No Title
May 22, 2008
Its 10:30 in the night. Usually I would be watching a TV series that I so dutifully download from one of those piracyKing websites. These days I am watching scrubs season 3. But things got very boring and I decided to update my blog. Not that anyone would miss it, but still.....
I wanted to do some live blogging last night from a super cool football match. But the on-field action was so nerve-wracking that I couldn't think of sentences to write. I did twitter a bit in the middle and almost dropped my laptop once when Drogba hit the goal-post. As i pointed out before, I never expected Chelsea to win the match...but so close...hooof! Screw you John Terry!
Well, something cool just started on NatGEo. I will watch it for sometime and hit the sack. I have no idea why I started this blog. It leads no where and If you have come reading this far...THANK YOU :)
Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 10:23 PM 1 comments
Labels: chelsea, football, idle, john, scrubs, terry, tv
Back on Blogger
May 21, 2008
The only reason why I am back on blogger is because every other blogging site disallows javascript. And I sooooo wanted to have my google reader stuff on this right sidebar that I switched back from wordpress to blogger.
Hail the googlers who make blogger a better place to write in.
Talking of user friendly space, I have a major issue with the gang@twitter. I always dump in whatever I feel in twitter hoping someone will read it and send something back to me. But last night twitter had its own tweet "We are temporarily disabled". The same happened even last week. If these guys do not have the right skills to get their act straight soon, I , and other frustrated users like me ( I am sure there are millions of them), will shift to something else. Facebook's own status message isn't a bad idea (Though it carries the weight of a bloated social network).
Office has been pretty much crappy this week since the research paper went out. Last week was like the most hectic week of PS (put in 20hours of work, OMG). Its like the whole PS2 work was done in those 6 days (yes, dropped in even on a saturday, and again OMG). At least now I spend more time on Google reader and trying to figure out which of those blogospheres is best for a newbie like me.
Tonight is a special night. The aunty of all football matches, the Champions league finals, takes place. Of course the mother of them all is the World Cup finale. Let the whole world cheer for manU, I dont care. I love the chelskis and their blue! I don't mind even if they lose (Which has a pretty high probability). I still get to shout *&@#$^@#&*$^*(@ at the united players. Yes, the chelsea fans have been rated as the worst supporters.
I also have my new cam with me now. A scintillating peice of technical marvel. The Canon Powershot S5 IS. So expect more of my flickr updates and subscribe to the feeds if you love them. Flickr page will be updated starting this monday.
Will try and do some live blogging from 2nite's match (just for the heck of it)
Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 5:47 PM 1 comments
Status Message Gyan
OUT
DND
If i had known what i was doing, it would never been called research
Rockin…. Liberty City
If you do NOT have a Girl Friend - You are missing SOME thing in your life. If you HAVE a Girl Friend - You are missing EVERY thing in your life.
I do not think much. I do not think often. But when i think, I think of YOU!
My Dreams Are tied to a horse that will never “TIRE”
Follow…Follow…Follow…United are going to Moscow!!
Mera Number Kab Aayega 
Jangli DP senti is going to be married
food?!
will miss BITS…
Tuesday Rains !!
It is the rolling stone..again..
yaadoon se unki thak ke main lauta to ye pata chala…pairoon mein the chale pade..mushkil tha kitna faasla…
often in life, you “ll be wat u r not to become wat u want to be
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
kabhi kisike saath aise ashyiane ki umeed na karna ki,apna sab kuch luta baitho…unse saugath aise na mil jaaye ,ki tinke tinke ko taraste raho……
సాయంకాలం నారింజల్లో సాయం కోరే నీరెండల్లో నా ఈడు జోడు తోడు నీడా నీవే…
Positive Husband, Sadist Wives,Jealous Judge
iM on A fAstTracK dude!!!
Information Communication Technologies for Development
“Let your light shine. Shine within you so that it can shine on someone else. Let your light shine.”
Intuition (male, female or mathematical) has been greatly overrated. Intuition is the root of all superstition.
There are three sides to any argument: your side, my side and the right side.
When u feel sad … To cheer up just go to the mirror and say … “damn I am really so cute” u will overcome your sadness … But don’t make this a habit .. Coz liars go to hell !!!!
Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.
Nothing in life comes without struggle…True!!
Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.
It’s funny how from simple things The best things begin
Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 4:36 PM 1 comments
Labels: google talk, messenger, status message, yahoo
I am back!
May 17, 2008
I thought I would sound like Sylar or Spidy when they said it. Not quite so dramatic :(
Watching an old Telugu film full of special effects (Ref: Bhairava Dweepam) and listening to a failed pop singer (Ref: Smita) while blogging is not exactly a great set up. But when it is spiced up with some good food (Courtesy: CISCO mess) and a cranky roommate who specializes in pouranika geetalu and knows by heart all the dialogues in an old film things become so much more interesting.
Lots of things churning in my head now. Will think about what to write and how to write and will come back soon.
Atleast the first hurdle of getting back to my blog is crossed!
Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 1:40 PM 0 comments
Labels: Comeback, friends, idle
The Bayesian Approach
Aug 31, 2007
For the people, who are unaware of , there are two approaches to Probability. I studied about these in the math courses in my Undergrad, but was never told of these being two different approaches to probability theory. Alas!!
1) The Classical Approach (also called the frequentist view)
2) The Bayesian Approach (also called the subjectivist view)
I shall be talking about the latter.. (as it is the one used in Machine Learning! and also my personal favourite 
The essence of the Bayesian approach to Probability:
You believe that you like a person. You don’t know how much you like him/her. The actions of the person towards you affect your liking or the belief (your belief that you like the person) you have towards him/her. This is common-sense. The beauty of the Bayesian principle lies in, encoding/representing the above common-sense fact using math.
An important thing one should be keeping in mind is that the Bayesian approach to Probability talks about ‘your’ beliefs on a subject. My belief about the Tajmahal is great. Another person’s might not be the same. This is the main difference when compared with the classical approach.
A simple example to explain the difference between the classical and the bayesian view is: Let us take the usual coin-tossing experiment. I toss a coin a 100 times, and then set out to estimate the probability of getting a heads when i toss it the 101th time.
1) Classical approach: You take a note of the number of times heads has appeared in all these 100 flips and then find the probability of getting heads by using: (No.of heads appeared)/(Total times the coin has tossed). You use this value for your future experiments saying that, in my first 100 coin tosses, i got heads 60 times (say), so the 101th time when I toss a coin, there is chance of getting a head than a tail!
2) Bayesian approach: Your aim of this experiment is not to know the probability of a coin showing heads in your first 100 tosses, but to know what might the coin show on the 101th toss or on the tosses later. Well, in this case the probability as obtained by these 2 methods might be the same, but your approach of seeing things is what that matters most.
Say, you have a belief that the coin shows tails. Now with every toss of the coin showing tails, you increase this belief or yours, and with every occurrence of a head, you decrease your belief. (You increase your likeliness about a person, for every nice thing he/she does towards you…isn’t it?) This is the Bayesian view of seeing things.
P(coin = tails|E) = P(E|coin = tails) * P(coin = tails)/P(E) <– the bayes theorem.
P(coin = tails) — Your initial belief that the coin shows tails.
P(E|coin = tails) — Now, given you believe that the coin shows tails, you test that against the Experiment, E. If in this test of yours, if you notice that the coin is infact showing tails, then your belief, P(coin = tails|E) gets increased.
(because, P(coin=tails | E) is proportional to P(E|coin = tails)*P(coin = tails) , from the above equation.)
You obtain the final value after completing the experiment. Now, based on this value you might take decisions on the future tosses.
Remember the word ‘belief’ is synonymous with ‘probability’ when u see things in bayesian perspective.
The coin-tossing experiment might not be a very good example to differentiate the bayesian and classical approaches.. I’ll try to give a better insight into this issue sometime later when it is being discussed with some machine learning problem. Just know that there are different views of seeing things, and the latter is the convenient one. It is convenient because it represents a common-sense/reality fact.
The Bayesian view is very very useful when dealing with Machine Learning stuff. and I’m a Bayesian.
#A good explanation on Bayesian philosophy. And there are many more!
(Abridged contents from "The Bayesian" by Vinay Gryffindor)Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 1:48 PM 0 comments
Labels: bayes theorem, machine learning, maths, statistics
Random Rambling
Aug 27, 2007
Life seems to be on the run. Just a month ago I used hog like a horse and slumber like a sloth all through the lovely week and go out to explore the countryside (or whatever was left of it in coimbatore) on the weekends. Now I lead a friday to monday life. The rest of the time just flies by.
Wake up on a monday morning with those legendary monday blues at about 8am. Get ready and go through the rush hour to office. The next thing worth mentioning is the beer bash on friday. The missing pieces in between are filled by me sitting in front of a computer, me drinking coffee and me banging my head all the time trying to figure out how in pluto's name do these software professionals survive, let alone make millions by just kutting all day long!!!
I had had enough of the software life. One full year filled with copied codes, reproduced assignments and sloppy professors. I expected the industry to be a lot better considering that we Indians make a lot of dollars doing IT development. And the industry was an awesome experience, at least in the beginning. I walked into NetApp to a great welcome. My manager walked with me upto my cubicle which already had my name plate on it. I had a free laptop with internet. New found friends took me to the pantry where food was free. I was told that on fridays beer was served, free ofcourse. The software industry employs some of the best looking girls too. And for a rough and hardened mechite like me this was paradise. I totally freaked out the first few days utilising every freebie that I could get. But suddenly I realised that I missed something amidst the partying. THE WORK!. What exactly do these software guys do to live that way? Well, they just code and code and code and more code!
In BITS I heard my computer science 'engineering' friends talk about development work happening in the MNC's in the nation and felt that they would be working at the fore-front of cutting edge computer science technology someday soon. They also talked about something called "testing" in a much demeaning way and I got the impression that it was just people putting in x=1 and x=0 to test whether a code is working or not.
Indeed even within the industry I found 'engineers' talk the same way about development and testing jobs. But soon I realised that these so called engineers do the same things, whether its development or testing, whether he's a fresher or a manager with 30years experience. They all do the same things. They all code and code and code! The interface might change, the exterior might change, the pay package might change, their timings can change, but their core work does not. They just code.
Well, 1 month into my internship and I have firmly decided never to go back to a pure software industry and work with software 'engineers' (they love that term in these companies!)
Engineering, in my opinion, is the useful manipulation of the laws of nature. Engineering has physics as its most fundamental building block. And that is how we were taught in school. If you are good in physics you can become an engineer. A computer science problem, even in its most primitive basic format cannot be remotely related to physics and hence it cannot be related to engineering.
I got into a little trouble when I started discussing this angle with my manager and asked him why he was not called a computer scientist instead of a software engineer!!
I am happy that I made a job with a core manufacturing firm where they have real engineers who practice engineering in the real sense of the term.
The trouble with living life from friday to monday is that you get these niggling seconds in between your orkut and free juices where you let your thoughts ramble randomly. And when you sit down to write a blog at the first chance you get, you are lost and those random sentiments desist to form a chorus. What results is this aphrodisiac poop that you have just read.
Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 10:49 PM 4 comments
Labels: fun, job, life, random, realisation, software, work
My first instruction!!
Jul 5, 2007
Getting settled in your cube or office
If there is no chair, borrow one from a conference room. Then contact the Workplace Resources people; they will get you a less fancy but more adjustable one. It may take them several days though. If your conference room chair disappears in the meantime, just go borrow another one. You have the right to sit down.
If you don't have a computer yet, twiddle your thumbs a few times, then go to lunch. In NB, there is the food court, but it's kind of doubtful, although the restaurants on the upper floors are ok. Better yet, wherever you are, just ask your co-workers to suggest a place to eat. Or look for write-ups of local eateries on the web. If all else fails, get in your car and drive around aimlessly.
If there is no name tag on your cubicle, just wait. One will show up in a week or two. If you just can't wait, ask your manager to ping the process.
I guess working in a new company has its advantages!
Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 4:44 PM 0 comments
Labels: fun, instruction, life, rules, work
