The Right Formula

Recently, while performing some experiments related to my research, I had to pull off some mathematical feats.. err, more like digging into engineering maths textbooks to get some random equations. The mathematical exercise brought back a very fond memory of my father. It is one of those childhood incidents that I cherish a lot. I instantly decided that it would go on my blog someday.

And that someday is today! So here it goes.

This particular incident is probably when I was in the fifth or sixth standard. We had recently started learning Algebra in school. Back during those days, my Dad took keen interest in staying updated with our (my and my sister's) school work, but only regarding the subjects of Maths and Science. In his opinion, the remaining subjects, from History, Geography to Hindi and Sanskrit, were 'just to pass/score'! :P So, here I was, discussing general school work with my Dad, when I happened to proudly claim my expertise in the expansion of (x+y)^2 and (x-y)^2.

Now, my dad always told us (me and my sister) stories of how he used to top his class in Mathematics, Algebra being his forte! In my bid to prove that I too belonged to his league of mathematicians, I proudly remarked -

Well, Algebra is so easy!

(x+y)^2 = x^2 + 2xy + y^2 and

(x- y)^2 = x^2 - 2xy - y^2

My dad instantly spotted the error. But I was adamant. I just knew I was right! Well, pure logic suggested that it was a long time since my father graduated from school. It was thus, more likely that *he* would have forgotten a trivial equation like this which they teach in school. So, as my father tried to explain, "No son, thats not right.. it should be... ", I stopped him in the middle of the sentence and suggested that I could *prove* the correctness of my expansion of (x-y)^2 . I vividly remember his expression, the slight amusement on his face followed by an 'Okay, as you wish!'.

I hurriedly grabbed a piece of paper and started explaining him:

"Lets write (x-y)^2 as (x-y) * (x-y). So that ways, if we multiply x and -y individually with the term (x-y), we get, x*x = x^2, x*-y and -y*x = -2xy and -y * -y is ........" and I looked up, as innocently as I could, just to find him smiling at me!

It taught me a great lesson in life - When it comes to Mathematics, never ever argue with your Daddy!

Greetings, after Eternity!

Hello Folks!!

I feel as if an eternity has gone by since I last blogged! I always knew keeping up with blogging would be painfully difficult and my new found passion would soon die down! I regret it actually did! :( But anyways, as the saying goes - 'Its better late than never !', I am hoping I can reinvent my passion for blogging :P :)

An year has gone by and its been all grey, just like Life truly is. Theres always the good and the bad, a mix in reality! So, over the year, I came across a lot of experiences, some good, some bad! But I am glad they all happened; I hopefully learned from both ! :)

A fresh new academic year has already started, with me moving in to Eindhoven (PSV Eindhoven fame), tough I still have some unfinished business in Delft (need to complete a few assignments and retake an exam :( ). I will soon be writing a big nice post about my take on Eindhoven! Perhaps, the best city I have ever lived in, apart from my hometown Pune! :) I have also started learning a little Dutch and its really very interesting :) Too bad, I never tried learning French or German, as that would have made learning Dutch easier!

I have also started cooking stuff for myself! Yes, to be honest, I never did much of the cooking (except for the times I wanted to prove myself that I could) over the last year! So, I am hoping I'd experiment with a lot of new recepies in the coming year!

Well, enough for this one post! More coming up later! Stay tuned!! :)

Regards,

Anand

Management Lessons

I saw this on my Facebook feeds the other day.. After reading it, I thought that it surely deserved a post in my blog!!

Following are some management lessons, which according to me, can't be explained in any better way!!

* Lesson Number One *

A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A small rabbit saw the crow, and asked him, "Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?" The crow answered: "Sure, why not." So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Management Lesson: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.

* Lesson Number Two *

A turkey was chatting with a bull.
"I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree," sighed the turkey, "but I haven't got the energy. "Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?" replied the bull. "They're packed with nutrients."
The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him enough strength to reach the first branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fortnight, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree.

Management Lesson: Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.


* Lesson Number Three *

When the body was first made, all the parts wanted to be Boss. The brain said, "I should be Boss because I control the whole body's responses and functions."
The feet said, "We should be Boss as we carry the brain about and get him to where he wants to go." The hands said, "We should be the Boss because we do all the work and earn all the money." And so it went on and on with the heart, the lungs and the eyes until finally the asshole spoke up.
All the parts laughed at the idea of the asshole being the Boss. So the asshole went on strike, blocked itself up and refused to work. Within a short time the eyes became crossed, the hands clenched, the feet twitched, the heart and lungs began to panic and the brain fevered. Eventually they all decided that the asshole should be the Boss, so the motion was passed.
All the other parts did all the work while the Boss just sat and passed out the shit!

Management Lesson: You don't need brains to be Boss, any asshole will do!


* Lesson Number Four *

A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold, the bird froze and fell to the ground in a large field. While it was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on it. As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, it began to realize how warm it was. The dung was actually thawing him out!
He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy. A passing cat heard he bird singing and came to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him!

Management Lessons Summary:

1. Not everyone who drops shit on you is your enemy.
2. Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.
3. When you're in deep shit, keep your mouth shut!

Hope you all enjoyed it!

Anand

A thought-provoking poem!

Saw this nice poem somewhere (actually on friend's Facebook profile), enjoy it!

All those who Sleep Tonight

All those who Sleep Tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -

Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

Vikram Seth

(http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/all-you-who-sleep-tonight/)

Of Cycles and more!!!

Warm regards, been almost 2 weeks since my last post! What was I doing? Well, something interesting, something so interesting that over the last 2 weeks, the only thing I was obsessed with was CYCLES (that is Processor cycles!!, btw)

Enrolled as a Computer Engineering student, here at TU Delft, I have to take 'Modern Computer Architecture' as a compulsory subject. For a change, the word 'Modern'  is true in the literal sense, since we are working with the latest MIPS 64-bit architecture (btw, just as background info, MIPS architecture was developed at Stanford by two people, one of whom is a Prof. at Berkeley now). My partner for this course is a guy from Berkeley (Kristian), who had already taken this exact course during his undergrad! (but his Prof. then, was the guy who wrote the book we use as reference text here!!). For an assignment which was due last Friday, we had to write MIPS code for a specific problem statement. The challenging part of the assignment was to optimize the code to make it run faster than the rest of the class (now this is *the best* part of the assignment, because, no matter how much you optimize your code to make it run fast, theres always someone who does it better! and then you push harder). The assignment took a lot of time, long sleepless nights and a lot of frustration (when nothing seemed to work), which finally culminated into a nice, elegant and fast code working to our satisfaction. The best part of this whole experience was that we both (I and Kristian) started out separately writing our own versions of the code, sharing ideas along the way and ended breaking all benchmarks taking the battle between us to new heights everytime!! It was amusing to look at how we implemented our codes in so different styles, helping each other to improve our versions of the code and still having a real fight for 'whose code runs faster?'. In the end, we ended up with very competitive cycle times, but realized that the competition between us actually helped us perform better than what we could have individually! 

The entire week spent on working out this assignment was surely worth the effort! Awesome fun it turned out to be, but the mental fatigue and boredom (caused by staring at the screen for hours to figure out how to eliminate a RAW hazard), just made the weekend look even more refreshing!! :) We had a Van Hasseltlaan weekend party (with me displaying some skills in making Egg Burji and Omlette for everyone!) followed by a party in Leiden till 3 AM !! :)

My 'To Do' list has sadly grown out of proportion, and is going to take some time and effort to catch up! Blogging would a little more difficult, but I'll try my best! (I'll never forget a particular remark by one of my best friends, 'If you want to do something, you *will* find time to do it'. I was very skeptical of this, but not anymore! :) Thanks Anvay)

Cheers,

Anand

One month in Dutch-land!!!

Its been exactly one month having left home (needless to say, missing home a lot!), and also implies successful survival for an entire month in this awesome, yet difficult environment (I can confidently say now that I can adapt anywhere in the world! (well, anywhere excluding Alaska!))

This week didn't really bring about much excitement! [:P] Classes(sometimes boring), assignments(always hard), my first written exam here(Piece of cake! MCQs -PU people will love it here :D) and a lot of running around(getting habitual now) consumed the entire week. The reconfigurable computing Lab which I am so crazy about, also didn't bring any respite. Contrary to my expectation, not many groups turned up with the solution for the component we had to design(yes, we did have our solution!! Me and my dutch-partner (Ath), spent the entire Sunday morning in the Library(the most amazing place to study) to wrap up the design and coding in flat 4 hrs!! Talk about efficiency! :)) The TAs spent most of the time checking our codes (so very pointless). At the end of the Lab, I walked out disappointed, again with the burden of homework to be 'expected complete' next Wednesday!

Since today is a special day (1 month completion, remember?), I thought I would pen down *my* view of Holland, University and life in general here.. So, heres 13 points which I felt were unique about this place! (why 13??, well my b'day is on the 13th!) 

1) You can forget your laptop in class, lab, anywhere and still expect it to be there! If you forget to lock your bicycle, even God can't help you. 

2) The cars wait for the bicycles to pass by. The bicycles wait for the pedestrians!

3) Everyone is honest and hardworking. They wont lie and would never mislead you. Whatever is the fact, they tell you on your face!  

4) The air is clean, the winds are strong and the weather changes every moment. Luckily it hasn't rained heavily yet! :)

5) In our apartments, we have taps with two knobs. One for hot water and the other for cold water, available 24 x 7. But the moment you step out of your house, forget the concept of *free* water. You actually have to go to the bathroom to refill your water bottle. (Even dutch students do that! and its potable water) 

6) Mobile-landline calling is way way cheaper than mobile-mobile calling!! 

7) Internet bandwidth is damn awesome!! However, breakdowns are common! Esp. DNS server breakdowns. (happened twice till today :( )

8) Fruits, dairy products and food in general, is of the highest quality, though a little costly.. Potatoes are really cheap and available in plenty.

9) Even the birds here (pigeons and crows) are healthier :P. The crows don't crow! (atleast I haven't heard them crow!) and pigeons are not at all scared of people.. 

10) You can talk with your professor like you talk with your friends.

11) Dutch girls are quite tall and physically well built (could beat the hell out of anyone :P), but everyone here is very friendly. More number of women smoke cigarettes, than men. 

12) They said, "You will fall in love with bikes when you come to the Netherlands!". I didn't.

13) EWI (23 stored, my department building), has 4 awesome lifts, which accelerate at > 10m/s squared. So, you can actually feel the G-force when the lift starts/stops. :) 

A complete month has gone by! My food habits have drastically changed (No more tea, snacks or chapati (we did find rotis here) - bhaji) Its been bread and rice all the way (thanks to my roomie - Surya), with only God knowing what all ingredients we add!! :) The next week will be a long one, with me expecting the assignments to get tougher and deadlines approaching faster than expected.. So pray for me! (I am serious!) 

My best regards to all!

Enjoy Life!!

Anand Khot

15 hours of Yale Patt

As promised, I come back with the blog for this week!!!

The week went smoothly with not much surprises.. Things have started to settle in and now, I do have a routine. For the rather unfortunate people living in Van Hasseltlaan, the day usually starts early at 6:30 am, when the alarm goes off all of a sudden. But, being the lazy engineers that we all are, we hit the snooze button and go back to sleep. Its not until its 7:30 am, that I regain consciousness, just to discover my roomie, starting to make his breakfast and lunch. Hurriedly, I enter the bathroom and have a quick shower (Btw, there is something interesting and annoying, about the bathrooms and toilets in the Netherlands, but I'll leave it for some post later). After having some breakfast and packing my bag, its time to unlock my bike and head out on the windy road to college.

The time just flies between 9 and 6, when I am doing something or the other at the campus. After 6, time again flies by, with me doing some assignments(ofcourse, along with usual lukkhegiri on facebook) or making dinner.. When your eyes start hurting, its the perfect time to retire to bed. The reason I simplify and wrap it up in 3 lines, is because a hell lot happens in between 9 am and 12pm, so much so, that it will take me hours to narrate it.

Okay then, coming to the main point - This week's highlight.. 

Last Sunday, I enrolled for the 'Yale Patt: Advances in Computer Architecture' guest lecture series, which ran from Monday to Friday (for 3-4 hrs everyday). Unfortunately, I couldn't attend all of the lectures, since I had a few compulsory classes clashing with this event. The lectures I attended were quite insightful and great fun. It was an honour to listen to Yale Patt, a micro-architecture guru, talk about the complexities and opportunities in future (multi)processor designs. Of all his witty remarks, sarcastic comments and amusing analogies on a wide spectrum of technical issues, I particularly liked two instances. First one will require explaining some technical background and jargon, so I'll skip it. Heres the second one - On the last day, when Yale Patt was gifted with a TU Delft sweatshirt, he brought up the topic of 'Whats the difference between guys and girls !??' (this was off-record, meaning that it was not being video recorded). He says, and I quote, "For we guys, when we see a girl and like her, we say- 'Yes, *this* is the girl I want!!'. But when a girl likes a guy, she thinks -' If I can change the way he does this, and change the way he does that, then I think I'll like to be with him!!' .. Lol, pretty insightful there, esp. coming from a computer architecture veteran whose inventions have gone into the cutting-edge Intel and AMD processors 

So, apart from attending this cool lecture series, I also, managed to get started with my assignments (I had to!! .. Trust me, all the assignments just fall into your inbox on one day! Its like the saying goes- 'When it rains, it doesn't rain, it pours!'. Not to mention, these assignments are nowhere close to the 'Mickey Mouse' assignments we did in Bachelors!!)

And btw, that assignment for Reconfigurable computing design class I talked about in the last post, is still in Design phase (:P :( ) and its due on Wednesday.. Hoping for the best!

Till then, Adios!

Cheers,

Anand Khot