Category Archives: Life

Milestones

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I have been away from this blog for quite a while now and much has happened since then. The past few months have been extremely busy but also quite eventful. 2008 was a very important year for me as I hit several big milestones. Each of these warrant posts of their own, but these one-liners will do for now.

Milestones

First, I successfully defended my PhD on October 31st. I have since finished all the paperwork and filed my dissertation. I am now, officially, Dr. Gupta! :-)

PhD

Second, I had a blast doing job interviews, and was in the difficult, but fortunate position of having to choose among several excellent offers, especially given the current economy. I will be joining Aster Data in a few days!

Work

And finally, I got married to this most wonderful woman! While our wedding was crazy and intense and hectic and a ton of fun, I have come to believe that the reason marriages are more successful in India is that just one marriage drains you so much that you can’t even think about ever getting married again :-D

Diwaker and Surabhi

My first “book” is published!

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The [[http://floatingsun.net/articles/apping-for-dummies|Apping for Dummies]] article that I wrote several years ago has remained one of the most visited articles on my website and over the years many people have told me that they found the article useful. I’m happy to announce that a much updated and enhanced version of the article is now [[http://pothi.com/pothi/book/diwaker-gupta-applying-american-graduate-schools-engineering-and-fine-arts|available as a small handbook]] over at [[http://pothi.com|Pothi.com]].

[[http://floatingsun.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/front.jpg|{{http://floatingsun.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/front-212x300.jpg}}]]

I’ve always thought about writing a book, so this is definitely very exciting for me. Even though it is not really a full-fledged “book”, it is a start nonetheless. The handbook is priced at **Rs. 99** (excluding shipping). So if you or any one you know is applying for graduate school in the US, specially in engineering and fine arts, do check it out. You can [[http://pothi.com/pothi/preview?pFile=132|preview the first ten pages]].

Note that the article is (and will always be) still available. Of course the book has a lot of extra (and more up to date) information that is not there in the article. The article is also fairly narrow in its scope — it was basically written for Computer Science students at the IITs. The book, however, is much broader — it should be useful to applicants in engineering //and// **fine arts**. As far as I know there is hardly any published information out there for graduate applicants in fine arts, so I really hope that this handbook will be of some use to the budding artists in India.

This whole thing is very much an experiment for me. At some point I might even make the handbook available online as a (paid or unpaid) eBook, but for now you have to order your copy from Pothi.com.

More movies

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So last night we saw another Hitchcock classic — The Rope. Awesome movie, and really well shot. The entire movie takes place in an apartment, and it doesn’t get boring at any point. Hitchcock plays clever camera tricks to make it appear as if the entire movie was shot in a single cut.

Anish says that it was shot in 10 minute cuts at clever places (like zoom into a guys back and them zoom out in the next cut). Absolutely marvellous performances by everyone. And I guess the gentlement of those times really had a charm that I certainly lack.

Today afternoon was a major debugging battle with Kashi, which we finally cracked after wasting a lot of time. I really hate Perl!!! Then I happened to take a look at the web page for CSE168 (its a rendering class) and they had the results of the final class projects up on the web page. And I was like, what a time waste we systems people do man! Vision and Graphics people always have this edge — they always have such cool demos!

Tonight we watched Yuva. Really impressive. Directed by Maniratnam and a sparkling cast — Ajay Devgan, Abhishek Bachhan, Om Puri and Vivek Oberoi. Not to mention Rani Mukherjee, Isha Deol and Karina Kapoor. For the first time I really appreciated Abhishek Bachhan’s acting. Maniratnam has really brought out this guy’s talent, and I guess the role really suited him and he carried it out quite well. Ajay Devgan was fabulous as always. Though Karina’s and Vivek’s characters were quite unnecessary and might have been just as easily eliminated. Karina’s definitely. She looks like such a w___e in the movie!

Next movie to watch out for is Girlfriend. Whats happening to Indian cinema!

Email wars

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* Gmail == 1 GB
* Aventure Mail == 2 GB
* Yahoo! Plus == Virtually Unlimited Storage (2 GB)
* Lycos == 1 GB

Thanks to Gmail, a lot of non-Gmail users are also going to be able to enjoy larger storage space for their inboxes. Yahoo! is deploying larger inboxes for both free and premium email members over the summers. A mostly obscure Aventure Mail is offering 2GB for free for the first 10000 customers.

I thought the way people were buying and selling and swapping Gmail accounts was almost ridiculous. I mean, Gmail is so hot simply because it symbolises “cool” — I’m not sure how many people are after Gmail from the point of view of its utility or functionality. But where is all this going to lead? I mean what after 1GB? And how does this impact spam?

With Yahoo’s anti-spam proposal gaining momentum, we’re hoping that the amount of spam will reduce in the future. But it seems to me that more storage for inboxes might also imply more spam as well. Though that relationship is quite obscure, its more like a gut feeling. As Gmail suggests, archive, don’t delete.

Most people I know hate spam because they have to delete the stuff manually. If spam filtering really becomes effective, at what point will spam stop being a PITA, if at all it ever will. If you look at the most popular networking applications through the decades, starting in the 1970′s, you’ll see that email has been a constant contender. And it still remains, and will probably remain for the next decade as well.

First monday of summers

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Today was the first monday of the summers. Its a weird feeling. Its summer. You’re supposed to be doing things that you “like” doing during summers, right? Now you like your research stuff. But thats “work” right? So how does research go during summers? Kinda weird I guess

Anyways, it wasn’t so bad. The campus was awefully empty today since all the undergrads have just vanished.

I’ve been watching a movie a day since friday, lets see for how long I can keep that up. I saw “Hum Tum” on Friday night and really liked it. The movie started of awkwardly with the direction a bit jerky. But it picked up really well as it went along, and by the end it came out really nice. It was fresh and both Rani and Saif have done a good job.

Then on Saturday night we saw “The Shining”. A Stanley Kubrick classic, the acting by all cast, Jack Nickolson in particular was amazing. But I didn’t understand the complete plot. Especially that painting in the last shot was supposed to tie some loose ends I guess. But it just created more confusion for me :-D

Last night was “Reserver Dogs”, the original of Kaante by director Quarantin Tarantino. Interestingly, Tarantino himself starrs in the movie, albeit only a cameo appearence. Some scenes are really gory (remember Kill Bill Vol. 1?) but horribly realistic. If you really want to know what happens to a man when he gets shot, you should watch this movie. Again, superb acting by all of the cast.

Finally, tonight I saw “Chronicles of Riddick”. Just one word — “pathetic”. The weird thing is, I still enjoyed the movie. It doesn’t have a gripping story, nor hair raising action. But I think Vin Diesel and the Necromonger babe were really cool, and the effects were awesome. Apart from that, there’s really no USP for the movie. I don’t know why its grossing so much in its first week. And tomorrow, we plan to watch Yuva. What a spree!