It was quite a scene!

Umbrella is not enough for Oklahoma rain. It was raining this morning today. I don’t know what kind of rain it is, cats and dogs or a rain of insults but it was huge. It reminds me the time when BUET was flooded due to heavy rainfall in 2004 (I can't remember the exact time very well). We played water polo in the big field in front of DSW office. It was quite a rain.

This morning, I get out of my apartment while it was raining. I wore a t-shirt and a windbreaker over it. My windbreaker is kind of maroon. When I get off from the bus it was raining insane. My unfortunate little umbrella tried its best to save me. I am sure it couldn’t do much better than this. But in reality today’s rain did not even care about its existence. So, I get completely wet. No problem, so far it was okay. But when I reached at my office I found my windbreaker was completely wetted. And the funny part begins when I found myself almost red! The color of windbreaker was washed-out and made me red, well I would say pink or maybe combination of both. I was looking ridiculous! Right that time, Dr. Dhall came into my office and he was astound and saying like what the heck happen to you! It was quite a scene!

How Do You Get That Lonely

It was just another story printed on the second page
Underneath the Tiger's football score
It said he was only eighteen, a boy about my age
They found him face down on the bedroom floor
They found him face down on his bedroom floor

There'll be services on Friday at the Lawrence Funeral Home
Then out on Mooresville highway, they'll lay him 'neath a stone...

How do you get that lonely, how do you hurt that bad
To make you make the call, that havin' no life at all
Is better than the life that you had
How do you feel so empty, you want to let it all go
How do you get that lonely... and nobody know

Did his girlfriend break up with him, did he buy or steal that gun?
Did he lose a fight with drugs or alcohol?
Did his Mom and Daddy forget to say I love you son?
Did no one see the writing on the wall?

I'm not blamin' anybody, we all do the best we can
I know hindsight's 20/20, but I still don't understand...

How do you get that lonely, how do you hurt that bad
To make you make the call, that havin' no life at all
Is better than the life that you had
How do you feel so empty, you want to let it all go
How do you get that lonely... and nobody know

It was just another story printed on the second page
Underneath the Tiger's football score...

[Blaine Larsen' 2004][Youtube]

Version 2.1, RC

It is learning managing myriad of things together. In fact it is doing lot of things together. Another most important thing is it has learned here is time management. It is doing twice the amount of things than it did before. And somehow it manages to get it within same amount of time. So, I will call it a significant performance twinning. But I am not sure about its perseverance. I hope its perseverance not gonna be affected. It has lot of things to do on this area. I am hopeful about a newer version within this summer. I need to improve it a lot by this summer otherwise it gonna be in trouble, big trouble!

High Hopes

Beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young
In a world of magnets and miracles
Our troughts strayed constandly and without boundary
The ringing of the division bell had begin

Along the long road and on down the causeway
Do they still meet there by the cut

There was a ragged band that followed in our footsteps
Running before time took our dreams away
Leaving the myriad small creatures trying to tie us to the ground
To a life consumed by slow decay

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
With friends surrounded
The night of wonder

Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by the force of some inner tide

At a higher altitude with flag unfuried
We reached the dizzy heights of that dreamed of world

Eneumbered forever by desire and ambition
Theres a hunger still unsatisfied
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
Though down this road weve been so many time

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river

Forever and ever

[Pink Floyd, The Division Bell' 1993][Youtube][wiki]

I am becoming Pink Floyd freak day-by-day. It was not that way! I used to like them but these days I only listen Pink Floyd.

Keokradong/ Tazingdong

This is Shankho

Mountain was my first love. I was kind of addict of Bandarban when I was in Bangladesh. Rassel and I have a plan to build an old home in Bandarban and spent last days of our life there. Funny! I know it is funny, maybe it never gonna be true. So what? Is it necessary to make everything happen? We love hills, we love to dream, what else?

I was reading Salehin’s blog today. He just came after finishing a successful trekking in Keokradong/ Tazingdong. These are the places takes my breath away. For some reason I feel a weird connection with these hilly regions. Anyway, Salehin wrote a wonderful article. If you are still confused, why I love that place so much, read his article. Now I am asking you, why I wouldn’t love that place? Here is a slide show composed of photos taken by him.

Life is too Short

Have you ever seen the morning?
When the sun comes up the shore
And the silence makes the beauty for a sound

Have you ever sat there waiting?
For the time to stand still
For all the world to stop
From turning around

And you run
'Cause life is too short
And you run
'Cause life is too short

Have you ever seen the glowing?
When the moon is on the rise
And the dreams are close
To the ones that we love

Have you ever sat there waiting?
For heaven to give a sign
So we could find the place
Where angels come from

And you run (and you run)
'Cause life is too short
And you run (and you run)
'Cause life is too short

There’s a time that turns
Turn back time
But I don’t say I can
It only works
If you believe in the truth

But there’s a time to leave
And a time to cry
But if you’re by my side
I will try to catch a star
I’ll try to catch a star
Just for you

And I run
'Cause life is too short
And I run (and I run)
'Cause life is too short

And I run And I run
And I run And I run
And I run

[Scorpions, Music: Rudolf Schenker, Lyrics: Klaus Meine][Youtube]

Trust is a funny thing

I saw a line in one of my classmate’s status message yesterday. It was, “Trust is a funny thing”. Well maybe, maybe no. I don’t wanna classify it into any category.

Today an interesting thing happened. One of my lab-mate and me were suppose to meet our boss. I went to my lab early in the morning. My lab-mate was saying like our meeting time is one pm. But I was confused and I was suggesting that it should be twelve pm. After some time at eleven am our boss asked us why we had not been showed up in her office yet. Then my lab-mate replied, “Shiblee thinks we are not supposed to meet till twelve.” To me it was okay. I am not worried about it because it is true. But what bothers me most is people don’t understand the meaning of group or working in a group. People don’t understand the meaning of “we”.

We worked in group in Bangladesh. My group-mates were like my brothers. Well you can argue, it was possible because they were my friends too. But they were my friends because they knew the meaning of “we”. “We” is a big word. At this point I want to add something, the word “friend” as we see it in Bangladesh is not same here.

I know this is a small thing but still it reflects very well what could happen in a tough situation. I learn one thing do not trust anyone, at least not in America. Trust is a funny thing here.

Reactive Computing

This semester I have taken a robotics course. From that robotic course I learn something: something very intuitive and very original. Complex behavior doesn’t necessarily mean complex algorithm. Complex behavior can be achieved from the combination of very simple behaviors. This is called reactive approach in traditional robotic literature. I was thinking one step ahead of it. It may not make any sense but it is just an idea. Actually I don’t have much time to explore it further. If anybody found it interesting then I would be happy to talk to him/her for further detail. Here is the idea:

We solve lot of complicated problems in our everyday life with limited problem size. “Complicated” here means NP-Hard or NP-complete. Does it necessarily means we have a very complicated exponential algorithm running in our brain? I think this is not always true. Sometimes, we solve some complicated problems almost without any deliberation. Now, my point is how do we achieve it? Sometime people call it intuition. Then what is intuition? To me, intuition is nothing but a complicated and controlled collaboration of some simple behaviors. In our daily life we solve a bunch of optimization problem. But we just can’t solve the same problem with higher input size.

This behavior based approach tempted me to look further for the different type of computing. The new approach should have lot of small computing unit in it and the approach must have an architecture to facilitate the collaboration between the components. Each of the components will know what is the problem or sub problem it can solve and what are the output it can provide. Like reactive robotics, all the components find a problem fits with its input domain will try to solve it completely or partially. Finally the combination of all the results will be our final result. If I sound reasonable so far then the success of this approach depends a lot upon how to combine the results? I am suggesting the same approach for the combination of the results. There would be couple of components who knows what kind of results they are capable to deal with and how to combine them. I am proposing output fusion in this point. Finally they will combine the results. The process continues until we found a single component working on the next level results and produce a single output and no component fit the current output with its own input domain. Let say, for the fun of it I fixed a name, may be “reactive computing”.

Well couple of questions may come at first, what is the difference with ubiquitous computing? Well first of all in the ubiquitous computing components are working with different sub-problems and each of them provides the solution. One output might be the input of another and so forth. But here in reactive computing it is not controlled and it is fuzzier from any sorts of ubiquitous computing. So the computation itself and the result are kind of uncertain. It depends on how many components it has, how each of the components works, how they combine and so forth. Now the next question is it a non deterministic algorithm? Well I would say the result is non-deterministic not the algorithm is.

It’s just an idea, an idea from an idle mind. I know there are lot fuzziness is still out there but it could be something to give a shot. I would like hear the comments and criticisms.

Time

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but youre older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
Its good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

[Pink Floyd' 1973][Youtube][wiki]

I am having super crazy time in my life. I feel like everything try to push me toward the limit. I am pursuing super crazy days. Sometimes I feel like I had started a little bit late. The very next moment I feel like it's not too late, it is never too late. I learn a very good thing from Upoma. She used to afraid look behind. She gave me a very good lesson. These days I try to follow her, I want to be afraid of my past. I don't wanna look behind. It's not too late, it is never too late. I don't wanna be old.

Medieval fair 2009

I went to the medieval fair today. It is the most rocking place in Norman I have ever been. It is kind of good fun seeing people, dressed middle age (One of the reasons, I like Americans is they do things properly) and wandering around. If you are an international student in Norman, it’s a must go place for you. See the photo gallery from their website. Lots of crazy people with crazy dresses doing crazy things! It’s like a typical bazaar in movies based on medieval age. Lots of visitors dressed like middle age. So you will really get a time travel kind of thing. This is the first time I regret that I have not bought my e 520 yet :( You can find some photos in online photo sharing sites[1, 2, 3] of Norman medieval fair.

I borrowed the above photo from the their official web site.

Bad day!

Another bad day! Actually I couldn’t concentrate on anything today. I had a report submission early this morning and I screwed it up. I wrote a little something like half of a page. It was a complete mess. I have to be careful from next time. Then in my TA hours I helped couple of students today. But I screwed when a student with disability came to see me in my office hours. I mean it was okay, but I am unaware of some disability etiquette. So I messed that up.

Finally I came to my lab and start working on lab. Now, I can’t remember very well is there anything I did at all. I tried but I could not. For some reason, I couldn’t concentrate on it at all. Then I started reading a statistics book and it seemed like Hebrew to me. It is not that hard but I could not get on it, may be I did not concentrate on it at all.

Then I tried to disassemble my laptop but in my lab we don’t have that kind of screwdriver. So I failed. Finally, I have graded some homework papers of my students. I am not sure is that okay or not? There is a high probability of screwing it up. And now I am waiting for the bus and writing this… who knows what next :(

Cryin' in the rain

A black cat moans
When he's burning with the fever
A stray dog howls
When he's lonely in the night
A woman goes crazy
With the thought of retribution
But a man starts weeping
When he's sick and tired of life

I keep on dreaming dreams of tomorrow
Feel I'm wasting my time
Lighting candles in the wind
Always taking my chances
On the promise of the future
But a heart full of sorrow
Paints a lonely tapestry

The sun is shining
But it's raining in my heart

No one understands the heartache
No one feels the pain
'Cos no one ever sees the tears

When you're crying in the rain
When you're crying in the rain
Cryin' in the rain

I can never deny
All the sweet things I have tasted
Tho' I've been mistreated
I keep coming back for more
I know where I'm going
There's no hope of absolution
I can't seem to separate
The good times from the bad

The sun is shining
But it's raining in my heart

No one understands the heartache
No one feels the pain
'Cos no one ever sees the tears

When you're crying in the rain
When you're crying in the rain

When you're crying in the rain
When you're crying in the rain

When you're crying in the rain
Cryin' in the rain

[Whitesnake]

This is not my favorite one but I liked the lyrics.