My Perspective

Bangalore MLC Graduates voter registration starts from Oct 1 – Nov 5, 2011 (Last Date). Election and actual voting will happen in the 2012. Who is eligible to vote? If you are resident of Bangalore AND you are a graduate from any Indian university (passed out before Nov 1st, 2008), you can register as a voter and cast a vote to send a graduate to the Legislative Council. You will need a copy of your graduation certificate, self-attested if you are submitting it in person, or attested by a Gazetted officer if you are posting it. You will also need an address proof (Any one of : Passport, Driving License, Ration Card). How to Register?

All those who were felt it right for Anna Hazare's anti graft campaign, this is the time to act! Here are some details about the last MLC Elections, Graduates Constituency (Bangalore) in 2006 Estimated Citizens eligible to register:  7,00,000  (then now 15L) Actual Voters Registered: 60,000 (approx) Actual Votes polled: 21,270 (Abysmal low 3% turnout) MLC elected: Ramachandre Gowda (total votes : 11,423) BJP's Ramachandra Gowda is the current MLC. He was the Medical Education Minister in Yedyurappa cabinet, but was forced to resign after he was accused of corruption in recruitments to medical colleges. This happened because we failed to vote and elect the right candidate! 

Ken Robinson on "schools killing creativity"... This is the most famous and most watched TED video. It does raise many pertinent questions on the current education system and how it is modeled. This video is a great watch for all.. Do not miss it..! Now, my question to you is..

It is long known that popular singer's vocals are pitch corrected through software. I mean off-key notes are adjusted. Yes technology can do wonders! Computer Software is changing the way musicians create, record, and manipulate music. Software called Music Objects Recognition (MOR) can dynamically adjust music elements like harmony, tempo, melody, etc. and can even emulate human performance on the piano..! Dr. Andy Hildebrand, Inventor of Autotune Andy Hildebrand, inventor of pitch correction software Auto-Tune, developed it by applying the data processing knowledge he gained from his work in geophysics, where acoustical waves are used to search for oil. Amazing isn't it..! He estimates that 90% of popular music vocals go through Auto-Tune. Also hardware versions are used to pitch correct live performances on the fly. Recently released “Throat and Harmony Engine” is capable of analyzing a person’s voice recording and recreating it. Visit this link for the complete article: htt...

Ten minutes after you start listening to your favourite music album, you feel that something isn't right. Even though you love this album, you can't listen to it anymore. You shut it off, tired, puzzled, and confused. This always seems to happen when you switch from a classic album to a modern one. What you've just experienced is something called over-compression of the dynamic range. Welcome to the loudness war. The “loudness war” (an assault on music and ears - an open secret of the recording industry for nearly the past two decades), refers to the competition among record companies to make louder and louder albums. But the loudness war could be doing more than just that... like halting technological advances in sound quality for years to come. Find out how..? Flash Version http://spectrum.ieee.org/aug07/5480 Text version http://spectrum.ieee.org/aug07/5429 Find out, how can Replay Gain algorithm help in this cause?

I recently came across this interesting article. And I wish to share it with you all. Here's a story about George Dantzig - the famed mathematician who's contributions to Operations Research and systems engineering have made him immortal. As a college student, George studied very hard and often late into the night. So late, that he overslept one morning, arriving 20 minutes late for Prof. Neyman's class. He quickly copied the two maths problems on the board, assuming they were the homework assignment. It took him several days to work through the two problems, but finally he had a breakthrough and dropped the homework on Neyman's desk the next day. Six weeks later, on a Sunday morning, George was awakened at 6 a.m. by his excited professor. Since George was late for class, he hadn't heard the professor announce that the two unsolvable equations on the board were mathematical mind-teasers that even Einstein hadn't been able to answer. But George Dantzig, working w...

Indus Valley is the largest among all the ancient civilizations that existed around 4500 years ago, spread in region of what is now the modern day Pakistan, Afghanistan, and northern parts of India. Interestingly, Indus Valley Script is the world's oldest script that still remains undeciphered. Recently, I came across this awesome TED talk on "Computing a Rosetta stone for Indus Valley Script". Here is the link:  In this talk by Dr. Rajesh Rao puts forth his argument as to why the symbols represent a language script while disproving the claims of other research groups which say that those symbols do not represent a language script. Also read this excellent article by Dr.V.S. Ramachandran, brain researcher in California on plausible connections of Indus valley civilization with Easter Islands in Pacific ocean, a region unconnected geographically with Indus valley..! Quoting Voltaire, " No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking ". ...

I recently watched the movie 'Stanley ka Dabba' (SKD) and here is my review of the movie. In short, SKD is a finely made film highlighting an important social issue and the movie succeeds in doing just that and it does smartly as well. This aspect is very important in a country like ours where pertinent issues like corruption, policy reforms are high jacked in a jiffy by things like IPL or 'Shiela ki jawani' song.

How to determine the distance to a star cluster using its H-R diagram? Background and Need Having covered the background on Star Clusters , H-R diagram ,  Main sequence and the need to study star clusters in our previous article on estimating the age of a cluster , we will discuss about ZAMS. Zero-Age Main Sequence (ZAMS) is the locus of all newly formed stars main sequence (MS) stars on the H-R diagram of a cluster – forming a boundary to the lower left of the main sequence. Idea

The highlights on the criminal and financial background of MLAs in the newly elected May 2011 assemblies of four states - Assam, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Puducherry: 35% of MLAs of West Bengal, 29% of Tamil Nadu, 10% of Assam and 30% of MLAs from Puducherry have criminal cases pending against them.   75 MLAs of West Bengal, 36 MLAs of Tamil Nadu, 8 of Assam and 2 of Puducherry have declared serious criminal cases pending against them including charges of murder, kidnapping extortion etc.   37% of MLAs of Assam, 52% of Tamil Nadu, 16% of West Bengal and 63% of MLAs from Puducherry are crorepatis.   For the complete analysis on this across all five states where elections were held please read this  report  (pdf) prepared by  Association of Democratic Reforms . For individual state wise analysis please visit this  page . All this information is prepared by collating all the information submitted by the candidates themselves and nothing more...

Recently I came across a comic blog looking at the lighter side of Tamil Brahmins (aka tambram) culture, their superstitions, daily life etc. etc. It is aptly titled " TAMBRAHM RAGE "..  I wish to share a recent article from that blog here. If you cannot relate to tambrahm jokes, there are other such raging blogs...

IEEE Medal of Honor for  the year 2007 goes to  Prof. Thomas Kailath   for "exceptional development of powerful algorithms in the fields of communications, computing, control and signal processing". How can one work and contribute at highest level in so many varied fields?  What is his recipe for success? Before we discuss that aspect, here is the link to article in IEEE Spectrum on Kailath  and his achievements.  I will summarize the article here for the sake of readers' convenience (also I find it easier for this discussion that way): His doctoral research was on the detection of random signals in noise. He worked out a theory for using a separate feedback channel to provide information about noise in a communications channel and adapt the incoming signals to move through the noise. (That work has yet to find practical application). He was involved in developing computer algorithms for the systematic design of special-purpose chips. He laid the groundwor...

"Where the mind is without fear and the head held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action; Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."

' Now showing ' is a movie review show on CNN-IBN tv channel aired on Fridays at 10.30 pm which review latest movies released that same week and as well as new DVD releases. Both the host and the movie critic on this show is Mr. Rajeev Masand known for his outright blatant expression of views in his movie reviews . I still recall how he famously threw an egg at the camera after reviewing the utterly hopeless movie 'RamGopalVarma ki Aag'.

How can we determine the age of a star cluster using its H-R diagram. Background Star Clusters are groups of stars that are gravitationally bound ranging from just ten to over ten million in number e.g. Pleiades cluster (Krittika) or M45 in Taurus constellation. An H-R diagram is a scatter plot of Luminosity vs. surface temperature or absolute magnitude vs. spectral type of stars. Main sequence is the track of stars that runs diagonally across the H-R diagram from high luminosity, hot stars to low luminosity, cool stars. Need The star clusters are useful in checking theories of stellar evolution, for calibrating absolute luminosities, and

I derive value out of watching the review, since it is better to spend couple of minutes reading the review rather than spending two whole hours watching the movie only to feel what a hopeless waste of time it was. It also makes sense as there are way too many movies out there but very few good ones given the rat race in the  movie industry! There are a quite a few reviewers out there, how to follow the right one. Now that is a tough question.

In this article, I wish to discuss and demystify few important myths surrounding the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare backed by India Against Corruption . Myth : Objective of the movement is to bypass the parliament and enact jan lokpal bill  and hence anti-parliamentary in nature. This is the single biggest misconception that many people on both sides have. The movement was to ensure that the strong effective Lokpal bill is tabled in the parliament at the earliest and enacted.

Continuing with the tactics for solving Sudoku from my earlier post, here is the second part of the post. Here we will discuss tactics referring to level 2 and 3. For legend and terminologies please refer the earlier post . Level Two : The tactics are quite elementary, in that one would observe that these are applied to almost most of the sudokus of difficulty levels greater than two. These are also very easy to calculate and present a very powerful and easy tool to solve the tactics.

All of us heard about the recent super moon phenomenon that took place on March 19 2011. Yes, I too witnessed the event late in the might and here is one of my pic.

Ever wondered where have those little sparrows that warble outside your home gone? The once ubiquitous House Sparrows (Passer Domesticus) are now rarely seen in the cities. However, they are still a part of the pleasant rustic residence. I was lucky to spot a bunch of them but in a hill station (not in the city). Here are couple of my pics..

Sudoku, the puzzle of this decade ,  is quite a fun to solve.! But if you find it boring and think it is fun only as long as one can solve it.. then do take my word.. "Sudoku is lot more fun to solve when it gets harder , but only if you have the right tactics and solving strategies." Over the next few weeks we will discuss solving tactics of varying levels and difficulties starting from the easiest to the difficult ones. We will only discuss the tactics for 3x3 sudoku ppuzzle..But before we start on that, I have a few points to make:

Do you want to know How to calculate the day of any given date off hand? Then read on.. For any given date, there is a simple workable formula to calculate the corresponding day. Since for most of the times we would work with dates in 20th and 21st century, So let me just limit myself to explain a simple formula that would work for these 200 years! Method : Given any date between 1900 to 2099, to calculate the corresponding day off the hand, we need to extract the following numbers. Legend: DD - day in the month MM - month CC - century YY - year in the century LY - no. of leap years past since beginning of century Given Date: DD MM CCYY LY - YY / 4 (last 2 digits of the year divided by 4) -> Quotient only Y - YY mod 7 (last 2 digits of the year's remainder with 7) L - LY mod 7 (no. of leap years in this century -> remainder with 7) M - value in the string ( 033 614 625 035 ) corresponding to month D - DD mod 7 (day in the month remainder with 7) C - 0 if CC = 20th century; ...

I am happy to have suggested Mr Sundar rajan GS to interview Dr. Sitaram Ramachandrula, Senior Research Scientist, HP Labs, Bangalore. Here is an interesting interview with him on the topic "Research in the Industry". Q: Please give a brief introduction about you. SR: My name is Sitaram Ramachandrula, and I am a Senior Research Scientist in HP Labs India in Bangalore for last 5years. I have done my BE in ECE from Osmania university campus and M.Tech in Digital electronics from Cochin university campus and Ph.D in ECE from Indian institute of Science Bangalore with a specialization in speech recognition. Prior to working with HP Labs, I worked with Philips semiconductors and Philips consumer electronics divisions for nearly 5 years. Before that I had brief stints in Encore software and Ammanna technologies.

How are Days of the week named? Continuing with the last post of why there are 7 days in a week, here I will try to elucidate the idea behind the naming and the order of the days in a week. This was the method used in the olden times (Babylonian civilization) to arrive at the names for the days and their order.

Everyone of us at some point or the other has resented the state of our nation. More so in the recent years, with all the scams that are exposed and coming to the public domain...! (thanks to RTI in part) Starting with the 2G spectrum scam (1.76 lakh crore) .. thanks to former Telecom minister A.Raja (now a resident of Tihar jail.. not for long); many more culprits are yet to come to book.. and all we are doing is to hope that they will..! Then the latest ISRO-Antrix-Devas deal (presumptive losses of 2 lakh crore).. All of these have highlighted just one issue.. How Corrupt our Legislative really is?

I am happy to have suggested Mr. Sundarrajan G S to interview Dr. Chandra Murthy, Professor , Electrical and Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore on the topic "How to pursue research" Here is the interview with  Chandra Murthy [CM] reproduced verbatim. The result is an wonderful insights into the thought process and view points of an academic. Q: A student has decided to do research – how do you suggest that he does a self analysis to really find out whether he is really interested in research? (peer pressure is common in colleges, so one might have resorted to research since his/her friends are into it.)

Many civilizations and religions have the concept of 7 days making a week. Is there any astronomical significance for this (7 days in a week)? How come all civilizations chose exactly to have 7 days in a week? I had asked the very same question to

How do they calculate the age of the universe They use Hubble constant (Ho) to estimate the age of the universe.. But How Do They Do It..? This is how...