Will Rogeres to Bahrain

It is really hard to realize what is united states by being in the country. I am flying back home today and lets start with my experience. I flied to Oklahoma Will Rogers to Chicago O'Hare International airport. Chicago O'Hare is a huge airport and my flight was late due to extreme weather in Europe. Well my next flight was Chicago to Frankfurt and as soon as I reached Chicago I realized it gonna be delayed for 2 hours. Okay fine, I decide to wander inside the airport. Everything looks normal, nothing especial. I realized the specialty when I reached Frankfurt. In fact Chicago has higher number of flight than the total number of people in Frankfurt and you can still notice the chaos! I took me an hour to find out the gate number of my flight, well may be I dumb ass, it took an hour for everyone. And then the security check point opened just two hours before the flight, it was not a problem, that particular security check point was originally for two or three flight so it was not that much rush. But most fun starts from then. Our flight was suppose to depart at 11:20am and we got into the place an hour before that and finally that plane depart at 1:30pm! and we had no idea what was going on. Well it is possible that any flight can be delayed due to severe weather in Europe but most funny part was the crew members was announcing that the place is going to fly within five minutes in every ten minutes! What a pitty!!! I know security of the passengers are most important and if can fly they can tell the passengers we can't, I didn't get the point continuous ridiculous promises!

When I was in the Frankfurt airport I saw girl sitting just outside the boarding area, and this is same for each boarding area. I went to the girl and ask why are you sitting here, she explained her responsibility is to make sure everyone sitting in that particular boarding are has the right boarding pass!!! I never imagined that some one needs to make sure that the passengers in a particular boarding area have right boarding passes. Isn't it the responsibility of the passengers to find the right place to sit so that they can have jitter free boarding?

Finally I got into Bahrain from where I am writing all these with there free WiFi!!! It looks like this airport is busy but not sure this is a very tiny airport even smaller than Will Rogers and plenty of people are roaming around. Here I notice one interesting thing, finding the passenger is the responsibility of the crew members, for each flight they are announcing with at least four languages for at least 5 to 10 passengers! I am wondering where are they??? In most cases they were found in the boarding area of that particular flight! Here is Bahrain people have severe problem with the flight or they just hate the airport authority and crew members. Either they don't understand what they are suppose to do or they just don't care!!! Most hilarious part is for every departing flight one crew member go to every boarding area and ask everyone if he or she is waiting for that particular flight! Apparently airports are not for everyone. I'll upload the pictures later.

Rhythm of My Heart

Across the street the river runs
Down in the gutter life is slipping away
Let me still exist in another place
Running under cover of a helicopter blade

The flames are getting higher in effigy
Burning down the bridges of my memory
Love may still be alive somewhere someway
where they're downing only deer
a hundred steel towns away

Oh rhythm of my heart is beating like a drum
with the words "I love you" rolling off my tongue

No never will I roam for I know my place is home
where the ocean meets the sky
I'll be sailing

Photographs and kerosene light up my darkness
light it up, light it up
I can still feel the touch of your thin blue jeans
Running down the alley I've got my eyes all over you baby
Oh baby

Oh the rhythm of my heart is beating like a drum
with the words "I love you" rolling off my tongue
No never will I roam for I know my place is home
where the ocean meets the sky I'll be sailing
I'll be sailing

Oh I've got lightning in my veins
shifting like the handle of a slot machine
Love may still exist in another place
I'm just yanking back the handle
no expression on my face

Oh the rhythm of my heart is beating like a drum
with the words "I love you" rolling off my tongue
Never will I roam for I know my place is home
where the ocean meets the sky
I'll be sailing

Oh the rhythm of my heart is beating like a drum
with the words "I love you" rolling off my tongue
No never will I roam for I know my place is home
where the ocean meets the sky
I'll be sailing

The rhythm of my heart is beating like a drum
with the words "I love you" rolling off my tongue
Never will I roam for I know my place is home
where the ocean meets the sky
I'll be sailing

[Rod Stewart][Youtube]

About me!

I have tried many times to write about me! This is blog is full of me, me and my complains. But I could not come up with something that represents me. I am sure this is not a very healthy situation. Not knowing thyself is not a very encouraging characteristics to have. Let me try one more time, what I can tell about me?

1. I am bad tempered.
2. I am complex (It is relative so I am not sure where should my name appear)
3. I often lie without any good reason.
4. I get tired of anything very quickly.
5. I don't have any hobby.
6. ...

It took quite a long to find all those and now I got stuck :( I am not all about these shitty things :( I do have some good things but I am not sure what are they. And now I am stuck, and ...

Going back

I am going back home this 18th, wow!!! After almost two and half years, should I be excited? Yes I guess. I am not too much excited, not very sure why? I have a kind of life here and I grow some kind of relation with this new life, may be I am just afraid of the change :( Not good, I am getting older and older.

I almost forgot the map of Dhaka city :( Sometime I feel like human beings are more rigid than trees, they can really grow their roots deep inside the place they live. I have some kind of relation with Norman, may be it is not my home town but it is the town where I lived for last two years and half. I am a emotional packrat, I keep emotions forever. Well maybe not true! Actually I don't, I almost forgot some faces, those were very close to me. I really don't understand myself :(

According to Rassel, I am a big hypocrite, probably I am, I am a big hypocrite.  I don't have many things left on me. I cheat with myself, I cheat with everyone every moment but still I don't know how to cheat with life. If one thing is persistent in my life that is probably my feelings about my life. I always hate my life, I always feels very very pissed off.

Beyond the Sunset

Should you go first and I remain to walk the road alone
I'll live in mem'ry's garden dear with happy days we've known
In spring I'll wait for roses red when fades the lilacs blue
And in early fall when brown leaves call I'll catch a glimpse of you
Should you go first and I remain for battles to be fought
Each thing you've touched along the way will be a hallowed spot
I'll hear your voice I'll see your smile though blindly I may grope
The mem'ry of your helping hand will buoy me on with hope
Beyond the sunset oh blissful morning when with our Saviour heaven is begun
Earth's toiling ended oh glorious dawning beyond the sunset when day is done

Should you go first and I remain to finish with the scroll
No less than shadows shall ever creep in to make this life seem droll
We've known so much of happiness we've had our cup of joy
And memory is one gift of God that death cannot destroy
I want to know each step you take that I may walk the same
For someday down that lonely road you'll hear me call your name
Should you go first and I remain one thing I'll have you do
Walk slowly down that long long path for soon I'll follow you
In that fair homeland we'll know no parting beyond the sunset for evermore

[Hank Williams]

Wichita Mountains, OK

Bricktown, OKC

Hypocrite

Dictionary.com explains the word hypocrite this way. Am I a hypocrite do I pretend something that I don't have? Yes maybe! It is hard to be truthful to everyone and everywhere. Well! may be it is easy but for me it is not. I would have ask a different question, why do I need to be truthful to everyone? Why can't pretend a virtue that I don't have? Human is basically a animal, if I hit someone he or she will hit me back, does it mean he or she does not have the virtue of not hitting a human being and therefore he or she should hit everyone!

Probably I got it all wrong; hitting back has nothing to do with hypocrisy. Well what is hypocrisy then? Hypocrisy is the name of pretending something that one doesn't possess. So where is the limit?

PANAM Halloween Party, OU

All credit goes to Adnan

Live simple

 

Life is lot easier when you have little less to think about!

Meaningless stuff

I had an interesting dream last night! I was trying to check my email by writing the gmail.com in a piece of paper and pressing the text by my pen :( Isn't it funny! When I woke up this morning I was thinking, well it may not be funny after ten years. All we need a IP enable piece of paper. I hope some technology is going to replace paper very soon and then what we need is a perfect OCR and IP on it. Does it sound like fiction? I guess no. If you look at Amazon Kindle, it looks very similar to book. We need something little bit thinner and pen that can write on it. I hope paper is going to be obsolete in foreseeable future and then we have to attach IP on it! My dream would come to a reality!

Tulsa, OK

Arcadia, OK

>

Shortcuts!

For some reason shortcut doesn't work for me. Most of the times if I try any shortcut I end up with opposite; no inconsistency this time as well. I tried one and end up messing even worse. Probably shortcuts are not for me but poor me; they are too lucrative to ignore :( The worst part of the story is this is not the first time I am realizing the fact but I forget the lesson very quickly.

Last few days was total crap; everything was against me! Every news was bad news! Every step was wrong step! Every action received even worse reaction! This is a hard time for me.

Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

[John Lennon]

Pauls Valley, OK

Trouble with physics

I have just finished an interesting book titled, "Trouble with physics" subtitled "The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next." Interesting book indeed. The first part of the book comprises a brief history of particle physics. I like that part most. I would say the author, Lee Smolin described the history of particle physics indeed in an interesting way.

In the second part is also quite interesting as well, in this part the author presented the rise of string theory and unresolved questions! He also criticizes String theory pretty harshly. He pointed out many questions those String theory fails to answer and many conjectures where String might fail. It is difficult for me to comment on this part because what he said is his arguments; I believe the String theorist must have their own explanation for them. But what amazes me most is, the transition from Part I to part II. Part I was written as if the everything is truth and Part II is written on the perspective of Science. I am not a big fan of popular science because sometimes authors write science book as if they are writing Gospel. The best part of this book the author did not present Science as a Gospel.

Part III presents the rival theories of String theory. Again, these all are theories and far from truth. I believe is Part IV is the part where the author made his main point. He pointed the unfair polarization of resources toward String theory. He also pointed some major flaw in doing science. Let me focus on one point, science is something that tempts scientists to think but recent practice is somehow fail to do so. I kind of agree with him; well I don't know very well about Physics but certainly I know about Computer Science. People are not interesting in thinking, they are more interested in doing, doing science. I am not asking to believe me, lets do this way;

Take some paper from recent conferences and journals and read the abstracts. You will certainly see one common thing. Everyone is claiming "In this paper we have solved Mr X's problem (which is the most important problem in this Universe) using the method Y (which is the best even known method to human civilization) in the context of Z (which is the most futuristic emerging research arena)." And most common trend is the authors have no relation with the problem, it is somebody else's problem; the solution is essentially proposed by someone else and finally the context exists only in imagination. There is not sign of think (therefore no science) in the whole process and to me this is very unhealthy.

I like to add one more interesting point. As a human being we are very fond of good and bad; we certainly know there exist two clusters one is called good and another is called bad. Even though we don't have any idea about what are those representing but we certainly know they are very important. Typically, we love good and we hate bad, since we don't know what are those things, we probably love the names. It is difficult to judge the think of a human being, but we have to attach a name with every person; scientists are not different. Hence we change the way of doing science, now the scientists are evaluated based on what they do not what kind of idea they possess. That made a big difference. People from all over the world are now interested about doing; that leads to another problem. Now everyone is doing something and start publishing. This situation gives the rise of publication industry. Now the problem became different, since publication industry became profitable many organization start moving toward it all of a sudden and the scientists start 'doing' in enormous pace. Now everyone becomes equal again with respect to publication and we are having hard time again to cluster. So now we starting clustering publication industries  and so one and this process continues. I don't know what it is bringing to us but certainly it is not taking us to the next step at least not in my view.

Anyway, go back to the book, "Trouble with Physics." (I have a very bad tendency of roaming around) What I felt about the book is, the main point of the book is not hard to perceive but it is difficult to comment on the specific example "String theory." String theory may find some success in future but it should not consume more resources than it deserves. At the end of the day it is 'just another theory'.

I would like to add some interesting quotes from the book,

• "working on String theory had proved to be a good intellectual training, and some former string theorists are now flourishing in other areas, such as solid-state physics, biology, neuroscience, computers, and banking."
• "String theory itself in need of unification"
• "The community has decided string theory is right and there is nothing you can do about it. You can't fight sociology"
• "After a certain point a successful scientist could easily spend all of his or her time on the politics of who gets hired where"

I have few comments on the very specific topic of the book,

• The things he called package deal (Part II) for String theory appeared same to me the things he called beautiful consequences (Part I)! May be the consequences are not beautiful enough to convince the writer but they are consequences no matter beautiful or ugly.
• The idea of curling up the dimensions and make them imperceptible appear again and again in the history of unification! Is this the same trap where human being are falling again and again or it is the reality? Apparently adding few more dimensions is the easiest mistake we can make.

The relationship

I feel like the relationship I have right now is wrong! It is a very wrong relationship. There is nothing wrong with any of us, I mean both of us are okay but we are not for each other. We are trying hard to make it happen but for some reason I have a feeling that we both know it would not work. We are just very different. Do we know each other? Well little bit and I am not a big fan of knowing very well. I believe knowing well is a very good catalyst for breaking up and it at the same time ends the journey of exploration, so I don't wanna know my partner from the very beginning.

I feel like we are trying to glue up two different piece of materials together which are very wrong for each other. But then again we have gone so far that it's not easy to be apart now. I have no plan to break it up but I don't wanna break it. Even though I know it's not right, still I wanna have it. At least we'll end up with a thermostat. In fact no relationship is perfect for me. Let me see how far we can go from here.

Network connection

I have a super interesting story to share: In my new lab I have one network connection for my Desktop. Since I always bring my laptop, I asked for one more connection. The new lab has every facilities for that and even we have two extra connection port in the room; all cabling and everything already done and it turn out that all the department has to do is to activate those connections! cool!

Now guess what they did! they ask 300$ for the activation! I have never heard of so much amount of money just to activate one connection and unfortunately I never thought it can even be charged. Then I thought probably those extra connections are just-for-show they really don't have any cabling inside them but guess what, they do have cabling and everything but where does that amount of money coming from?

Here is the explanation, in our previous building, if a new connection had to be established, they had to buy the cables and connect the new port to the switch and so and so... and all those things cost 300 bucks! So in the new building even though everything is already done they just charge that much amount of money to activate the connection! Wow! what a lovely elegant idea! Since I don't have money what I did was buy a 10$ switch which comes with two cables. I connect the switch to the network port and connect my machines to my new switch. Obviously that solves my problem but I am thinking what will I do if one fine morning they asked me for million dollar because that the cost of a 3GHz computer when the department was established!

'STUFF' NO-ONE TOLD ME

I went to my feed reader and found google has posted a new "blog of note". I used to follow them regularly but now I don't. Today they posted an excellent blog as a blog of note. I am not a big fan of cartoon but this blog is so good. I have copied one from that blog, I hope you would enjoy it as much as I did.

It's true, no one keeps count of my failure; more precisely no one even cares.

String theory!

I had a very little idea about modern physics; I new the name of modern theories; well may be what they 'state' as well. But hardly any idea about String theory. I tried several times to understand what it is but in most cases I was demotivated by complicated description of String theory. I had an idea that it is not easy to explain String theory in plain english, or even if it is described it is impossible for me to visualize what it is. In a nutshell, somehow I got the idea that String theory is not for me and don't try this way.

Then one complain is pretty common among non-physicist, what have the physicist done during last fifty years? Some of them were even more aggressive to claim that age of physics has finished. Well, even though I have no idea what they are doing, I had a great respect for the physicist and I used to argue them by saying what they are doing is far reaching for the engineers; probably that is the reason why we are not seeing any breakthrough from experimental perspective! By knowing little bit about String theory I have to say that I am partially true unfortunately not entirely. It seems like String theory is based on something that is not doable now not even in foreseeable future; then what the theory is all about?

The theory is all about an eleven/ten dimensional thing and that is the cause of everything is this earth, it has very well formed set of constants those make everything different from one another; and we human being can see only three (four) dimensions and rest are somehow vanished (either they curl up or they are just beyond our universe) and we cannot perform any experiment to neither falsify nor justify the theory. Wow! what a beautifully stated elegant idea of modern physics! After reading carefully, I believe I come up with another theory that might have more implications, "God made the universe and he made two different things called energy and particle, he live in a holy place where no human being can ever enter or imagine." Doesn't it sound right?

It is elegant because, it will solve not only the problems of physics but also the social problems as well. Why it doesn't sound good? Because we cannot prove the existence of God and neither falsify his existence, the same thing is true for String theory (at least right now). This is interesting, when I was a kid I memorize the definition of science, where there was significance for experiment and analysis but without that part I am now confused what I should call it?

আবল-তাবল

অনেকদিন পর লিখতে বসছি, কি জানি লিখব ভাবছিলাম ভুলে গেছি। আজকাল মাথা ঠিকমত কাজ করে না। মাথারই বা দোষ দেই কি করে, কমতো আর ধকল যায় না ওর উপর দিয়ে। মাথাটারে মাঝেমধ্যে খুলে রাখতে পারলে খারাপ হইত না, আমি আর মাথা দুইজনেই ক্ষানিকটা শান্তি পাইতাম। যন্ত্রনা! মানুষ কেন লেগো দিয়ে তৈরীনা :( যাইহোক কিছুত আর করা যাবে না, বরং কিছুক্ষন আবোল তাবোল কথা লিখি।

আজকাল মনে হচ্ছে আবল তাবল কথা লিখার জন্যেও চিন্তা করা লাগতেছে, হমমম... অনেকদিন রাজা উজির মারা হয় না, আগে কত ভীষন ভীষন চিন্তা করতাম, রাজা উজির মারতাম, আজকাল আর কিছু করা হয় না। আমি কি মারা গেলাম নাকি! তপু ভাই বলত আমার যখন খোজার ইচ্ছা শেষ হয়ে যাবে, তখনই নাকি আমি মারা যাব! আমি মনে হয় আগের চেয়ে ভীত হয়ে গেছি, এখন আমি অনেক কিছু বিশ্বাস করা শুরু করছি :( খোজ করতে ভয় লাগে। আমি মনে হয় মারা যাচ্ছি, এরপর হয়ত একটা ভ্যদামাছ হয়ে বেচে থাকব, না! আমি তা চাই না!

ভাল একটা খবর আছে! আমি বাড়ি যাবার টিকেট কাটছি! ডিসেম্বরে বাড়ি যাব, গিয়ে কি করব জানি না তবে যাব। অনেকদিন পর বাড়ি যাব! আমার অবশ্য বিশেষ আগ্রহ ছিল না, কিন্তু আব্বুর শরীর ভাল না; আমাকে বাড়ি যেতেই হবে। যাই, গিয়েই দেখি নতুন কি আছে।

ভাল লাগে না, ঝড় থেমে যাচ্ছে! ঝড় থেমে যাচ্ছে! ভবঘুরে ঝড়টা থেমে যাচ্ছে একটু একটু করে, প্রতি নিয়ত মনে করিয়ে দিচ্ছে, আমার সময় শেষ হয়ে আসছে। আমি আমার মত করে বাচতে চাই, বাচতে চাই!

Art of writing

So, now I am learning 'Art of writing', it is not about misleading the people, it is about presenting something positively. It is writing something several times but still each version looks like entirely new one. They called it art of writing :) Interestingly this art is everywhere in academia. This art is so emerging that NSF has to offer a workshop for scientific ethics and they are trying to enforce it by making a prerequisite for research assistants.

The motivation for the conference organizers is money and the motivations for the researchers is more funding. Organizing more and more conferences and publishing more and more papers is like win-win situation. Researchers are happy because they can publish more and get more funding and organizers are happy because they can earn more money. It's an interesting industry; by the grace of this industry we have got few bunch of politicians and lobbyist claiming themselves as scholars!

Here are some interesting posts from Daniel Lemire's blog, "How reliable is science?", "Manifesto for Half-Arsed Academic Research", "How to get everyone talking about your research!"... Anyway, this what we called research and we are proudly proud of our research :D

Microsoft Academic Search

I came to know about Microsoft Academic Search couple days ago. It gives a very fancy visual view of researchers, conferences, journal etc. Probably they are competing with Google Scholar. Google scholar doesn't have any fancy view. In my opinion what a student/professor needs is the results not the views. Very few of their targeted people care about view, how fancy the results look like and so, what they care about is results. Isn't it wrong effort for wrong group of people.

Even if I accept the view, the search is essentially slow. Probably the reason is their fancy view; the speed bothers me a lot. What I care about is first correct results not slow fancy view. On the top of that the results are not updated. I tried with different people and most of the time, it missed the very recent papers and articles.


And most interesting part is some results are even wrong!!! I have no clue how they do it but some results are wrong. See in the figure, according to Microsoft Academic Search the first author is a guy from University of Cairo!!! wow!!! Particularly I know the first author of this paper and he has never been in Cairo in his entire life :( Another typical Microsoft product. huh! another bad product!

Norman revisited: Game day

Junks: Motion blur

Norman revisited: Duck pond

What's new?

Not very many things,

I have completed my long cherished Masters and now thinking of PhD. Probably, starting my PhD from this Fall. Not very sure whether I am ready for such a long commitment(!) I am truly afraid of my flickering mind and now even dare of small commitments. At this point I am not very sure how good it would be to consider such a long commitment. Anyway I moving forward who cares what next.

My parents are really insisting me on going back home but I don't feel like. I never enjoyed my life here but the homesickness I had is missing right now. Right now, I am in no man's land. I don't feel like going back home rather I think would love to go somewhere else. Moving to a small town and living a tranquil live is my ever lasting dream. So I am not considering going back home at this point.

I am deliberately looking for the reclusion I had before and hardly manage some. I need some time for myself. Somehow I become very popular which I really don't want to be. I need to find a way.

Just got back from a trip to Vegas. It was okay but really missed Hasib and Rassel. Planning a trip to Colorado sometime this month. I think that's it. I am really trying hard to make my life little less boring.

DEMS: A Data Mining Based Technique to Handle Missing Data in Mobile Sensor Network Applications

In Mobile Sensor Network (MSN) applications, sensors move to increase the area of coverage and/or to compensate for the failure of other sensors. In such applications, loss or corruption of sensor data, known as the missing sensor data phenomenon, occurs due to various reasons, such as power outage, network interference, and sensor mobility. A desirable way to address this issue is to develop a technique that can effectively and efficiently estimate the values of the missing sensor data in order to provide timely response to queries that need to access the missing data. There exists work that aims at achieving such a goal for applications in static sensor networks (SSNs), but little research has been done for those in MSNs, which are more complex than SSNs due to the mobility of mobile sensors. In this paper, we propose a novel data mining based technique, called Data Estimation for Mobile Sensors (DEMS), to handle missing data in MSN applications. DEMS mines the spatial and temporal relationships among mobile sensors with the help of virtual static sensors. DEMS converts mobile sensor readings into virtual static sensor readings and applies the discovered relationships on virtual static sensor readings to estimate the values of the missing sensor data. We also present the experimental results using both real life and synthetic datasets to demonstrate the efficacy of DEMS in terms of data estimation accuracy.

In DMSN' 2010

Grand canyon

It is hard to explain why Grand canyon is so amazing unless you be there. Mountain is something which amazes me all the time and Grand canyon with its color made me speech less. Here is something I need to share that I learned from my mistakes of Grand canyon trip.

1. Plan for at least seven days, this is so amazing place it is hard to see everything in short period of time. If you are planning for less than that all you can do is some photo session. If "be there, done that" is you intention then probably you can finish it up by few hours. But my recommendation is plan for at least seven days, find a quite place and try to feel the color and vastness of this awful mother nature's creation.

2. Don't make any arrangement to stay in a hotel. Staying at hotel is waste of money and time. You have to travel a lot back and forth. Make an arrangement for camping and that's the way you can enjoy the grand creation. And of course make some plan for hiking, Grand canyon trip without hiking is incomplete. Find a camping place near the Colorado river and spend some time. The quieter the place the better it would be. If you are in a group fix time to be alone.

3. Renting is a car is not a good option but I don't know about good public transportation. But surely if you rent a car left it somewhere before the camping. Grand canyon national park has some arrangements for parking and they are often very full. I recommend public transportation (if you have any).

4. Try to visit as many places as you can by walking (hiking). Do not drive, it is waste of your time. It is around 110F during summer with extremely low humid, so carry as much water as you can. Following the trails for hiking is a safe option but if you are little bit adventurous, you can do more than that.

5. It is really difficult to find food in Grand canyon area, so make some arrangement about the food beforehand. I would recommend light foods but you can carry some heavy meals and waste as less as possible time for food.

6. Skywalk is one of a kind engineering work, if you can appreciate its extreme engineering make a plan to visit there. If you have acrophobia then surely you would enjoy Skywalk. Either you have to have acrophobia or you have to have some knowledge about engineering to appreciate Skywalk otherwise it is a complete waste of money for you.

7. Finally try to avoid crowd. Scenic and crowd does not go together. I would recommend going to Grand canyon all alone and be there all alone is the best option.

I hope I covered all you need to know before you plan for Grand canyon. It's a one of a kind place and be there before your end. It is perfectly capable of changing your perspective.

Choices

I was walking alone thru a side show
With passion and pain on each side.
Something inside me was calling
For a chance to stay alive.

At the time I didn't know what was calling
As my head was buried in grief.
Today I heard what was crying.
My freedom calling me

And we all make our choices
Like a blind man feels his way,
And the choice I've made is simple;
Passion over pain.

When I got to the end of the side show
And looked back to where I had been,
My eyes filled with teardrops of loneliness
For the ones who will never be free

And we all make our choices
Like a blind man feels his way,
And the choice I've made is simple:
Passion over pain.

I thought of the children in the side show
As they wandered around so confused.
Some day they'll make their decision
But which one will they choose?

And we all make our choices
Like a blind man feels his way,
And the choice I've made is simple;
Passion over pain.

[Uriah Heep]

Racism!

Once again racism. Racism is something I am encountering these days! It is not that other people are judging me, it is my friends(!) are judging other people. Very funny but true. Personally I hate racism, it hurts me when my friends say, stay away from race "X". A decent number of my friends are here in Norman now and unfortunately I have heard most racist comments from them. I don't know why but it hurts me. I hate racism. Segregating people is the last thing I would accept.

Racists are narcissists. Today they are segregating based on your color, tomorrow when everyone would have same color they will segregate based on something else, then something else, and so on. Human beings are social animal, and probably the worst byproduct of being a social being is racism. Its a shame for human civilization if we can't overcome such a small shortcoming. I have heard hundreds time that my friends are judged by their race; I know its true but to me that cannot be a justification of being racist. Racism is an ancient thing. It is taught in family and society, no one born with it.

OUTLIER DETECTION FOR DATA STREAMS

Outlier detection is a well established area of study for statistical data. However, most of the existing outlier detection techniques are designed targeting the regular data model, where the entire dataset is available for random access. Typical outlier detection techniques construct a standard data distribution or model from the entire dataset and execute their detection algorithms over each data point. Evidently these techniques are not suitable for online data streams where the entire dataset, due to its unbounded volume, is not available for random access. Moreover, the data distribution in data streams change over time which challenges the existing outlier detection techniques that assume a constant standard data distribution for the entire dataset. In addition, data streams are characterized by uncertainty which imposes further complexity. In this work we propose two outlier detection techniques, called Distance Based Outline Detection for Data Streams (DB-ODDS) and Automatic Outlier Detection for Data Streams (A-ODDS). Both techniques are based on a novel continuously adaptive data distribution function that addresses all the issues of data streams; but DB-ODDS identifies outliers depending upon a user-defined minimum neighbor density, whereas A-ODDS identifies the most deviated data points as outliers. We also present efficient and online implementations of the two techniques and experiments evaluating their accuracy and execution time using three real-life datasets from meteorological and energy consumption monitoring applications. The performance results show that DB-ODDS and A-ODDS are superior compared with existing techniques, and while DB-ODDS requires domain knowledge to function, it offers better accuracy and execution time than A-ODDS.

In case if you are interested what have I done for last six months. This is what have I done for last six months. I am tired of it.

Downtown train

Outside another yellow moon
has punched a hole in the night time mist
I climb through the window and down to the street
I'm shining like a new dime
The downtown trains are full
full of all them Brooklyn girls
They try so hard to break out of their little worlds

You wave your hand and they scatter like crows
They have nothing that'll ever capture your heart
They're just thorns without the rose
Be careful of them in the dark
Oh if I was the one you chose to be your only one
Oh baby can't you hear me now, can't you hear me now

Will I see you tonight on a downtown train
Every night, every night its just the same
On a downtown train

I know your window and I know its late
I know your stairs and your doorway
I walk down your street and past your gate

I stand by the light of the four way
and watch them as they fall, oh baby
They all having their heart attacks
They stay at the carnival
But they'll never win you back

Will I see you tonight on a downtown train
Every night, every night its just the same
You leave me lonely
Will I see you tonight on a downtown train
All my dreams, all my dreams fall like rain
On a downtown train

Will I see you tonight on a downtown train
Every night, every night its just the same

Will I see you tonight on a downtown train
All my dreams, all my dreams fall like rain
On a downtown train
On a downtown train
All my dreams fall like rain
On a downtown train

[Tom Waits; 1985] [Rod Stewart' 1989] [Youtube] [wiki]

I am suffocating, ..., suffocating, ..., suffocating...

Thesis defense

So I graduate! I have defended my master's thesis today. It was interesting. I did not have to answer many questions, hard to tell why!!! So far it went well. I have passed. I have everything done necessary for masters. So now I graduate!!! At least, I achieve something since I came here. Maybe, it is not too big thing, I know many many people did that before me and more will do after me but it is one of those good things those happen to me! So I celebrate!

The interesting thing about the graduation is the first question people ask is "What next?" True fully, I don't have any answer for that. It's hard to tell no plan. Even I have tried that today. I told one I have no plan yet; interesting, he replied why did I graduate then! I don't what to say! What should I say to this question? All I can say is I can't stay here forever and do research and bla bla bla... Anyway the good thing is I graduated and it took me little less than two years; so I am pretty much on time. It was my first preference, I wanted it done by time and I did it, so I am kind of happy.

Now I need to think what next? I have couple of options: 1) I can go back to home and come back later for PhD, 2) I can start my PhD here, 3) I can get my OPT and start looking for job, 4) I can just sit and do nothing, 5), 6), ... Very many options! I am confused at this point. I don't want so many options. Hopefully, I'll come up with something, something interesting! Right now all I want is to do relax! relax!! and relax!!!

dataset or technique?

An interesting trend is clearly noticeable, Sensor data sharing website. There are plenty of websites on internet collect data from numerous sensor networks and published the data online. With the increasing popularity of micro-sensor network there is no wander that many researchers are exploring different facets of sensors network applications. Myriad of research papers have been published throughout this decade to address fictitious or real problems. I am not sure how many of them are truly useful but at least those papers help to some students to graduate and some professors to be tenure. Quote unquote, "Ian F. Akyildiz" this area is too crowded but industry usage is too restrictive. It is difficult to point the real problem that discourages the industry people. Anyway, it was not my concern what I am trying to point out is that there are numerous sensor data sharing websites on internet and many researcher collect data from those websites.

The scenario becomes too fuzzy now. It's like someone is using some others' data for some other purposes. Based on my observation, the results published in this domain are highly sensitive to the dataset. Now if the dataset doesn't make any sense, how come the results! The websites are providing data only nobody cares about the quality! I know it is neither their responsibility nor concern but this is the researchers' concern. In my opinion any researcher can write a proposal about the quality estimation for these data and get some funding from them. To me it is a clear need now. I was reading a paper this morning, it was a survey paper and in that paper the authors argue, the results do not vary from one technique to another technique, rather the results vary from one dataset to another dataset! So what is more important, come up with a new technique or come up with standard dataset?

Why there is no new post?

I have nothing to say!
I should not say anything!
I have said enough!
I am compensating what I have said...

DBOD-DS: Distance Based Outlier Detection for Data Streams

Data stream is a newly emerging data model for applications like environment monitoring, Web click stream, network traffic monitoring, etc. It consists of an infinite sequence of data points accompanied with timestamp coming from external data source. Typically data sources are located onsite and very vulnerable to external attacks and natural calamities, thus outliers are very common in the datasets. Existing techniques for outlier detection are inadequate for data streams because of its metamorphic data distribution and uncertainty. In this paper we propose an outlier detection technique, called Distance-Based Outline Detection for Data Streams (DBOD-DS) based on a novel continuously adaptive probability density function that addresses all the new issues of data streams. Extensive experiments on a real dataset for meteorology applications show the supremacy of DBOD-DS over existing techniques in terms of accuracy.

In DEXA' 2010.

Life is too Short

Have you ever seen the morning?
When the sun comes up the shore
And the silence teach the
beauty for the sound
Have you ever sat there waiting?
For the time to stand still
For all the worlds and stars
From turning around
And you run
'Cause life is too short
And you run
'Cause life is too short
Have you ever seen the glory?
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 see I can
It only works
If you believe in the truth
But there's a time to live
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]

Cologne collector

Last few days I am going throw some cologne reviews. I think this is not because I want to buy something rather it is working as an excellent escape goat for me. An interesting escape from real life. I have heard about aroma therapy long ago. However the cologne seller made me buy two new colognes. It's fun reading other people comments on different perfumes. The most interesting thing catch up my attention is the perfume is not judged by the smell rather it is judged by the number of women pay attention on it. If the cologne can drive the girls toward the wearer, then it is the best. Interesting judging criterion! Again if someone wears a cologne and nobody notices it there is no point of wearing it. At the end of the day few very people are bothered by their own body odor.

I had a fascination on fragrances, it's not entirely new. I love wearing pleasant fragrance. It just makes me refresh. I used to wear body spray but they don't last too long. Then I moved toward perfumes/cologne. It works okay. I am from south asia. Spicy food is our daily dish. Spicy food aroma drives everything away. So I have to use some kind of fragrances for daily life otherwise it is hard to stand the aroma. Polo Black is my signature cologne. You may not like it at the beginning but it is very refreshing after one or two hours. They called it "base note is very strong". I have Drakkar Noir, Armani Code and Burberry Touch now by the grace of American marketing policy.

Using Data Mining to Handle Missing Data in Multi-Hop Sensor Network Applications

A sensor’s data loss or corruption, aka sensor data missing, is a common phenomenon in modern wireless sensor networks. It is more severe for multi-hop sensor network (MSN) applications where sensor data reach the base station via other sensors; hence a sensor’s failure can cause multiple missing data. In this paper we present MASTER-M, a data estimation framework based on data clustering and association rule mining to estimate the values of missing sensor data for MSN. Estimating, instead of resending, the missing sensor data is becoming popular as it may reduce query response time and sensor energy consumption; however the current works cater to only single-hop sensor networks. To fill this gap, our novel technique addresses the issues related to MSN, such as simultaneous missing sensors and missing spatially correlated sensors. It consists of three steps: 1) clustering sensors online; 2) capturing association rules between sensors inside each cluster, and 3) estimating the values of the missing data using the obtained association rules. Experimental results on both real-life sensor data and synthetic sensor data demonstrate the efficacy of MASTER-M in terms of estimation accuracy compared to the existing techniques. Moreover, we also present experiments showing the supremacy of data estimation by MASTER-M in terms of energy savings over re-transmission of missing data.

In MobiDE' 2010.

Microsoft Equation Tool

"Wow! Microsoft provide a new equation writer tool with Word 2007. I am gonna write my next article with it." - Don't be stupid like me. Trust me my friends it sucks more than the previous one. If you have to write one or two small expression, then it might be okay (not very sure :() but if you have to write plenty of mathematical expression you will be damned! You cannot imagine how slow it is, It sucks big time! The whole equation tool is a piece of crap, it's evil. Never ever try to use that. I don't know why my advisor loves MS word :(, this product should be banned officially.

Where do I go from here?

Groceries are gone, my pay cheque is spent
They turned off the water, I'm behind on my rent
Last night I drunk my last beer
And where do I go from here?

I've been laid off since Monday before
The union is holding out hoping for more
Well, I could be laid off for years
And where do I go from here, where do I go from here?

Sittin' at the kitchen table
Staring at my unpaid bills
Sometimes I feel so unable
It's the boredom not the worry that kills.

Oh, where do I go from here.
Where do you go when nobody needs you
Why can't you sleep when there's nothin' else to do
Why are your thoughts so unclear
Oh, where do you go from here
Where do you go, where do you go from here.

I don't like complaining and I could use a rest
but my sofa and chairs just got repossessed
and my pride is the next thing I fear
Oh where do I go from here, where do I go?

Where do I go from here
Tell me where do I go, where can I go
Where can I go from here?

[Don Williams]

sanity???

What is sanity? Doing things that other people want me to do or maybe doing something from a set that other people believe right for me. What if I lost my sanity? I would do whatever I feel like doing! I better loose my sanity; probably this is the only way I can have my cherished life.

if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly

- Paul Graham

break! break!! break!!!

A had paper due early morning today. It went well and after the submission "she" said I can take a break today! I don't know for some reason it made me laugh. What is a break? What does it mean having a day off? Break! break! break! I want a break, I want a break, I want a break. Day-by-day I am losing my sanity. Everyday I am hope everything going to be good but at the end of the day I am figuring out it is not. It's my life.

I used to tell people I am a loner but in early days of America I realized I am not. It's not easy to be alone, it's not fun to be lonely. Those days I crave for a human being. I don't know why now I feel whose days were good days of my life. I am not sociable person at all, no matter what I can't be sociable. Every things seems boring to me, every things seems useless to me. Every person seems irritating to me. I am going insane!

Couple of days back rassel send me a link, I can't exacly remember the title but it was about need and greed. I don't know why he sent me that but I know I am greedy, I posses a eternal hunger of countless small things. I am not a good man at all. I had all the virtues when I was a kid and I lost one by one in course of my little dumb life. I don't have anything now, I am empty now.

While writing this post I went to the wiki page of seven deadly sin to see what is the rank of the greed on the list. Interestingly it seems like I have six of them except gluttony! Maybe I have the gluttony too, I am not sure. I am a stupid whore. I need a major re-work. I want to go back to my mom, I need to go back to her!

Losing My Religion

Life is bigger
It's bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no I've said too much
I set it up

That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've said too much
I haven't said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

Every whisper
Of every waking hour I'm
Choosing my confessions
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt lost and blinded fool
Oh no I've said too much
I set it up

Consider this
The hint of the century
Consider this
The slip that brought me
To my knees failed
What if all these fantasies
Come flailing around
Now I've said too much
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

But that was just a dream
That was just a dream

[R. E. M' 91][wiki][youtube]

Dhaka

To be very honest I rarely missed my family, most of the time I missed Dhaka city. This is my home town, my home.

স্বপ্নভরা দিনগুলো মোর!

অনেকটা হুজুগের বসেই ঢাকা থেকেই পারি জমিয়েছিলাম এই ছোট্ট শহর নরম্যানের উদ্দেশ্যে। আমার আশে পাশের সবাই চলে যাচ্ছিল স্বপ্নের দেশ আমেরিকায়, আমিও লোটামম্বল নিয়ে সামিল হয়ে গেলাম তাদের দলে। ঠিক কি করব জানা ছিল না, জানা অবশ্য আজও হয়নি, হবেও না কোনদিন মনে হচ্ছে। প্রথমদিকের দিনগুলো পার হয়েছিল সবকিছু বুঝে উঠতে উঠতে। আমি সবচেয়ে বেশী সময় নিয়েছিলাম ঠিক কি করতে হবে বুঝে উঠার জন্যে।

একটা ভাল বেপার হয়েছিল আমেরিকার প্রথমদিকের দিনগুলোতে। আমেরিকানরা খুব ভাল ব্যবসায়ী, তাই ওদের প্রেজেন্টেশন জিনিশটা খুব ভাল জানে। ওদের ওদ্ভুত ভিশন আছে। খুব সাধারন একটা জিনিশকে ওরা প্রেজেন্টেশনের মাধ্যমে অসাধারন বানিয়ে ফেলে। আসমান-জমিন স্বপ্ন দেখে ওরা খুব সাধারন জিনশ নিয়েও। আমার মধ্যেও বেপারটা খানিকটা ঢুকেগিয়েছিল। আসলে ঢোকা বলা ঠিক না, বেপারটা আগের থেকেই ছিল, আবার মাথাচারা দিয়ে উঠেছিল। আবার সেই একই ভুল! হা্য় আমি আবার একি ভুল কি করে করলাম! ঠিক কতবারের মাথায় আমার শিক্ষা হবে, আল্লাহই জানেন।

যাইহোক আমেরিকার প্রথমদিকের দিনগুলো কেটেছিল স্বপ্ন দেখতে দেখতে, কত কি আবল তাবল স্বপ্ন দেখতাম, দেখতে দেখতে হঠাৎ নিজেকে আবিস্কার করলাম বাস্তবের বাইরে! মন মেজাজটা খুবই খারাপ হয়ে আছে! সব ছেড়েছুড়ে কোথাও চলে যেতে ইচ্ছে করতেছে। আমি ক্লান্ত!

Bad time again!

Something went wrong. Somewhere something is terribly wrong. There is always a disconnection between what I want and what is happening. Sometimes I feel like I almost minimized the distance but in the very next moment I realize I didn't. I am not doing anything, I am not minimizing anything all I am doing is hoping and over estimating myself. Do I posses more than average self confidence; Am I an arrogant one? What's wrong with me?

Where should I start now? I feel like I am in the middle of the ocean, not very sure where to go! Do I have any place to go? Apparently not! I am very very disturbed! This time my stupidity put me in a place from where it is hard to get back. I don't know what to do! What really I could do! Bad time again!

Come Sail Away

I'm sailing away
Set an open course for the Virgin Sea
'Cause I've got to be free
Free to face the life that's ahead of me

On board, I'm the captain
So climb aboard
We'll search for tomorrow on every shore
And I'll try, oh Lord, I'll try to carry on

I look to the sea
Reflections in the waves spark my memory
Some happy, some sad
I think of childhood friends and the dreams we had

We lived happily forever
So the story goes
But somehow we missed out on the pot of gold
But we'll try best that we can to carry on

A gathering of Angels appeared above my head
They sang to me this song of hope and this is what they said

They said, "Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me lads
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me baby
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me"

I thought that they were Angels, but to my surprise
We climbed aboard their starship, we headed for the skies

Singing, come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me lads
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me

Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me

[Styx' 1975]

Old rockers never die

বাতাসে বসন্ত!

ভাল লাগতেছে না। ঢাকাতে থাকলে এমনদিনে শহীদমিনার কিনবা, শহীদুল্লার পুকুর পারে গিয়ে বসে থাকতাম, কিনবা রাসেল কে সাথে করে ট্যাক্সি ভারা করে এয়ারপোর্ট ঘুরে আসতাম। রাত প্রায় তিনটা বাজে, আচ্ছা ঢাকাতে যারা থাকে সবাই কি জানে গভীর রাতে ঢাকার চেহারাটা দেখতে কেমন? গভীর রাতের ঢাকার এক অদ্ভুত নির্জনতা আছে। আমি খুব অবাক দুই কোটি মানুষের শহর ঢাকা, গভীর রাতে কেমন যেন একাকিত্বে ভোগে। আজকের আব্‌হাওয়াটা কেমন যেন ঢাকার বসন্তের মত। বাতাসে বসন্ত! আহ্‌ কতদিন বাতাসে ভিজা মাটির গন্ধ পাই না, বসন্তের প্রথম বৃষ্টিতে আর ভেজা হয় না। কতদিন কোকিলগুলো আমার ঘুম ভাঙ্গায় না, অনেক কিছুই আর কোনদিন হয়ত পাব না।

ঢাকার ঋতুর সাথে আমার পরিচয় অনেক পরে, আমার কৈশর কেটেছে এক ছোট্ট গলিতে, যেখানে আলো বাতাসের বড়ই অভাব। ছোট্ট সেই গলি থেকে একদিন হঠাৎ করে কিভাবে যেন চলে আসলাম ইউনিভার্সিটিতে আর সেখানেই আমার প্রথম পরিচয় বসন্তের সাথে। হলুদ শারি পরে মেয়েগুলো বসন্তের গান গেয় যেত বটে, তার অনেক আগে থেকেই আমার ছোট্ট জানালায় কোকিলগুলো বসন্তের গান শুনিয়ে যেত। আহসানউল্লার কোকিলগুলোর কোন ঋতুঙ্গান ছিল না, বসন্তের অনেক আগেই কেন যেন ওদের বসন্ত শুরু হয়ে যেত। বড্ড ক্লান্ত লাগছে। সব কিছু ছেরে চলে যেতে ইচ্ছে হচ্ছে।

রাস্তায় হঠাৎ দুই একটা গাড়ী দেখা যাচ্ছে। এই শহরটা যেন কেমন, সকাল বিকাল কোনটাই বোঝার কোন উপায় নাই। সব সময়ই এক। আচ্ছা এই শহরের মানুষগুলোর মন খারাপ হয় না? ওরা কি করে? আমার এই শহর ভাল লাগে না। আমার আসলে কিছুই ভাল লাগে না। আমি খুব ক্লান্ত, আমার খুব চিৎকার করে বলতে ইচ্ছা হয়, আমি খুব ক্লান্ত, আমার একটু বিশ্রাম চাই, হোক খুব অল্প, তাও একটু বিশ্রাম চাই।

খুব বরিশাল যেতে ইচ্ছা হচ্ছে। হঠাৎ করে! চলে যেতে পারতাম। কিনবা সিলেট! কিনবা অন্য কোন জায়গায়! যাওয়া হবে না, হয়ত আর কোনদিনও যাওয়া হবে না। মধ্যবিত্তের সবচেয়ে বড় বিলাসিতা নষ্টালজিয়া, আজকে আমাকে বড় নষ্টালজিয়া্য পেয়ে বসেছে, কিছুই ভাল লাগছে না। বড্ড জোরে গাড়ী ছোটাতে ইচ্ছা হচ্ছে, চলে যেতে পারতাম ঠিক ঐ দিকন্তের কাছে!

Experiment results!!!

I am right here right now :(

Waiting!

I am in the conference room, waiting for my professor :( She did not show up today. The good about the new rooms is, you can outside. Sometimes it helps; it helps while you are waiting for someone or if someone talks rubbish. I have a very bad habit, if I don't like what a person is talking about, I never pay attention on him. In my undergraduate days, I used look outside when a boring instructor start driving us real nuts. Now I am waiting for my advisor. I believe she will not show up today but still I am waiting for her. I need to talk to her badly :(

I don't know why people love to keep me waiting for them. Maybe, I particularly good at it. I try my best to be on time, so in most of the cases I have to wait. Usually I don't get impatient. Sometimes I feel like I can wait forever for something. I have waited for so many things in my life. I came into this world after seven days from my due date. I waited seven days to be in this filthy world. I waited two years for my first footstep. I waited eleven months for my undergraduate class. I waited three years for a girl. so and so... But to be very honest I am very good at waiting :) I have been always waiting for GODOT.

Oooops, what the hell I am talking about. I don't have to wait today. I am perfectly free to leave the room but I am enjoying this reclusion, so I am here sitting in the conference room, writing blogs, watching people. No, I should go, I have plenty of things to do. bye

Spring in the air again!

Another spring! Spring in the air again, warmer days, windy outside, lovely!

Cold & flu

This is the fifth time I got cold and flu this year (stupid!) Last year I was pretty good and this year I don't know why my body is not working. Something is seriously wrong. Cold and flu is fine but stupid runny nose is driving me nuts. I just can't concentrate on anything. This is not good at all. I have too many things to do and too few time to get all of them done. I feel little bit week these days, I don't know why (!?) Probably I should work on my nutrition too. I should not stand this too long.

The funny thing is this is the first time I am having vitamin tablets regularly but apparently no luck. I went to the doctor but she said I am all good but the stupid cold is coming back periodically. I think the culprit is my room. The heating system of my room doesn't work properly. I spent very few time there but last Sunday I spent the entire day and Monday I got cold !? hmmm... I think I should stay at my office, may be it would help! I just hate runny nose :(

Get lucky

I got the Marc Knopfler's latest album "Get Lucky" yesterday, wow! Marc Knopfler is addictive, I can't stop listening since then :( There is something in this album that takes me away and I feel very relaxed. The amazing voice with fabulous guitar works, hard to stop listening. The album is an wonderful collection of rocks.

I'm better with my muscles
Than I am with my mouth
I worked the fairgrounds in the summer
And go pick fruit down south

And when I'm feel them chilly winds
Where the weather goes I follow
Pack up my traveling things go with the swallows

And I might get lucky now and then
You win some, you might get lucky now and then
You win some

I wake up every morning
Keep on eye on what I spent
Gotta think about eating
Gotta think about paying the rent

I always think it's funny
It gets me everytime
I wonder about the happiness and money
Tell it to the breadline

But you might get lucky now and then
You win some, you might get lucky now and then
You win some

Now I'm rambling through this meadow happy as a man can be
Think I just lay me down under this old tree
On and on we go through this old world of shuffling
If you got a truffle dog, you can go truffling

But you might get lucky now and then
You win some, you might get lucky now and then
You win some

[Marc Knopfler' 2009]

Java memory leak

I had a interesting problem regarding JAVA memory leak couple of days back. Typically, java garbage collector collects all the un-referred memory space. My problem was interesting, I had a fixed array of objects and some of them (in random) hold the information about few other objects in the array. The array was like a queue and object are coming from one direction and going out from another direction. When each object left the array, the object is theoretically dead to me. I don't keep any other reference to it. Interestingly, it was causing an chain of references where the last object sitting on my array and the first object died long ago. The problem was interesting.

I am having memory problem again and this time I did some google on JAVA memory leak problem. I found that I am not the only one having similar kind of problem, there are thousands having similar kind of problem with their JAVA codes. Obviously I would not say this is the problem of the java platform, this is just a bad practice. The interesting thing I conclude is a bad programming practice can cause the harm no matter how good the platform is!

OU Supercomputer!

Last few days the OU supercomputer is screwing me! I had several tasks and each of them takes a day or two to complete. So I get an account in the OU supercomputer to execute my tasks. It was quite okay but the problem is they have such a long queue that my tasks were waited in the queue for the entire week. Still, I was okay but then some of my jobs were terminated in the middle (huh!) and I have no clue why? I have talked to them and they said it's because of memory usage! alas! So I have to go throw the whole process again, submit the jobs, wait in the queue and finally when they will get chance (I hope they will!) to execute I don't know what going to happen this time?

One more interesting thing. They have two more powerful machine than their regular machines but I found the powerful machine takes longer time than regular machine, funny! Why is that? I still don't have very good explanation for that. Maybe it's because of threads! The jobs which are running on powerful machines have more threads than the jobs running on regular machine. But then again, the powerful machine has twice as many core as in regular machine and my threads are all non-blocking threads. So, the context-switching should not deteriorate the performance but somehow it does!

Ice storm

The bad part of the mobile camera is you can never take what you intend to take :'(

What should I do?

I don't feel like going home, I don't feel like working either. I should go, where? Is there any place can go other than my apartment? My world become so small that it is hard to tell does it exist or not. I am feeling bad, damn bad!

How about if I go home by walk? Not a bad idea! May I would feel better. Now-a-days I feel suffocated everywhere. I need a bigger world. USA is a big country but very little place for me. I was thinking since evening where I can go and still the set is empty.

Well, I better leave the lab and walk around the campus. I can go Maruf's place :( not a good idea! I am tired of same people! Anyway, I am leaving :( don't know where I am going.

Relationship!

I think I have a problem with relationship! Relationship does not mean a lot to me! Is it true? I believe yes! I believe it is a late but better than never. Relationship does not mean a whole lot to me. I am not good at maintaining relationship.

Machines!

Four laptops are running around me; they are executing something; I am waiting for them. Not very romantic, right? I have an interesting feeling, are they thinking anything? Are they talking to each other? If they can talk to each other what they might talk about? I am sure, they must be cursing upon me. I keep them running for two weeks in a row. Is that too bad? Well, what if I were a laptop? Would it be reasonable for human being?

I can a tell an interesting story. In my last semester Machine Learning class I designed an learning agent. Those who are aware of Machine Learning must know that most of the learning agents are based on some kind of reward function. So in my design, I didn't assign much reward for perfect case but I assigned plenty of negative rewards for the imperfect situation. So the agent works and learns absolutely great! But when I submitted the design the instructor took off five points and leave note on my paper. The note was interesting, it was saying don't be so cruel, it's just a poor robot, why are you beating it so harsh :) It was funny and we all had fun at that time.

Well, running a laptop for entire week might not sound so cruel; because we don't know the definition of cruelty for machines. Is it possible to be cruel to a machine? I don't know the answer yet; because we don't know are they living being or not? Since, we don't know the perfect definition of life yet how come we classify something as not alive! This is injustice! The good thing is I am not a laptop and the bad thing is I am some kind of "top".