Whew…thesis almost over! just got to finish writing the thesis now…done with all the coding and simulations.

1.5 years of effort which actually followed the 80/20 principle as far as work was concerned… i could manage to do only 20% of the work in the first 80% of the time and I did the real work (80%) in just 20% of the remaining time. I guess that reaffirms it as a universal principle now. So let’s see how and why that happened.

Research in the field of networking, and more specifically in the field of wireless networking…and even more specifically in the area of wireless ad hoc networks is really a very promising and booming in terms of the amount of money and innovations done. So how did that become the reason ? Well…simply put, something that is touched by so many people is bound to divert you in all possible directions. Looking for an unexplored area when 9/10th of the area is already explored and beaten to death, understanding that itself takes so much time, that by the end of it you are too exhausted to think anything new.

I must have read a zillion research articles, journals, papers etc just to find out that ‘it’s already done’. Not until 80% of the time was over that I could see the some light at the other end of the tunnel. Finally shooting in the dark seemed to have paid off. But again, adviser has to be convinced that its credible enough area to be able to publish a paper in. Another problem!! then try and read up a zillion other papers around that idea. Now what? Adviser and I cook up a ‘novel’ scheme (which is apparently scheme #1 for him while I think it’s the final scheme) and I am to code it. I am all high and I already see myself in the graduation ceremony, accepting my degree from the dean. I code it in a week!!. I even code all the scripts around it so that i can automate the simulation process, and I can leave the simulation overnight and come back in the morning and take the results. (I have no help whatsoever. I have to do it on my own. Thank God I have the programming experience from working for 2 years before I thought of doing masters.)

The graphs look awesome to me, but adviser has a different point of view and a different idea. Another round of 3 hour meetings to cook up new idea. I try as much as possible to implement it by modifying the old code. I introduce a million ‘wild hacks’ and flags in the code……This goes on and on during that 20% of the remaining time….the code is getting messier and messier…and I am getting lost in my own code. I suddenly forget to disable the flag and I get really weird results. I panic. I think the problem is somewhere else. I try to change that. I mess it up more. Oh..no..I forgot to take the backup… but thank God i still remember where I changed it. I change it back to the old code. (you see..we do not have CVS set up as yet..we are too busy with research…as it’s always research with a deadline for us)

A lot of iterations and messups later we have something that definitely looks like a ‘novel’ protocol. The results have improved a lot. Comparative analysis show that ‘we are much better than them”. I can now see two things… a research paper(s) with my name and the dean handing me the degree. Wow..I love it. Finally coding work is over. I am so excited to write the thesis book. Adviser shows the first appreciation. I feel great!. Adviser: “We have a new post-doc coming and I want you to handover everything you have done to him. Before that I want to see all the documentation on the code and the simulation HowTo” Man..!!! i didn’t see that coming! When will I write my thesis?? How will I be able to start my new job. Documentation and handover will take time. I need to write it in the form of my thesis…not as a ReadMe file so that someone can use it. I could have done that later. I was so excited to start writing my thesis book For the next week I try to manage both. I get threatening mails. Well, I don’t have much of a choice, do i? I am trying my best to do 3 things at a time. collect results, handover and write my thesis. Happy that i am going to be done in a month, but the phase is bad!

Suddenly I seem to be enjoying this pain. Maybe its because subconsciously I know i am done and I have really done some good work. Something changes my outlook. Looking back I see that I have actually amazed myself by doing so much work in so less time. I feel great! I have tested my own limits and I survived. That gives a huge boost of inspiration to work harder and push myself even more. I learned a hell lot more in my thesis research than I did with all the courses, collectively. I feel more confident about the subject. I feel like I know so much about. I want to show off. …( maybe I’ll save that for the thesis defense )

Well, wrapping it up, here is what I learned from the “Research” experience. — “Always focus” “Converge, don’t diverge”. (maybe that can be the epigraph in my thesis book)

It also left me with an unanswered question
“as a masters student (and not a phd) should I go for a completely unexplored area (which might result in me putting in an effort and time equivalent to a phd research but still get a masters degree) or to look for a tiny unexplored portion of a large explored area (which might result in me putting in lesser effort because of help and literature already available, but still might take equally long, or even longer, to find that tiny area)”

Whatever might be the answer, I am really happy I chose to take up the thesis option and not the comprehensive exam option, to get my masters degree. I wouldn’t have had this sense of satisfaction of being a Masters if I had gone in for the latter. The latter itself makes so sense. It’s like repeating Bachelors from Pune University all over again.

Signing off with another comic strip that i am a huge fan of, the PHD comics.

Siddharth Khimsara

I am one of those crazy fans of Calvin n Hobbes! It’s probably the best cartoon strip that so perfectly blends the ‘hypocrisy in our lives’ and ‘reality in fantasy’ using satire in its own unique way. Bill Watterson really managed to capture some of the so obvious interpretations of our life so well. Even though you enjoy the strip, it definitely leaves an aftertaste that makes you think!

I plan to start posting my favorite strips that really made me think…and my thoughts .. let me start with this one..

This one really captures the fact that from my point of view when I was a kid, everything that I did was not intentional to inflict any kind of damage or cause problems. It was my ‘kid’s inquisitiveness’ or my ‘kid’s curiosity’ to do something Likewise, I as a kid, did expect the elders to think from my point of view.

(this is by no means a cover up for whatever I did as a kid… I miss my childhood even more as the reality of life hits me everyday )

until next time …

Siddharth Khimsara

No doubt that I cannot live without my ipod. It is one of the best designed products of our times… but there are certain essential and intuitive features both in ipod and itunes, which apple needs to fix/add…

I am just going to list them as they come to my mind …..well if you got any more..i would encourage you to leave your comment on this and I would add it to the list with due acknowledgment to you. I think there are a lot more…

1. This is by far the biggest one! … why can’t I manage photos on my ipod manually..?? Why do i always need to sync it with a main copy? I should be able to drag and drop photos into different albums just like I add songs do different playlists!

2. Why is it so difficult for itunes to let me manage my songs in terms of folders and sub folders? That way I can be more organized. I used to have a chinese look alike ipod which would let me just drag and drop the folders using windows explorer and it would let me recurse thru these folders.

3. Why can’t I add songs to the ‘on the go’ playlist from the cover flow? ( I suggest this feature on the apple website)

4. <please comment if you have anything in mind…i’ll add it here….ofcourse with your name after it

Siddharth Khimsara

i got a new ipod 160gb classic yesterday…and since yesterday I am trying to fill it up…but its way too much space …but i know will fill it soon….. awesome UI…and the cover flow is just crazy. and they have even fixed the problem of fast battery drain because of cover flow, in the 1.0.2 version of the firmware. I love the user interface on the classic ipod so much better than that on the old 5.5 generation.

anyway..i just thought i should write about one of the major irritations using itunes when it comes to syncing the ipod..and how i solved the problem with some common sense. It will surely help a lot of other people who have faced this problem. However, before I being, I would like to THANK apple for atleast letting the playlists show directly inside the ipod…. i used to have a 30gb and in that there was no way to do this..the only option we had was the smart playlists

.

Anyway, this is what happened while i was putting songs into my ipod using itunes. if you have look at the screenshot, you can see that for >= 8gb ipods, we can create playlists inside the device itself (i.e ipod). Now if accidentally I delete one of these playlists, and dont remember which one it is, since I have like around 50 playlists, the songs that the playlist remain in the ipod. but the playlist is lost….and in the 6000 songs on my ipod, there is no way I can locate them..and put them back in a new playlist with the same name! This is exactly happened with me and you can guess how irritating it is…for a moment i was like..forget it..i have a 160gb..what the heck… but I still wanted to solve this problem..and i suddenly thought of applying reverse logic……….if I cannot find the one that is lost, let me just mark the ones that I do have ….and then i thought of using the rating option in itunes..

….this is what I did… i marked all the songs in all the playlists which were intact to 5 stars… ( just Ctrl-A –> (right click) –> rating –> ***** and I did for all the playlists… I then went to the music playlist which shows all the songs in the ipod currently…and sorted the songs according to the rating. I found around 300 songs which did not have a 5* rating… these were the ones that were there in the playlist that i had accidentally deleted….. whew! i immediately created a playlist for it and copied them there. .so revers logic helps a lot sometimes … …btw now you better CtrlA again and remove all the ratings….. (this idea will work only for the ones who don’t really use this ratings feature.) personally I use the play count to know my own rating..its again more intuitive

now i am not sure why itunes doesn’t warn you before you delete any playlist or why there is no undo for something like this… or maybe there must be some setting for it…but i couldn’t locate it!!

i personally feel that though itunes is a great software, it need a lot of intuitive improvements..

Siddharth Khimsara

(this blog has an abrupt start and an abrupt end…but I will be punching in more thoughts later and i’ll make it more connected with why I am writing it in the first place… but until then…please read this and please forward it…)

Google is definitely going to crawl on this page but I wonder if there is any way I can get the eye of the Orkut team…I have to give them a piece of my mind…!!

I keep getting calls from friends and friends' friends asking me to help report abuse to certain communities and personal impersonating profiles...
.i hate ORKUT anyways..it's really a place where mostly all losers hang out...and do stuff like recursing an endless link of profiles just to look at their albums!!..otherwise all the shit that happens on orkut would have never happened...

Impersonating Profiles and other problems with ORKUT!!!!

Here is a direct link to deal with it...
http://help.orkut.com/bin/answer.py?answer=59678&hl=en-US

Seriously...if anyone knows someone in the Orkut team in Google.. I would like to personally get in touch with them... I want to know the reason why these guys don't understand the gravity of the basic but really dangerous flaws in the design of Orkut as a social portal...
it would very well start world war 3... ""have u guys at Google seen the kind of hate communities between countries ..... ??? and please do not ignore it under the pretext of freedom of speech...!!!"""

anyway...i wonder how Google justifies its clarion call of 'dont be evil' in this case!..... all they have to do it is keep restricted access like in Facebook!!!

If you want to make it BIG…..”Think out of the box”…”Think different”…..”Lateral Thinking”…all these terms kind of make me nervous. I even tried reading a book on learning how to think laterally, but it confused me even more.

There is yet another variation to this “making it big” theory, and more applicable in today’s world. I would put it as “think crazy”….when your ‘conscious’ and ‘experienced’ and ‘matured’ mind tells you that something you have in mind is a crazy idea, don’t reject it! You could be the next richest person in the world if you ever make it come true..who knows.

Just to state and example, think of the Microsoft Surface… its a crazy idea..and that’s what I call innovation. At first thought I was awestruck, my ‘practical’ mind pushed me on the negative and I was wondering who is going to use this??? But the very next moment I said ‘you never know…it might be the next big thing’. Look at the ipod. It’s almost a revolution. The American youth cannot live without it. (I am one of the non-American ones!!) I just checked out the latest ipod at my university bookstore today. It’s crazy. No one has yet dared to give 160 gigs and still promise the same performance. I really like this thing about Apple. It’s their unstated but understood policy. “We will sell you this device that will do only these following things, but it will do it really well matter what. Don’t ask for everything in one device” Going back in time, the personal computer was itself a crazy idea. A 20mb of space would be enough for a person till the end of mankind..someone even dared to state that when PCs were just introduced!!

Anyway…the point is that you need to be crazy enough to think of something different and then smart enough to either build it yourself or convincing enough to make someone else build it for you and some other to fund it.
[On an equally serious note,....we do have some crazy ideas that can be implemented. So if you are one of the VCs or someone who thinks like me....please get in touch with us]

By the way, I have always wondered if this is an irony or it is just a co-incidence, or better still is it really the truth!! How come almost all the people who have made it big (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs etc etc) have been college dropouts or not interested in studying?? Sometimes makes me feel that I should follow their footsteps ..HEHE

Signing off…

Siddharth Khimsara

This post, in its own kind, is a continuation of my previous post coz this happened just a day after I wrote it.

I was walking back towards the building that I work in, from the main Google campus and I cross Eric Schmidt walking with another person who kind of looked very familiar. Like every visitor to Google, he had a printed label with his name and company, but all I could see was his first name (since its always printed in a larger font compared to the other details). It said Steve.

For a few moments, as I walked ahead, I just couldn’t place him. Then it suddenly struck me.. ..it was Steve Jobs !!

Well its great to see the people you admire right in front of you. Gives you a different kinda ‘passion boost’ somehow.

(Sorry that I posted this blog so late. I had planned to write much more, but never actually did Again that writer’s void hit me i guess…)

Siddharth Khimsara

Disclaimer: When I refer to ‘technology’, it includes almost everything that comes under these immensely broad categories… “Computers and Internet”

I love technology. I just can’t get enough of it. I desperately try to keep up with it, though it’s advancing at a ‘breakneck’ speed. But that never bogs me down. Infact, every new innovation gives me an increase drive every time to understand it with the hunger for being the one to innovate one day.

Steve Jobs said in a speech he gave at Stanford,

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

This is what I have been doing. Ever since I recall, I have always had had an unusual sort of enthusiasm to work on or understand anything that is new and promising. I always want to get up to speed with all the new things on the horizon and all the current trends. I have this weird urgency in trying to get up to speed with anything, lest I fall behind in my race to catch up (and overtake) the technology on open throttle. Till date, I really haven’t been able to match that speed

As Steve Jobs puts it as “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”, and I would add to it, “Stay Excited!!”.

Anyway, being what I am, I always seem to be the ‘impatient‘,’over excited‘ sorts or even ‘Hyper‘ , to others. While I completely understand their feelings, I really don’t care beyond that. I am fortunate that I have that ‘Hunger‘, that ‘Foolishness‘ and that ‘Excitement‘ in me.

Signing off…

Siddharth Khimsara

I want to start the 2nd post in my blog with a quote from Finding Forrester. (Note to myself: my first post is still incomplete)

“No thinking – that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is… to write, not to think!”

Well, this is what I am trying to do while I write this post.

Alright.. now what do I write about? This is the place that I always give up after trying really hard to think of something new to write about. Well, don’t confuse it with “writer’s block”. That is a place that most writers find themselves only after they have written something and then suddenly cannot think of what to write next. I am in a place much worse than that. I call it the “writer’s void”. I am always trying to find a way to fill that void with some interesting topic so that I can atleast reach “writer’s block” Oh wait..there is yet another thing I didn’t confess. There is a parallel process that starts in my mind, the moment I feel i want to write, which is cooking up a million topics that the subconscious mind feels I should write about. However, my conscious mind just doesn’t approve of any of the topics, rejecting each with either of these errors; ‘too insignificant’ or ‘in-depth know how about this topic not present’. So now I find myself in a place called the “writer’s dizzy”, caught up between my conscious and subconscious mind. This is a place where I am trying to formulate the opening sentences in my head for all those million topics, hoping that I will start writing something. It’s like the poor code in a continuous ‘for loop’, hoping to catch a break statement. :> I survive in that ‘dizzyland’ for a little while and then I find myself back in the place I originally started from; “writer’s void”

I am just happy that the continuous for loop of the human mind is not an infinite for loop!

Well, for those of you who have concluded that I will give up again….well you right.. I am back in the state of ‘what should I write about’.

Maybe you should scroll back to the 1st line of this post and start reading it all over again.

To start writing a blog is my first step into the world of Web 2.0. I have finally (after a lot of deliberation and procrastinated plans) stepped into the flowery world of web 2.0. Well, I come from the Linux world, so this anything that doesn’t involve writing C code in ‘vi’ is flowery to me

I am one of the fortunate ones (or unfortunate…maybe ??) who really didn’t have anything to do with web development related to the pre-web 2.0 era. I have currently started looking into the basics of web 2.0 programming. So most of my time these days goes in reading up and watching some video tutorials on .NET, AJAX , JavaScript, DOM blah blah… to be frank, just a month back I had no idea how it all worked, but today I am well up to speed with it. The only problem is that I haven’t really started coding as yet. Well, that won’t take much time. Getting up to speed with a syntax of a new language becomes really simple once you have coded in C and C++ for more than 2 years.

Anyway, to start blogging was my 1st step. To make my personal web site (and definitely not like the typical ones that you know as ’students’ homepages’ on any university/department website) This is one of the reasons why I say I am one of the fortunate ones. I never learned to make a site like that I would rather remain ‘homepageless’ than design a site like that.

Well, I took one little step towards it already. I registered a domain name of my last name form the Microsoft OfficeLive website for free! Well, it still holds the default webpage but I plan to change them very soon….

(Oh heck..i just remembered…it’s summer. This blog will remain incomplete until the end of summer …look out for the updated blog very soon)

Siddharth Khimsara