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Quotes From Here And There

Albert Einstein
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
Dylan Thomas
I fell in love – that is the only expression I can think of – at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behavior very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy.
Eddie Cantor
It takes twenty years to become an overnight success.
Edward Abbey
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
e e cummings
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
Eyler Coates
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually produce a masterpiece. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Gustave Flaubert
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.
Going to the Opera is like making love; we get bored but we come back.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If I love you, what business is it of yours?
John Steinbeck
Only through imitation do we develop toward originality.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.
Leonard Cohen
Ring the bells that still can ring;
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
That's how the light gets in.
Montaigne
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Paul Sweeney
You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.
Peter Altenberg
I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart.
Robert Frost
In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money.
Satchel Paige
Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.
Thomas Mann
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
V S Naipaul
The writer has only to listen very carefully and with a clear heart to what people say to him, and ask the next question, and the next.

My Personal Library


IIT Bombay: CS 699: Software Laboratory

Friday, August 27, 2010 by Abhinav Maurya

This is a blog about the Fall 2010 offering of CS 699, the Software Laboratory course @ IIT Bombay.



Update 27/08/2010: This course is a course which makes little sense to me. It aims to teach us LaTeX/Beamer, Python, Shell Scripting, and Web Design (HTML/CSS/Javascript). It is not understandable how an institution comparable in quality and reputation to some of the best institutions around the globe can place such a ridiculous course at the graduate level, and worse still, assign it credits more than any other course in the department (our normal courses carry 6 credits). The course carries 8 credits which is a high number by our credit structure. I do not understand why the course cannot have lesser credits or be split across the two semesters allowing more time for the assimilation of the skills that it attempts to inculcate in us. The course can also be structured as a month long audit primer that graduate students take prior to beginning their first year CSE electives. In a more general sense, it is a manifestation of the rigidity which is often found in Indian educational institutions. The blanket assumption that these skills are necessary and must be shoved down our throats in a single highly loaded semester is beyond my comprehension. Here's a past student's view on the subject.

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IIT Bombay: CS 725: Foundations of Machine Learning

by Abhinav Maurya

This is a blog about the Fall 2010 offering of CS 725, the Foundations of Machine Learning course @ IIT Bombay.



Update 27/08/2010: The course is taught by Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan who is offering this course for the first time. Last year, it was offered by Prof. Sunita Sarawagi. Though the professor knows a lot about the subject, the lectures could do with some more organization. In particular, the planning of the course over the semester is still sketchy and motivations are vague most of the time. Do not let the word 'foundations' deceive you; it's a particularly heavy course and needs you to know probability, linear algebra, calculus, and statistics at a fairly high level to appreciate the points that Ganesh makes in the class. This is a prerequisite for some advanced courses in Machine Learning offered by the department. The CSE department @ IIT Bombay is known for its Machine Learning research group, and this is the course that teaches you to make sense of the basics of the field.

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IIT Bombay: CS 684: Embedded Systems

by Abhinav Maurya

This is a blog about the Fall 2010 offering of CS 684, the Embedded Systems course @ IIT Bombay.



Update 27/08/2010: The course is taught by Prof. Kavi Arya (an Imperial College/Oxford University alumnus) who has honed the course to make it an immensely enjoyable introduction to programming of embedded systems. The course has a very hands-on approach (obvious from the course evaluation which places project at the top), involving the programming of an in-house robot named Firebird V. The lectures are centered around learning skills that will help in programming the robot. The labs began with a two-day worshop (14 and 15 August - yeah we work on national holidays too!) on programming the bot in C. We have now moved to an abstracted modeling language called Esterel which has made life much simpler and which has an elegance to it. Other modeling languages and the real-time aspects of embedded systems shall also be covered in due course of time. The course has a project that we shall soon begin with. One of the things you observe about the teachers here at IIT Bombay is how responsive they are to the needs of the students. The course has been fine-tuned over the years which is why we are finding it much easier and streamlined than our seniors. This course is especially enjoyable for CSE guys who are averse to the nitty-gritty and unpredictableness of hardware but would like to program a bot at a much more abstract level.

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IIT Bombay: CS 641: Advanced Computer Networks

Saturday, August 21, 2010 by Abhinav Maurya

This is a blog about the Fall 2010 offering of CS 641, the Advanced Computer Networks course @ IIT Bombay.



Update 21/08/2010: The course is taught by Prof. Bhaskar Raman (a University of California, Berkeley alumnus) who uses innovative ways to motivate the class. The course covers advanced topics in computer networks like congestion control, queueing algorithms, inter-AS routing, etc. It does not include wireless sensor networks. The course is centered around readings of important papers in the field of computer networks, a very interesting and illuminating task if done with enthusiasm. You are required to submit a summary of designated paper readings. The course also has assignments on NS-2 and a final project. Prof. Bhaskar Raman is an absolutely fabulous teacher! If you come to CSE@IIT Bombay to study, you should definitely consider taking one of his courses. It is a good idea to revise Network and Transport Layer chapters from Tannenbaum before starting this course.

Update 03/09/2010: From some time, there was something about the prof that rankled me. I have now realized the reason. In almost all idealistic people I have known, there is also a certain sense of despondency and cynicism over the world not being the just place that it should be. Often, only children do not suffer from such vain notions. Prof. Raman is perhaps the only person I know who is idealistic yet non-Chekhovian in his own way. You need to know this guy to understand what I mean!

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IIT Bombay: CS 621: Artificial Intelligence

by Abhinav Maurya

This is a blog about the Fall 2010 offering of CS 621, the Artificial Intelligence course @ IIT Bombay.



Update 21/08/2010: The course is an introduction to artificial intelligence. The lectures by Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya are really good and interactive. He has also fine-tuned the course and its evaluation components to suit the audience background and expectations. It includes a paper reading, a seminar, and quizzes besides the MST and EST. The professor thought of giving out projects but ultimately dropped it. That was a good thing because in an introductory course to a broad field like AI, small sustained assignments can do much better than a single big project in clearing out the fundae of the subject/topics.

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