember these instances I recall "necessity is the mother of invention".

In america people spend all the time reading instructions rather than using common sense. The systems are designed that way. Though I initially felt that the average american is dumber than an average indian I came to see the reason after sometime. Will you ever see such an instruction in any restroom in India? Well if you did in some restroom in start hotel - ladies and gentlemen we are on the way to become dumber. My first reaction to this instruction was "how can someone be that dumb to not recognize that it would be wet in a restroom?"

Now please stop bothering about how I took a picture in a rest room and just enjoy the post!

P.S. I still dont get why people call toilets as restrooms. I found neither a bed nor a chair in any of the restrooms I have seen so far though they are particularly clean.

ok! another random pic in mens bathroom :P I just found it funny thats all. @females reading the blog - I am not trying to be chauvinistic

Though I call it land of instructions it really is a land of opportunities. I saw a guy sitting in puerto rico with two paper fish (the origamis) on a table. we went and asked him what he was doing. He said he would make the paper fish fight(ya with his hands) and we could bet on of them! There is no way you are making a paisa of money that way in India :)

My first commercial airplane journey!

2010-08-24T07:05:00.000-07:00

yup! My first journey was on a two seater airplane which has a transparent body. I could look through the side of my legs! You can see what surveillance means from that airplane :) My second journey was on a 6 seater airplane with my classmates in IIT Kanpur. We were supposed to do a lab when we actually had a heck a lot of fun. I have no pics of my first airplane journey - I will just buy that two seater in about 10 years and take pics :)

My third journey happened to be my journey to San Juan (Puerto Rico) - this is my first commercial airplane journey. It is no where close to my previous flights. If I was blindfolded and put in the airplane there would be no way of me knowing that I am on a plane except for the screwed up thing that happens in the ears (thats because of the pressure drop i guess - some one enlighten me on this).

I had both interesting journeys and boring journeys. I had hot chicks, awesome guys, boring people sit next to me through the journeys - never met awesome chicks yet on plane :P. If you ever travel in groups make sure u dont sit together.Airplanes are awesome places to meet new people. Some end up grumpy but i liked most of my journeys because i found interesting neighbours. I would suggest getting some conversation openers before u start your journeys. I like the international journeys more because you get enough time to move around and talk to others. Usually the planes are bigger on international journeys and the passengers are bored enough to talk to strangers :) The air hostesses are better looking too!

Dont order Indian food on international journeys unless u are a strict vegan. what is the point if u eat the same thing and live the same way when u go to a different place? If you do order by mistake convince the neighbour to try out your food and take his food off :P I will post a second post if i remember anything else

About meeting interesting people the guy standing next to me owns this place http://www.vangogc.com/. I have mentioned in facebook that this guy had 15 ppl working for him by the time he graduated. What I liked the best was the way he made me remember his website! He asked if I heard of van gogh - which I strangely knew. Then he asked to replace the last letter with c and voila i found his website now after 15 days after I met him!

You guys suck!

2010-08-06T16:37:00.000-07:00

Me: Visa office
auto wala: 120 saar
Me: I paid 70 bucks last time. dont bullshit
auto wala: petrol prices increased saaar
wtf????
Me: How far is Visa office from here?
Auto wala: 10km saaar
Me: what is the mileage of auto?
Auto wala: saaaar
Me: I know its around 25km
Auto wala: saaaaar
Me:how much did the petrol price increase?
Auto wala: 4 rupees (per liter)
Me: You spend half liter on my travel. I will pay you 72 bucks to compensate for the increase in price.
Auto wala: what saaaar
Me: I am compensating for the increase in petrol price. am I not?
Me: You guys really suck!

Moral of the story: Auto guys are the only guys who make money when the petrol prices increase. They are like goldman sachs - make money irrespective of whether the stock price increases or decreases.

P.S. I know I unnecessarily wasted my time with him but had to get it off my chest.

I have a new way of dealing with autos. I tell the place and price. I usually find out the price from one of my friends and add 10 bucks to it and proceed. For instance the conversation would start with - Visa office, 70 bucks. I just leave in case he does not accept or bargain. Some auto walas usually smile and not bargain. Most see me leaving immediately and call me back and accept my offer.

Please treat yourself!

2010-07-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

Let me do the honors before I begin.@Adarsh, Anubhav, bynge, sailaja, spring, ravi, anvesh mohan - Thank you very much for commenting. It is definitely an encouragement for me to write more. Please keep commenting and feel obliged to do so :)
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I sometimes miss it. Actually I have been missing it for quite sometime. I am not talking about celebrating your success. I am talking about our work. Being excellent at work is a treat to yourself. I have been missing it definitely from the side of academics. Once you know that you are excellent at what you do, it really does not matter whether you get recognized for it or not. Please dont misunderstand I definitely like if I am recognized and awarded but I would not want to spend time on trying to get it. Its no longer very lucrative to go and try to work for an award. You start finding it silly or stupid to fight for a reward for your work. This statement might sound stupid but go to the people who are best(really the top guys- sometimes these guys dont end up being the most famous guys usually because they dont care) at what they do you find this as a common trait. Age really does not matter. You can see this across all ages.

I had a surprising revelation in one of the talks of prof. LS Ganesh. I love his talks as most people do. Excellence at work(whatever be the work) is prescribed as the duty of every Indian citizen in Indian constitution. Now talk about a country where excellence at work is part of the duties of the citizen of the country! Talk about India! On a different but related note Prof. LS Ganesh in one of his talks described the stages of learning:
1.you dont know that you dont know
2.you know that you dont know
3.You know that you know
4.you know so much that you dont really care - the reason why these guys are sometimes are not very famous in their fields

I started figuring out what happened to me and why I treat myself less. The enemy to being excellent at work is laziness.(Laziness has its own benefits. I attribute most of my very best ideas to my laziness). I have been lazy all my life but I was treating myself for quite a while. After two years of stay in IIT I learnt something which fed my laziness. I learnt MBA (my version of MBA is Management By Absence). I learnt how to get things done without my presence. This gave me a lot of leverage but now since I could get things done I never really needed to do a lot of work I only had to keep track of things. I learnt this so well(I know people who can swear on anything to vouch for me on this) that I got myself a big leverage. After this I almost stopped treating myself. I had glimpses of treating myself but its been sometime since I treated myself. I am kind of getting it back. If you are working and doing it for something else other than being excellent you are not really treating yourself. This is the case no matter how much the job sucks. I wish somebody reminded me in this span of 3 years . I guess thats the only thing you can do about past - wishing.

Wiki Crime

2010-03-08T01:57:00.000-08:00

Firstly, @Jayanth, Naveen, Rakesh, Jyo,nampu, srikanth, Teja, Ram, Amrutash,shanmukh,Preethi, nesh, pinky,sheshank,sanjeev, lk, Pratyu,suri,mohan- Thank you very much for commenting! Babloo recently asked me when I am posting my next post! i am kicking myself :P

Secondly
In the last post I just wanted to talk about the order of magnitude of the kind of expenses you are looking at. I am just suggesting that entrepreneurship is one way if u are looking for some fun as well as fun :)

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A month ago I was on a high of ideas. I usually get high when I get an awesome idea. I dont know what exactly an alcoholic high feels like but I think this high is close to it. I am looking for a lot of criticism, thoughts and discussions on the following idea.

I am just calling it wikicrime. No! This is definitely not about collaborating in an open environment to commit a crime. Before I actually explain I should start with a little introduction to my thoughts on corruption and crime.

For all those people who have a pesisimistic (did i make a spelling mistake?forget it) view about India please take a look at the following statistics. Readers digest conducted two experiments once 20 years ago and once in the recent times. They left a huge sum of money in envelopes at various public places and they found that 85% percent of the cases the finders were trying to return it to the owners. This percentage remained same at both times. Dude we live in a good place! But then....

What is it in India that is feeding corruption and crime? India has a good legal and constitutional system. The only problem I find is that they forgot to factor in the fact that MAN/WOMAN as of now lives only 70 years on an average. It seems as if they have designed all this assuming man lives for ever. So lets get the truth no matter what and not punish the innocent under any circumstance. Cool! Very commendable. What the hell are u going to do about the people who are commiting crime and using this as a loop line? Where is the complementary system to reduce this? There is none as of now.

There is a need to make this faster. If we just speed up all these processes in India by 2X we will be at much better position. Well, since law is not something which can be changed so fast I think the idea of wikicrime might help in this matter.

Let me explain my idea. We start a wiki where anyone can post details of corruption or crime they face/come across.(they can do it anonymously). This wiki has to be made popular enough that people get used to posting into it and people who can help need not spend time in searching for crimes. Newspapers do it to some extent but they dont have enough space to publish stuff. This also has another advantage that the criminal (or the corrupted guy) will start getting a little concerned once he find his name and act in a wiki. It should have a provision where the most popular criminal (or corrupted guy) ends up topping the list :P. You could vote for a guy and increase popularity.

This does nothing in terms of punishing the guy who commits crime. But it does make him popular for what he does. Nobody wants their kith and kin to think they are criminals (or corrupted). For instance if that ACP Rathore who was molesting had his name, photo and his act documented in a wiki and people start voting him and taking him to the top things would have been faster.

There are drawbacks with this system. There can be a lot of fake/false accusations. These would stay at the bottom of the popularity list. We should make sure that a post made is not deletable under any circumstances. If its a false accusation let it be still on the wiki but we should make sure things are not buried under any circumstance. If its a false accusation people will know about it and I am sure the guy can give an explaination about it.

Implementation of this idea:
To start with we should have support of the following stake holders -
1. news reporters who work in crime investigations - Tehelka?
2. money in the form of donations not in the form of sponsorship (sponsors might pressurize if they contribute a lot of money). We could put ads but then google might end up placing ads of only things like condoms, viagra and stds because of the way google ads work.
3. Publicity to people and support from them.

Well, thats all I have thought of as of now. Thank you in advance for all the criticism and suggestions from you. Lets see how this turns out. please do comment guys!(of course that applies to girls too!)

How much money do you want to live?

2010-02-04T17:59:00.000-08:00

Me 1:Are you out of your mind?
Me 2: No
Me 1: Why the hell do you want to pack placements?
Me 2: Placements is the 2nd option. When have I started putting that much fight for my second option?
Me 1: ok ok. What if you screw up the first option?
Me 2: Dude Ravikanth! Are you out of your mind? When have u started looking for options instead of fixing whatever is wrong with the first option.
Me 1: ohh ya true. hmmm
Me 1 and Me 2 agree on the same thing. I pack placements.Thats the story of my placements.

I wanted to start up from the time I heard the way start ups work. ohhh!! Wait! what? I am supposed to talk about "How much money do you want to live?". Ya ya ya I know. Please hold on- This is the primer :). I dont want you to be bored at the beginning of my blog post.

Its quite frightening and annoying to not sit for placements. Its a nice experience. I had fun not sitting :). At this juncture I started reasoning myself with those endless whys? (people who know me are supposed to smile at this point. if you know and if u dint, do it :P). So I decided to figure out how much money I would be needing.

What do you need for a comfortable living?
hmm. lets see.
6BHK(ya 6 bedroom house), One bike, One SUV, one convertible, a cook (to cook food for u), two servants to help you out at home.

What could be your monthly expenses?
Food - Rs.30,000(Fair enough?includes the cook salary)
Shelter- Rs.40,000(I have no clue what I am going to do with 6 bedrooms :P)
Clothing - Rs.20,000(should be ok)
Salary to both servants- Rs.15000(total)
Maintenance - Rs.25000(power,pay some insurance for yourself and stuff u want to insure)
So far its 1.3 lakhs. Let me make it 2 lakhs to be on safe side.

How much money do u think u will need for living like this for 100 years? 2lakhs*12months*100years= 24 crores. I need 3 more crores to buy what I started out with(the bike, house etc). This is the money I need now assuming i live 100 years. I already lived 20 years and I dont think I will more than 80 years. so 40 years are gone. It dropped down to 14.4 crores plus the 3 crores to start with. So its about 17.4 crores.
Ohh yes. I know I have not counted inflation. I have calculated the net present value.

This is a formidable target if you want to do a job and earn that much. No job pays u that much. Why put yourself through a job which does not help anyway?

This to me does not sound like an unbeatable target at all if you start up. I am not joking.I strongly believe it is not one for a lot of my friends. There are at least 20 ppl in my hometown who dont have a degree and have 100 crore worth of assets which they earned.

Why is liking your work so important? Whatever u do you eventually want to enjoy. Sadly work takes most of your time. Do you want to be happy most of the time and sad for a small amount of time (to start with) or the other way round?

There are some jobs which are fun to work and pay a lot but you don't feel satisfied with the work. The way they live is by conning themselves for their life. works for them :)

I want all three - fun, satisfaction, money :P some believe its not possible. I believe it is possible. Lets see :) cya!

Free domain

2009-03-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

There is this domain called .co.nr where you can get free domain names which you like. The website is
http://www.freedomain.co.nr/