Law of brain activity and temperature

I think this law is generally true, $\textstyle \text{level of brain activity in research} \propto e^{-(\text{outside temperature})}$ Please don't quote me on this.

California heat...research

I have been back a few days only, and the heat has already started to kill me. It has made me listless, not that I wasn't before, and almost sucked out all the energy in me. Amidst all this, I met my advisor today to discuss a research problem to start on. Since classes don't start till later, I can use the time in between to, hopefully, take a few stabs at the problem. Let me try to summarize the general research problem,

Use some form of probabilistic machine learning model to tweak segmentation/recognition of objects in natural images using high level knowledge (forming the ground truth).

The summary is very vague, but I will try to give exact details in later blog entries.

Leaving...home...

My summer at home has come to an end. I am leaving today, flying back to California for graduate school.

My books wishlist

I am adding these two books to my wishlist. From what I have read in the reviews, both of these are going to be an enjoyable read.

• Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky.
• Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.

Actually, the second one was recommended by a college friend.

Using Latex on Blogspot

I have been looking for a way to incorporate Latex code on Blogspot to write math, and here is a great way of doing it.

It looks quite nice too, $\sum_{i=1}^n 2^i$

By default, the math, as a rendered image, is displayed within a border. The border can be easily removed by modifying the html content under layout -> edit html

.post img{

border:1px .......

......

}

Simply set the border attribute to 0px. I think this also means your uploaded images will no longer have a border, but you can probably give that up for the sake of Latex.

[Update on August 17, 2009] I don't like the size of the rendered image displaying the math, it creates white space between consecutive lines if the math is put in as inline, making a large blog entry with lots of inline math equations look ridiculous. Wordpress does a much better job in handling latex code. Blogspot should incorporate latex handling if it wants to be popular among bloggers who like to use math in their blogs.

Reading list... my conscience

This is for my conscience, that I am also spending valuable time in the summer looking at 'valuable' things. This list depicts some of the cs related books that I have, or been pretending, to read/skim over the summer.

• Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# by Matthew MacDonald.
• Database Management Systems by Ramakrishnan and Gehrke.
• Basics of Compiler Design by Torben Mogensen.
• The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks.

Notice that the list does not include anything related to machine learning, but, again for my conscience, there are some machine learning related stuff that I have also been paying close attention to.

Three men in a boat, a comedy of human folly

This summer, I have taken an interest in reading some classical literary work. The detective stories that I have been reading, which I have mentioned in my previous post, is a testament to this fact; though, one can argue the inclusion of such detective stories as ‘classical literary’ work, let us not delve into that matter. I recently took up a classic book titled ‘Three men in a boat,’ by Jerome K. Jerome. Through the comical nature of three, seemingly lazy, English friends as they embark on a journey by the river to relieve the stress of their overworked lives, Jerome brings out some follies of common human nature. I haven't yet finished reading the book, just over half way through, but as I come across new incidents in the lives of the three English gentlemen on their revitalizing river trip, I can't help but reflect as to how, surprisingly, the behaviors portrayed seem to reflect within the intricacies of modern life.

Rabindranath Tagore, a question, and a hope

Tagore was the first Bengali to win the Noble Prize in literature. He created masses of amazing songs, poems, and stories that were translated into many different languages, appreciated by Bengali people as well as from people around the world. Well, I am digressing from the point of my post, which is not to acclaim Tagore, because there are far able people who can do a better job, but to raise a question that suddenly popped into my mind while I was watching a program on Tagore. Why haven't we seen any other Bengali noble laureate in literature after Tagore? It has been decades since Tagore passed away, and I don't think we have seen anyone else in Bengali literature rise to the pinnacle like Tagore. Are the Bengalis losing their creative and literary minds, I hope not, the ability to stitch together words that talk about simple life, and sway people's mind - maybe materialistic nature is burgeoning on the creative minds before they can bloom, who knows? But I do hope, and I will be greatly elated, that at some point we get to see another Tagore rise up to transform Bengali literature into new directions.