Hmm

Done with first term in uncle sam's land!

Adios another year!

Another birthday passed by,another year slipped away, they say times are good when they are fast.I dunno how to react to this. I freaked out a bit,am i where i wanted to be now, am I on the right track, so do i have a plan blah blah, in the end, oh who the fuck cares, if am no more than another one on the street at least am livin it up!

In the name of the best within us

These are my, most favorite lines from one of my all time favorite books "Atlas Shrugged".

"In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours."

Thought block

It's like having everything you ever wanted right there in front of you,and like you are not prepared for it.

It's as if every moment from then on is another chance to make it up to it.

But it's just a dream , not like it's ever gonna come true.

Halloween

Theaters showing horror movies, heavily colorful atmosphere, buses carrying drunken people, guyz dressed like dorks and gals dressed at their provocative best, what's the matter, Oh it's halloween. I had way too many submissions the day before Halloween, couldn't care less for a costume, but it was gud fun to go out and feel Halloween anyway. Roamed around downtown, had Indian food at probably the only mentionable Indian restaurant in Minneapolis "dancing ganesha" and then jumped around for a while with a bunch of drunken people.

PS: (In the pic)Mikhil dressed as a FBI agent, me,well dressed as an eskimo and sid behind us click on pic to get a better view dressed as a Ninja,prolly devastated after Win7 release.

Invictus

In the not so dynamic life of a researcher where the greatest challenge is to keep your convictions up and alive, i today resolve that I shall play the game with no fear or hatred with nothing holding me back from living out this "one life". I shall try not to win , but see if i can fail any further, if things could be at their harshest best and I could still move on,i shall move and move not coz i have to get somewhere, or to something , but fearless, emotionless coz thatz the only the only way i know how to live.

I am the master of my fate.

I am the captain of my soul.

My current research pursuits

Computing DNA copy number variations of cancer cells by using edge detectors

Purpose: Aberrations in DNA copy number is found to be the reason behind many types

of cancers, autism and other genetic disorders.DNA copy number variations have been

measured by many techniques. The popular ones are : 1) Local fluorescence in situ

hybridization based techniques. 2) Classical CGH 3) Microarray based CGH etc.

The common problem faced by all the techniques is that the signal is usually

corrupted by noise. As a result, sometimes true edges are missed and false edges

are amplified which affects the overall result. Hence, in this project I plan to

carry out the de-noising and smoothing of the DNA signals by using edge detectors,

which are commonly used in image processing as a pre-processing step.

Review: An edge can be defined as a sudden/abrupt change in the state of a signal.

A good edge detector is supposed to have the following two most important

qualities:

1)It should be robust against the background noise. It should not falsely detect

edges caused by noise, nor should it miss weak actual edges.

2)It should localize the edges accurately.

But, both these qualities are difficult to achieve at a time due to the nature of

the smoothing filter and are related by an uncertainty principle.

An edge is usually modeled as a step function. Edge detection is usually a four

step process: 1) Smoothing (to remove the noise) 2) Find the derivative (to pick up

the edges) 3) Find the maxima and decide on the confidence intervals. 4) Threshold

(optional).

Choice of a derivative: The first and second order differentials are usually used

to ascertain the existence of an edge. The first derivative gives a much smoother

edge, it gives a maxima centered on the location of the edge. The second derivative

gives a more accurate location of the edge i.e. the edge occurs where the

derivative crosses the zero axes. Hybrid detectors use both the derivatives using a

logic circuit to obtain a smoother signal with lesser probability of error.

Choice of Filter: Differentiation process which is used to detect an edge cannot

distinguish between an edge and a noise. Hence, the overall SNR of the signal is

reduced, so to avoid this problem the signal is first passed through a filter so

that it gets regularized. This is achieved by convolving the input signal with a

filter, f(z), whose Fourier transform, F(w), satisfies the following conditions,

known as Tikhonov’s Conditions, which are:

1)F(w) must be bounded 2) F(w) is an even function in frequency 3)F(w) and jwF(w)

must be finite energy functions 4) F(w,sigma) = 0 for sigma > 0 and w tends to

infinity 5 ) F(w,sigma)= 1, for sigma=0 where w = radian frequency. Band-limited

filters satisfy Tikhonov’s regularizing conditions, but have infinite support and

are therefore computationally inefficient. Support limited filters are seen to be

computationally efficient but unsatisfactory in the view of Tikhonov’s criteria.

This compromise is met by filters with minimal uncertainty, uncertainty is defined

as the measure of spread of a filter in time and frequency. The known functions

which satisfy the minimal uncertainty condition are the Gaussian, Gabor and Hermite

functions.

Gaussian is more popularly used because of the following benefits, 1) It is smooth

and infinitely differentiable 2) Decays to zero rapidly(compared to sinc functions)

3)Separable in multi dimensions. The choice of sigma of the Gaussian filter,

greatly affects the quality of the output. A large value sigma causes too much

smoothing and removes some actual edges, while a small value of sigma causes a

higher amount of noise to be detected.

Threshold: Once the signal has been smoothed by the filter and if the filter is

using a first order derivative, a threshold value is applied at this stage is to

limit the noise induced edges. If the derivative is greater than the pre-selected

threshold, then an edge is selected.

The most efficient edge detectors are usually hybrid structures of the above

mentioned choices of derivatives and filters.

Some other techniques: Some authors used the technique of histogram equalization

prior to the edge detection to improve the signal quality. This technique is based

on the fact that histogram of a given signal should be as flat as possible.

Other than the zero cross edge detection and the Laplacian edge detection mentioned

earlier two other popular edge detection techniques are :

1) Sobel edge detection: It look for edges in both the horizontal and vertical

directions and then combine this information into a single metric. It uses the

gradient operators along the x and y direction to compute the gradient magnitude.

It can be used in I-D cases as well.

2) Prewitt edge detection: It work in a similar way as the Sobel edge detector

but with a different set of pre-defined weights. It can also work in 1-D.

In case of extremely noisy signals, neural networks(FANN architecture) have also

been used to compute the edge.

Conclusion: I hope to choose one of the above mentioned techniques to denoise and

smoothen the DNA signals.

Intution

What exactly works for a product in the tech market.The quality of the product, durability,efficiency performance,security and the most important quality of all usability,of course it all starts with the UI,interface etc., I call it the "presentation layer".So a customer actually takes a deeper look at your product if the presenatation layer is attractive enough.Just like, if some girl is pretty there is every chance she would get the initial attention from men.As Barney in HIMYM says" the similiarity between women and fishes is that they are both attracted towards shiny objects."(Well it applies for both men and women.)

Letz see what exactly works on the presentation layer.

A web page with a text box and two simple buttons make up the UI of the most cutting edge search engine the world has ever seen.(Google)

A simple white board marker like surface with huge buttons and bold engraved letters, gives you world's most popular mail, yahoomail.(People find gmail tuffer to use,as it bundles a email thread opens up the reply window below and doesn't outline all the options clearly.)

The first touch phone sells like hotcakes"iphone" inspite of the fact that it had a crippled bluetooth, bad keyboard, no select all option(how did they miss that),etc.

The main reason why Zune bombed so badly was the first version looked ugly(dull black),not coz it frooze on the new year day.My personal take, first Zune had sharp edges which hurt real bad.(whhy??)

So what can we derive,what exactly works, intution.

If a product is intutive it becomes a customer's friend immediately.

A text box and button saying search, intutive.UI

World's most easy mailing interface, yahoomail,intutive enough,even for complete laymen.

But thatz the hardest thing to find out, what is intutive??

It actually takes a lot of study and nice pieces of observations compiled together in making a product intutive.

Like how, this is how:

I got a Samsung Eternity a few days back, Samsung's take on the Iphone.(Looks and feeels very similiar)

It has two features worth talking about.

1)The iphone has one black buttton below, which takes u back to home from which ever directory that u are.But if are inside the fouth level of directory say Camera\MyPics\Ooty\Falls and you wanna go one folder up,that is to Camera\MyPics\Ooty then you almost have no go.Well samsung eternity's button below,acts like the up arrow in windows explorer and takes u one step behind. Nice!Good obseravtion.

2)There is a small button on top right rear side.Acts as the lock-unlock button,oh thatz such a hassle with Iphone. Nice again!

So my final take,intutive features are direct result of simplicity and good people centric observations.

Self Obsessed

Another reflective piece of self criticism.

After I opened a bank account at the TCF bank in the campus branch of UMN, I received a purple coloured sweat-shirt on depositing my first 50 dollars.

Boldly saying"Golden Gophers".

I chuckled to myself as i knew it is going straight to my closet unless someone asks for it .

Whhoh, why??

Four years at NITR;T-shirts sold every year, never bought one.

2 years at Microsoft; T-shirts,jackets and bags distributed all the time, never used one.

The trend shall continue at Gopherland.

Never had an email signature, saying am blahblah.

Never had a business card saying howdy here's the so called me.

If,I was so proud to be wherever I was,why did I never wear my pride on my sleeve.

Was I playing the humble kitten.No, something a blunt person like me just can't.

Was I intimidated by something, heh, thatz just ridiculous.

The reason is that,I was always way too proud to be myself,nothing,no university, no company, no country or watever else u have, captures the true light of my indomitable spirit.Am proud to be all that, but I only wear the greatest pride on me,the pride of my individuality.

So i don't wear nothing, coz no identity is bigger than me.

It is the source from where,I derive the strength of all my convictions from.

This is both a gud and bad way of thinking, think u can guess why, whatever, at least my premise has no contradictions.

Guilty.

My grandmom, my dad's mom expired today.

I feel a little bad and heavily guilty tonight.

Am suddenly a little nostalgic, all her stories,endless chats, descriptions of quit india movment when she was a 10 year old,all the those little stories from puranas and other indian mythological books,all her experiences as a police officer's wife,some of her patentable recipes and those loving eyes of a person who well and truly believes in you. Miss u Maa..

Before coming from India, i could have gone and visited her(one last time)but because i was so busy in travelling and "exploring myself" that I could never find the time.

Am sorry Maa, I really am.

I don't really like myself today.

If you are reading this,please go out there and give a hug to every person who cares for you.

Travelogue:NYC

So it starts like this.

Mom and Dad dropping me off at the Dum..Dum.

Mom giving me a good emotional speech about staying careful,aware and holding myself in all possible situations.Dad, very quiet,like he's gonna miss his buddy.Sister,the usual chatterbox, and also my biggest die-hard fan who already believes my thesis will win me the nobel prize someday,Lolz,who kept telling me about how I shouldn't worry about anything back home and it's all gonna be ok.

Well,thatz my family,God's most precious gift to me.

I never missed them more than i did in that 22 hrs weird flight. Weird coz i got up in calcutta in a direct flight with a stop at delhi,here comes the weird part, they make u get down at delhi airport(phish market is a better description) and u change planes, itz like a completely new check in minus lugggage.I had heard about delhi's internationtional terminals being unduly overcrowded but howrah bridge won't look all that busy to you, once u spend some time there.

I was just talking to a co-passenger at delhi, Katie, who happened to be a professor of biology at the NYU, when something really funny happened. Some guy, bengali by appearnce,very innocent looking like he won't hurt a fly, came upto me and said hey i just overheard your conversation,am a graduate from UMN too, am from calcutta, i used work here in tata motors, i did my undegrad in IITG, UMN is a great place blahblahblah.........and suddenly he sneezed very heavily like his brains would burst out, before i could talk or react, the woman next to me walked away and u know what ,so did I, and so did the next person, and soon so did all of us, ( they should call it fear flu not swine flu), he was left all alone just because he had a bad sneeze,immdiately I took a napkin and wiped my hands and stopped talking for a while, looking back at it,i feel that was very insensitive of all of us, but thanks to media, common man is a lot more scared these days.

Me getting down at JFK 60'clock Tue 11th August , Ron picking me up at the airport,us finding our way past that stupid airport railcar, and here I am at NYC, Harlem, the place where my buddy stays, the block that i had last seen in Die Hard 3,and am heavily jetlagged. I have to admit that fear makes us take stupid decisions, the easiest way of getting past a jet lag is that,just keep doing everything at regular hours, sleep when itz nite and eat even when you are not hungry and stay normal, but because i had seen too much television before leaving india, i was thinking like this, i should just oversleep, thatz the best way of avoiding any possible infections/flu , looking back at it, i can only smile at myself. HUH.

So I,slept two and half days straight and Ron had an exam to study for.

Other than our short little trips to a some nearby italian and mexican resturants, thhe first 2 days were pretty uneventful.(A vegetarian's perspective)I feel italian food just overflows with cheese and mexican food reminds you of Indian food quite a lot. Funnily, I never noticed this about mexican food when i had it back in india.

So we went along to our first place of visit in NYC, Rockefeller centre.When you are in Manhattan it feels like you are in a very chilled out place, like the humdrum of a busy metropolitan is missing, but once you are downtown you see the real NYC,the skyscrapers lined up for miles, and yeeah not just buildings, architectural marvels, you might have read about those in many books,i will not try to capture the spectacle in my words,go feel it yourself.

So we went on top of the second highest building in NYC now(probably),and enjoyed an aerial view of the entire city, quite a sight that.I had thought, initially that I would probably be the only visitor,(who on earth would wanna go on top of a building paying 15 dollars), but to my surprise,there quite a lot of people there.

Next we reached,Times square, there are so many places in this world which are worth watching over a hundred times over, like Taj Mahal, this one is worth watching just once , but you will be spell-bound the first time you watch it, next time onwards you won't even know u are there.I think thatz what explains the hundreds of visitors and tourists standing there for hours together and admiring the amazing play of lights(like a daybreak). I was no different, but yeeah you wont feel the same the next time you go there,which we did, 2 days later to watch a movie.

Third act,a typical american bar on the times square,few drinks, we call it a day with lots of pictures as a testimony.

Next day, we start late, do some shopping, have some junk food and reach "ground zero", the place where the twin towers stood once, apparently that has now become a construction site for the new set of towers,now coming up,called freedom towers.Looking at that site, i wondered how much world politics has changed since that day, for gud or for bad, only time will tell.I couldn't take a picture, thought it might haunt me(Silly me !).

Next we,reached the site of another architectural wonder, built in 1875 and absolutely flooded by tourists,the brooklyn bridge.The manhattan bridge happpens to be right in front of it.I wonder how Shah Rukh sat singing on this bridge all alone, Kal ho na ho, it should take at least 3-5 hours to completely evacuate the bridge.Nevermind, he's our superman, absoultely capable of anything.So we went around the parks, waterfronts and viewpoints all around the twin bridges.

And thatz when you see another side of this sublime city,the calm one, the coming out for a walk one, the breeze is so amazing one, the gentle one.They say sunrise and sunset at this location is quite scenic and it truly was.We were accompanied by Ron's roommate,Vinay who kept providing me with his tid bits NYC gyaan once in a while, and it was nice to know too.

I always believed that all those websites which rank resturants and theatres on a weekly basis,never reinvent the wheel, their sample surveys provide us with a very tunnel vision about things,but here i was,about to to be contradicted. Ron took us to a place which he said is a great place coz it got voted by Zagat as the best pizza place in NYC,i thought yeeah letz see,but even a fusssy foodie like me was completely floored, I have never had better pizza in my entire life than in that italian pizza joint that day(SLUURp!). I shall follow zagat from now on.

Little down the street was where i saw quite a scene.

A street full of italian resturants(around 3/4th mile long) called "little italy", resturants all over the place, and all those little shops selling junk jewellery and other trivial stuff, with lotz of small flashing lights,all over the place. In short , typical jatra party style rapchik masala, so Indian mela like, the decoration so indian wedding like,and all this is italian, well aryans must have definitely come from europe.

The next day was completely dedicated by us in visiting the Liberty island,statue of liberty and the ellis island.One more incident worth talking about, we are standing in an infinite queue of tourists to get into the water ferry which would take us to the the islands, lots of bums kept asking for money by playing instruments and singing etc. So here we are, and we see a set of bearded gentlemen and a few women in black burqa like clothes talking in hindi,we are guessing Indian/Pakistani, suddenly the bum next to us starts playing,some tune,Ron says(dunno how he knows) dude itz Pakistan's national anthem, and then a little gal from that group goes out and gives some money to him.Hmmm, Purpose solved for him, we were still guessing, he just knew what to do,awesome maan u rock.

The statue of liberty is a worth watch, not just for it's majesty and beauty but also for the amount of history surrounding it.USA the nation built by immigrants, this is first thing the immigrants used to see when they entered the states.The statue of a lady with a torch in one hand and the declaration of independence in another.Then the immigrants were taken to the Ellis island, which was like the immigration centre of US back then, they now have a software which can track back the name of the ancestors of the americans, after they furnish a few details.Hmm, must be emotional.In fact they have a small museum of sorts at the Elllis island commemorating many special days and occassions.Like when 11000 immigrants had entered the US in a single day,like how much diversity used to be on display in the ellis island, my favorite one,the jew man used to kiss his wife like he wants to exhaust all his kisses, the italian just holding his daughter and not displaying any affection towards his wife in public, thatz diversity,thatz US.

We saw a short movie about what was it like to be an immigrant back then, what went through there minds, what happened at the island, how the immigration process was joy for many and going back to bondage for a few.Quite Moving, I would say.

So we called it a day again

Our next destination was the famous walls street on a saturday.All empty, except for the tourists.I must admit hat the statue of George Washingtom near the NY Stock exchange is quite a piece of art and then there was the legendary bull, from where the stock market "Bull" finds it 's name. Legend goes,it was to motivate the traders and provide them with a pinch of aggression as they walk in everyday.Watever.Traders might consider creating a bear, just to keep themselves in check sometimes.

My last day consisted of shopping and movie watching(Hangover,Kaminey) and just chilling in NYC.

Hope to go back once more, I still haven't been to Niagra.

But overall, a trip to remember!

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away-I

Well it's gud to be back after a very long time.

All that and a update on the last few episodic months is coming soon on this way.

But before that lemme announce new liitle feature that gets added up on this blog today.

Here it goes, everytime the subject line reads "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away-Number"

it must be some experience which was worth penning down and definitely worth reading years later.

Lemme see how many I can collect from here on.

So am at grad school in Minneapolis after having an awesome vacation back home, preceded by a honeymoon period

in the office after my resignation and a week to remember in NY with one of my best buddies Shrinivas(Thanks

Ronnie,you indeed are one of the best things that has happened to me) and I come to this cold lonely windy place

where summer temerature is at 12C and and am unable to find a single one I know or can connect to.

So it's the first 3 days going through the usual routine of orientations,cards, passes,bank accounts and blah blah and

plus I get heavily stared at if am wearing a sweater(woof people's eyes almost screeching aloud, hey itz summer dude)

.Deep inside am feeling very alone, very home sick and and my mind keeps going back to mom's emotional speech at the

airport.

So there I am all drenched in a sudden downpour.,lost in this huge campus where I can't figure out where to go for the

last couple of hours or so and missing everything awesome about my life.I ask some one passing by "Hey Could

temme how the gopher goes to the Coffman hall."(The entire university is connected by a subway which people probably

use when it snows or rains, and Gopher thatz what anyone connected to the University of Minnesota is called(students

profs etc.)even the roads). He says "hey you, oh no nevermind" then when he says with a litttle shaky confidence "think I have

seen you somewhere,thatz when i almost spontaneously say "think I have heard you somewhere",ayaskanta ...amogh

woohoooooo.

That was one of my buddies from back in 12th, someone I had a great time with back in those agonizing lab sessions.

We, finished our twelth together, I went to NITR he went to IITR(Roorkee) and somehow we had lost touch though

surprisingly he was well informed about me that I was in tronics and had joined MS and other stuff,and guess what, he has

been here for the last two years pursuing a PHD in chemical engineering and we both were completely unaware of this, his mom

happened to be our teacher in BJB junior college, and whoa what a way to meet.

Rest, well we had a great time that evevning.

Suddenly I was talking to someone in oriya and cursing someone naturally with a smile.

Suddenly I was feeling all better and cozy and little more confident.

It wouldn't have been have half as much fun had we had a regular meeting.

It's a small world and a beautiful life.

A new life begins, am a Gopher now!

Could not find installable ISAM.

A colleague of mine was trying to do something really simple,read an excel file programatically:
There are 3 ways to do this using C#:
1)Add a reference to the Excel Object library and use the Accessor class.
2)Use the data binding mechanism already provided in Visual Studio.
3)Use the OLEDB class to run SQL queries on it.

If you are a lazy programmer who hates writing too many lines of junk code and who would rather spend a bit more time in figuring out an easy way of doing things then the first method strikes out, itz a lot of functions and a lot of properties.
The second one is the easiest to implement and use but gives you almost no flexibility.So that one is crossed out too.

I personally liked and implemented the third approach why?? simple easy instinctive.
An excel sheet is a like a database,every sheet inside it is like a table and the name of the header is like the name of column.
So if I have a an excel sheet called Jobs.xlsx where first sheet is called Emps and i would wanna have the employeed ids which is the 5th column and has a header called ids, I just have to say:
[Select ids from Emps$]
Here is the sample code:

string conn = @"Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=" + @"D:\s.xlsx" + @";Extended Properties=""Excel 12.0 Xml;HDR=YES;""";
OleDbConnection connection = new OleDbConnection(conn);
connection.Open();
OleDbDataAdapter dataadapter1 = new OleDbDataAdapter();
OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand("Select * from [Sheet1$]", connection);
dataadapter1.SelectCommand = cmd;
DataTable tbls = new DataTable("aa");
dataadapter1.Fill(tbls);
DataRow dr = tbls.Rows[1];
object[] obj = dr.ItemArray;

So because I had done this earlier, so I just sent over my code to my colleague.
The code crashed in the 3rd line:
connection.open();
>.NET exception:Couldn't find installable ISAM.
Whoa itz running on my machine then why not his and wat the hell is ISAM, huh.
The first thing that we do when something puzzles us is search:
But guyz here don't look at the results returned by the search, it will talk about unchecking just my code in System properties,it will talk about two Jet OleDb providers present in your machine blahblahblah.

The remedy is just check your Connection String.
If you have problems with connection strings which probably every developer has u can visit,http://www.connectionstrings.com/
The connection string is consumed first but validated later by the compiler, and when it does it doesn't know what to do as it doesn't have a base value to validate with probably.So what does it do, pops out the last message from the error queue. HUH.

It's funny even today in the age of super duper compilers and debuggers we still have errors and exceptions which are handled so badly.